Post Punk vs. New Wave

I diagree. The DK's were insulting The Knack, a band which I will not call new wave, but power pop.

 

Post punk 100%. In fact, they define post punk for me perfectly.

 

but the snarky introduction to the song specifically draws a line between punk rock and new wave

 

I think The Fall is pretty unique, but I would say Post-Punk. They didn't embrace the mainstream pop sound like most New Wave bands. In the US, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that even knows who they are. Like the fabulous American band, Sparks, The Fall was experimental in sound and image and really sounds like nothing else.

 

For me, New Romantic is a subgenre of New Wave.

 

New Wave makes me smile, Post Punk gives me knots in the stomach. Love ‘em both.

 

Dang! Americans!

New Wave was a specific genre here that followed on from Punk, and was itself followed by the Two Tone/Ska/Mod revival, before the New Romantics came along. All within the space of a few years. The genres ran concurrently, but their individual impacts had a definite timeline.

 

New Romantic certainly grew out of punk. In fact many of the original punks frequented the Blitz Club. So, yes.

 

You may want to read Dylan Jones excellent "Sweet Dreams" book. Because like many people you seem to confuse the term "New Romantic" with developments in 1982. But: During the 1979-81 period things weren't quite as "linear" as you make them appear to be. New Romantic has a direct link to punk.

 

It ain't very new if it's 43 years old.

 

I don't need to read it, I'm we'll aware of the links. And you can probably show that New Wave was a term equivalent to Punk, rather than a separate genre to describe Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, Boomtown Rats and Squeeze. I don't think any of that is the point though. Genre labels are what they are, and one of the things they are are generalisations that describe general events in musical history. As such New Romantic is that music from around '82 that doesn't sound anything like Elvis Costello or indeed The Sex Pistols.

 

I think of New Wave as like Suzanne Fellini or the Plimsouls or 20/20 or bands like that and Post Punk as bands like PIL and Joy Division. Basically Post Punk as anti-rock and New Wave as pop rock.

 

Punk Rock was an enema to flush out the cheesecloth. New Wave was Punk Rock played by Pub Rockers. Post Punk was a return to a Art Rock mentality but with different tools (and trousers).

 

This is precisely the correct interpretation about the term "post-punk". All those trends were considered "post punk". The terms New Wave and Post Punk were used indifferently to encompass any band with a new sound or trend influenced by punk.
And you're right: many bands that some put in the New Wave were not considered as such. However, the whole New Romantic scene is also part of what was called post punk ... there you had Duran Duran, Ultravox, OMD.
Then the term was used in a more open and comprehensive way than now.

And the whole music scene was more "open minded" than it appears now ...

 

Is Sgt Pepper a Merseybeat or Skiffle album, just 'cos that's how The Beatles started out? Of course not.
Just 'cos Billy Currie was in Tubeway Army and they started off as a guitar band does not make Vienna era Ultravox punk or new wave. If that were the case, then Midge Ure was in Slik and thus Ultravox were a bubblegum teenybopper band.
The music is what it is regardless of where folks came from or what they did before.

 

Both terms were created and used indifferently in the early 80's for all emerging music and bands of those days. It was used by chroniclers, journalists and music critics to define what was happening then with the music scene and the appearance of bands like The Police, Devo, OMD, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Adam & The Ants, The Cure, Magazine, Depeche Mode, Ultravox! and a long list to name.

They were wonderful years because many new bands appeared and none sounded like another. Some musically were unclassifiable like for example: XTC, others tended more to the pop sound and not for that reason they were rejected, example: The B-52's or The Go-Go's.
Many of these bands already existed before and were in the underground scene in the mid 70's however for the general public they were considered "emerging". They all shared something in common: they made "new" music apart from what was known so far. Many came from punk or the underground scene

When they reached the mainstream and the industry caught them, then things changed. Some became more and more experimental then subgenres appeared as terms for music criticism. Other bands just became more predictable musically and were absorbed by MTV and corporations and designer bands, clones to sell, began to appear.

Now both terms; New Wave and Post punk have different connotations as you read around here.

 

I think everyone has gotten your point by now!

BTW: Midge Ure almost became a Sex Pistol but fate had other plans.

 

I met Ultravox back in the day. And Malcolm Mclaren when he was producing Bow Wow Wow. Lol. Fun times.

 

Well... for someone who was present at so many seismic cultural events - no matter how we are pigeonholing them today - Midge Ure certainly dropped off the radar big time. And McLaren. At least he was entertaining. Even though sometimes he could be...

 

Because I saw The Fall a few times in 1977 (once as part of an audience of 3 or 4 people), I've always seen them as a punk band, perhaps the purest punk band (in the sense of rudimentary DIY with strong artistic flair from Mr. Smith).

 

It’s a question of the timeline. New wave was 77/78 , post punk 79/80 and beyond

 

In my opinion, post punk would be stuff that was a bit darker or heavier, less commercial sounding, in the style of bands such as Joy Division or The Cure, just for example, or trending toward a more traditional rock based sound, for example REM or U2 or The Replacements.

New wave to me is more pop oriented, bouncy, upbeat, commercial oriented, such as Culture Club, Human League, Duran Duran, etc.

And there's probably a lot of bands that managed to straddle the two, although I'm having a hard time coming up with an example. Maybe later period Depeche Mode? The Plimsouls? Red Rockers or Romantics? Modern English?

 

I’m a boomer but like both. New wave is the last style I really liked and bought lots of those albums though I liked grunge as well.

 

I've also noticed a very huge Roxy Music influence in New Romantic music. I think Bowie gets a lot more credit (well deserved) for influencing post-punk/new wave than Roxy Music. But all those bands and the revivalist bands are directly or indirectly influenced by Roxy Music, especially the British ones.

 

That is certainly how the terms have played out. I believe post-punk came later to distinguish the harder, darker, less commercial "new wave."