Among those of us who lived through the New Wave era, that is, the minor boom of fun, late-’70s power pop/punk rock bands, not, as VH1 retro programmers, Entertainment Weekly writers, and youthful bloggers might have you believe, early synth-pop bands from 1983-1985, did you take great pains to examine where these bands fell along the fine line of “cool?” I did. Let me explain.
Despite what 98% of my fellow students would have said regarding my tastes in music circa 1979, I knew it was cool that I liked punk and new wave bands. I wasn’t cool—don’t think I was deluded into thinking such a thing—but my tastes were cool. That being said, it took only a few weeks of delving into this new music scene to realize that I, as a young rock nerd, had to uphold certain standards of excellence within this genre. Leaving out the punks, almost all of whom were cool, with possible reservations over the suspiciously phony Stiff Little Fingers, judging the coolness of artists loosely categorized/marketed as “new wave” was open to much interpretation. Elvis Costello, Rockpile, and Graham Parker were way cool. Blondie, despite what really cool cats in the New York punk scene had been whispering, were cool. The Police, when they first appeared on the scene, were pretty cool, even if the writing was on the peroxide bottle that they might have bigger fish to fry than empowering awkward teenage boys with a sense of cool. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Cheap Trick clearly were so cool that we tried to drag him into our New Wave Army, whether they wanted to serve on the front lines for us or not. The Cars would surely pull their lesser new wave cohorts into the mainstream, no?
Joe Jackson, as has been discussed here, hit the scene as something just short of way cool, then he managed to merely toe the line of cool while pretty much thumbing his nose at the kids who fell for his schtick in the first place. The Records also walked the equator of cool. A teen had no chance of impressing the 1979-era Cool Patrol roaming American high schools, but the few of us who dug “Starry Eyes” were confident that the children of all those young dudes would one day grasp that band’s simple brilliance. (We were dead wrong, of course, but confident at the time.) Brahm Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, promised perhaps even more cool when new wave fans fell for his minor his “Girl of My Dreams,” but did anyone buy that album and find a second halfway listenable song on it? Let me know if there was a hidden track I missed. That album was direct from Turd City!
When you were 16, where did you draw the Equator of Cool?
Bands like Athens, Georgia’s legendary The Producers, who were recently featured in these hallowed halls, fell way short of new wave’s rapidly developing standards for cool, at least as I and my 4 friends were concerned. The pastel suits and choreographed shows of enthusiasm weren’t cool by any genre’s criteria. Shoot, those moves would have been considered dorky in Lawrence Welk‘s band. And listen: for those of you feeling a building sense of outrage that I’d criticize the music of well-intentioned, tuneful bands because they weren’t cool: we’re barely talking music here; we’re talking about what it took for teenagers with outsider music tastes to get by in the “mean streets” of our nation’s high school hallways, circa 1978-1981. (Townsman andyr: Please do not blow my characterization of our high school as anything but “tough.”)
Finally, I know plenty of fine Townspeople dig this band, but The Knack destroyed all hopes of the New Wave genre ever gaining certification by the Elders of The Cool Patrol. Doug Fieger and his ass-kisser, journeyman bandmates sealed the deal on charges of “phony Beatlemania.” The Clash and other crumbling punk rock bands happily stepped on the backs of once-worthy heroes working a more gentle approach. The Romantics‘ “What I Like About You” and The Go-Go’s would outlast the shame of the era, but New Wave artists were immediately tainted. Costello had already been distancing himself. Parker ditched the Rumour and attempted to align himself with The Boss. Fans of the coolest to the mildly cool among these bands either got duped into hanging their hopes on The Knack or quickly and quietly hung their heads in shame. There was no fighting the fight any longer. Shame was our ultimate fate.
I measured a lot of New Wave against The Pretenders first album. I liked some New Romantic stuff, such as the first two ABC and Duran Duran albums, but a lot of it went wimpy quick. The wimp factor of some old favorites — like The Cars — drove me in the arms of Jason & The Scorchers, Rank & File, et al — and then into the wilds of alt-country, where I roamed for most of the late 80s and 90s.
The Pretenders’ first album is a good measuring stick!
Do they still sound good today, is a safe rule of thumb: Wire, Blondie, early Human League, Devo – yes. Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins – no.
By coincidence we were discussing ‘new wave dancing’ on our radio show last week. Radio Podrophenia. Possibly the worst examples being – Debbie Harry and the crowd in Atomic. Or Linda Hamilton on Terminator 1 *shudders*
We’re having a run out on teenage youth cults tonight – punks, mods, new romantics etc..and ex Ant Marco Pirroni has chosen a glam anthem for us…here from 9pm London Time (just over 4 hours from now) if you fancy chipping in..
http://www.chanceradio.moonfruit.com/#/podrophenia/4553347543
Shoot, I haven’t heard Starry Eyes in years. Quite enjoyed it, thanks!
I have such mixed feelings about this era or whatever you want to call it. (I realize that the borders of New Wave were highly porous.) At the time–and to me that means 1979-82, maybe–it felt like This Is It: “we” (whoever “we” were–anyway, a few friends and I, anyway) had “our music” and we were “winning”! I was too young to realize that winning meant the end of what you liked about it. I can still remember when The Go-Go’s hit the top 20 with “Our Lips Are Sealed,” or maybe it was when “We Got the Beat” hit the top 5; anyway, I remember, Oedipus, who at that time was the top “new wave” dj in Boston on WBCN, starting off his show one day and saying something like “you did it, you made it happen, the Go-Go’s are number such-and-such this week.” Oh, shallow triumph! Next thing you knew, the friggin’ Human League were number one and everyone was “new wave,” and from there it was one small step to Duran Duran ascendant. Pull the plug, kids, it’s over!
So, by the time I was 16, it was, as they say, the fag-end of New Wave. Let’s just call it a learning experience.
I’ll leave you with one of my (still) fave “New Wave” tracks, Pete Shelley’s Homosapien. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI
(Even though the whole mash-up thing misses me, this mash-up of Homosapien and ABBA’s Does Your Mother Know kills me, absolutely kills me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEHq4h7dl9I)
I was 10 in 1980 and knew these bands through being covered by The Chipmunks on the eye-opening “Chipmunk Punk” LP. I did buy Blondie, The Knack, The Cars, Tom Petty, The Go-Gos records shortly after (thank you Alvin!), but my idea of cool was Atari,The Muppet Show and The General Lee.
The good stuff holds up, the bad stuff is for laughing at thier outfits.
Speaking of, if you missed the 1st hour of MTV replay this weekend, you can find it here: http://ultimateclassicrock.com/watch-the-first-hour-of-mtv/
MTV, hour one proves that Split Ends holds up MUCH better than STYX, and Brass In Pocket could be a hit in any era.
In 1980, I was in high school in Arizona and was generally at the mercy of what was played on AM/FM radio. I was well ensconced in Billy Squire, Queen, Led Zeppelin, ELP, Kansas and Abba. I also had my weekly classical piano lessons. Suffice it to say, I was not aware of a lot of New Wave until it became more mainstream. And there was the introduction of MTV.
The other kids in my high school whom I admired were in to Bruce Springsteen but then started to talk about the B52s and The Police. I considered those latter colorful album covers to be the entry to hipness and my entry to New Wave. In 1982, I spent several weeks with my cousins in England and was introduced to The New Romantics (Split Enz, Visage, Adam Ant, etc) who I instantly loved but now associate more with the time rather than a sense of coolness (those puffy shirts!). Since then, most of my love of New Wave has been retroactive and discovered somewhat later (mid to late 80’s). When early U2, Depeche Mode, OMD, and REM came on to the scene, I thought I had gone to musical heaven.
I WISH I had been aware of The Talking Heads when they first started to play. By the time I heard their music (in the mid-80’s) they were considered pretty darn cool.
In Jonathan Lethem’s “Fortress of Solitude,” the title character comes to age during this time period and The Talking Heads (and the nascent Hip Hop scene) become the back drop of his adolescent adventures.
Good call on the B-52s — it’s hard to remember, but for one or two years when they put out their first album and EP, the were the cool kids dance favorite.
The 16-year old me thought Holly and the Italians were really, really cool.
go figure.
In 1981 I thought Adam and the Ants was the coolest thing out there next to Devo.
You know, I still think Kings of the Wild Frontier is a groundbreaking album.
Listening to “This Year’s Model” in the car today, it made me realize how much the New Wave bands highlighted the organ (Farfisa, Hammond, etc.) as part of the band or the mix. Then it morphed into the synth.
Honestly, I’m having a bit of trouble understanding how the word “cool” is being used in this discussion. The new wave thing I remember at the time was considered hip, nerdy, and “alternative,” although the word didn’t exist yet. So do you mean “cool” here as what nerdy kids who cared too much about music thought was cool? In 1978, where I lived, there was no doubt who was considered “cool” by the people who were cool at the parties: Van Halen. Costello was a nerd.
I had pals whose basement I’d hang out in and we’d listen to “Rock Lobster” and drink beer and smoke pot, but nobody was having that kind of music at any “cool” party that I ever went to.
But you may very well mean cool here (for instance, when I see the “thumbing his nose” Joe Jackson reference), to an outsider notion of cool.
No, within the community of people paying attention to New Wave, Costello was cool and Oingo Boingo was not.
To cut a finer line, I thing the main stage post unfairly combines power pop with new wave. Power pop is all guitars and classic rock structures and new wave was synthesizers and a sort-of modern stance. Power pop made have gone top 40 with the Knack but never had any real commercial potential, hence, Cool. New Wave was more of a mixed bag. Very commercial bands like the Thompson Twins were uncool while edgier stuff like 20/20 or Thomas Dolby could be cool. Crossover stuff like Blondie or The Cars were a matter of personal taste.
Real punk didn’t really get to Cocoa Beach in the late ’70s – it might have well been happening on another planet. I never cared much for the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Ramones, or the early punk anyway. However, when Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Blondie, M, and the other new wavers began appearing on the radio around ’78-’79 or so, I was interested. I also liked the Berlin-era Bowie. I got to hear a lot more punk and new wave when I moved to Gainesville, FL (a major college town) in 1979. I very much enjoyed the New Romantic, quirk-pop, and synth-pop of the early ’80s, and I still would rather listen to that than the Clash, Ramones, or Pistols. Blow up The Knack, though.
Interesting incident – I was at a Gainesville party in early 1980 where the crowd was pretty much in the 24-30 age range. The TV was on and the B-52s were making their first SNL appearance with “Rock Lobster”. Most of the crowd had a “what is this shit?” reaction. When I piped up to say that I thought it was kind of fun and cool, everybody looked at me as if I had lost it. One guy said “Oh, Tony likes all sorts of arty shit like Yes and King Crimson.” The crown went back to passing the bong and listening to the Eagles’ The Long Run.
What I’m getting at, mwall, is that punk and new wave were NOT cool in our schools at the time, but for those of us who were into that music, I think we had hope that at least some of it would eventually get through and be accepted as “cool.” So, as my friends and I discovered that stuff, we had some responsibility, I think and recall, to weed out in advance the nerdiest of our nerd music, so that when the day came when The Cool Patrol would actually give that stuff a listen they wouldn’t be immediately turned off by the kind of stuff that probably deservedly added to our reputation as UNcool kids. Does that make sense?
The organ had always been a staple of reggae, ska, and two-tone music and that’s how it got into New Wave, though a lot of bands had the attitude that having a keyboard player was not the punk thing to do (“Keyboards? This isn’t effing Pink Floyd, you know”). The synth had always been lurking around from Eno, Berlin-era Bowie, Devo, Residents, Gary Numan, and so on. However, the New Romantics made it the early ’80s instrument.
Yeah, that makes sense: it was a way of establishing among rock nerds our own sense of cool that maybe we were lacking otherwise–and that maybe, having convinced ourselves of our own coolness, we might be able ultimately to convince others.
Mainly that didn’t happen, in my experience, although sooner or later a lot of people were playing The Talking Heads and Blondie and The Cure etc.
And I think that one of the things lurking in the background is the split in the rock audience that became more or less permanent in those years: choosing either to go mainstream or to embrace the music outside the mainstream.
And by the time some of the more mainstream out-of-the-mainstream bands (Talking Heads, U2, etc) became really big mainstream bands, the non-mainstreamers moved on quickly.
For me (and others probably) there was also the split of going to college: more DC government and want-office-desk-job nerds were into new wave, which was the soundtrack for many of the most boringly wretched parties I ever attended.
I know where Mr. Mod is going with this piece. As I remember my days in grade/high school, the lines were clearly drawn in the late 70’s and early 80’s where you stood. Either you were were a New Waver (punks) or you were with the Ozzies. If by chance you were in the middle, you listened to Journey, Michael Jackson, REO Speedwagon or any other non-threatning pap.
If you were a New Waver, you still had to endure the un-cool of The Thompson Twins and Duran Duran, because the New Wavers were outnumbered by the Ozzies 4-1. But I knew that I was way cooler than the wankers and most New Wavers. I was listening to Lou Reed, The Ramones, Blondie and listened to College Radio and Fred Sonic Smith’s Sonic Rendezvous. But I was willing to accept those borderline new wave bands just so I wasn’t totally alone.
I think a more direct route was from 60s garage rock, stuff like Incense and Peppermints or 96 Tears, which the Nuggets compilation and its descendants brought back into currency.
I feel your 1980-era pain, Tony! That story rings true.
Right on, mwall and cliff. Thanks for helping to clarify what I was trying to scratch.
I was already in my late 20s when all this happened, so I guess I was kind of insulated from these cool wars. I do remember record store clerks being disturbed by the fact that I was buying punk/post/punk records as well as Bob Dylan and the Dead and reggae and folk/blues/country etc. There really was a time when you were supposed to choose sides, and some people thought they were going to change the world and somehow ‘win.’ I’d already been though that in the hippie era, and I guess I’d lost the capacity to be a true believer.
This all happened again with alternative nation in the 90s, right?
Mr. Mod, you’ve described it from my high school era perspective with near perfect accuracy. I’d add XTC, Talking Heads, and Devo to that new wave era. Early U2 possibly — new wave maybe, cool for sure. There’s a lot of differentiation among all of these — it’s not just power pop and later synth dance that I think of as new wave.
The destruction of new wave cool by the massive hits of the Go-Go’s, and Romantics is tied in my mind to the college years. (The Knack was too early.) Heavy rotation of those songs on the radio and at parties. I picture in my mind a dimly lit dormitory hallway, beer kegs in rooms, and the English Beat and the Clash blasting away. (Some kind of ska/punk/wave/rock confluence.) Those guys were still cool but all that stuff was becoming mainstream by then, which cool struggles with–of course, there is a difference between college mainstream and overall mainstream. MTV may have provided the springboard between them.
I’m still waiting for something to OutCool “This Beat Goes On/Switching to Glide.”
aloha
LD
I think it happens every decade in one form or another. I think right now, we’re in a “careful what you wish for” phase. In the late ’90s-early ’00s, I thought it was crazy that bands like Wilco and the New Pornographers were banished to a low-selling ghetto while Limp Bizkit was taking over the world. Now, it seems indie rock has finally graduated to the big leagues, but a lot of it is toothless and way too polished and manicured.
In the Detroit market, that song was a regular fixture on most of AOR stations oddly enough. I always found it out of place wedged between Deep Purple and Skynyrd.
Colder than an Otter Pop: Gary Numan’s “Cars.”
Numan is still something of a guilty pleasure for me. Yeah, he looked like a dork, he wasn’t much of a singer, and his sound had a serious case of rigor mortis. However, he was sooo 1980 and I find that appealing. Being a keyboard player, I also like the great analog synth sounds. “Cars” was a pretty good song but I think “Metal” is extraordinary. Plus this electric-technocrat video is cheesily perfect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtbqFNxIHyI
Tony, maybe you are the missing link between Yes and the B-52s!
Can either of you or anyone else explain to me something about Gary Numan (who was/is definitely cool!): one of his great songs is “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, but what is the significance of the quotation marks around “Friends”? Help me, and enjoy this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu6MDdxBork
I think I know what you mean. It bugs me that going to see Rock N Roll High School in a half full theater the one weekend it played near me is now tainted by the classic rock station playing The Ramones, like they just always did. They didn’t. Elvis Costello wasn’t cool to the people I knew, The Sex Pistols were “awful” and Tom Petty was new and original. I’m glad Tom came around when he did because I think it helped me hang with the more in crowd when I was in those places, but I wouldn’t blame anyone if they only had Damn the Torpedoes and never investigated petty any further.
I didn’t like the Ted Nugent’s, AC/DC’s (to be truthful I’m pretty ambivalent towards AC/DC), and whatever other “hard” rock was selling back then. But I did like a lot of things that crowd could get behind, like Rory Gallagher or BTO or Neil Young. That worked out because then I could slip in some Pretenders or Clash or even something like Television and people would let a side of a record slide, so long as we got to familiar territory soon. I really wanted the stuff I listened to to be more accepted, and I still do. But it just doesn’t happen often.
An interesting question, to me anyway, that comes out of this discussion is: At what point did you stop caring whether anyone else likes what you like or thinks it’s cool? And if you aren’t at that point yet, can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?
This is probably going to come off sounding like I’m claiming a level of coolness I made no pretence to having, but I think I stopped caring whether people–except maybe a few people whose opinions matter to me–in any way approve of music that I am interested in back in high school. I mean, in the words of the Who: Why should I care?
Well the album it’s from is called Replicas, and it’s a science fiction concept album about a dystopian future, androids, etc. So I assumed the ‘friends’ aren’t human and therefore not really friends. Conjecture, but what else could it mean?
Good question, misterioso. I joke about this concept so much that I must still be struggling with the issue for real. I’m afraid I reached a point in my mid-20s when I honestly convinced myself, deep down, that my tastes in music were cool. However, this belief requires serious maintenance, which explains why I did the things that led up to Rock Town Hall and now do what I do here on a regular basis. Someone might know me better, but I think I’m being serious.
I barely recall hearing a song by Gary Numan all these years other than “Cars”! The two you guys posted aren’t bad.
I don’t think I ever cared about what uncool people thought about my musical tastes, even when I was very young. I think I was always kind of in my own world, but I always had friends who shared at least some of my interests.
With the development of each new personal listening device, I cared less and less about other people’s musical tastes because I was more in control of what I listened to. At the same time, I found it less necessary to spread the gospel of what I think is cool. I know that my musical tastes are not for everyone so I just kind of acquiesce when listening to music in a social setting. Bartending in a dance club gave me the ability to tune out music I don’t like and headphones allow me to listen to live in a Chili Pepper and Van Halen free world most of the time.
One thing though: I don’t care if people liked it or not, I still don’t understand WHY Glad Girls by Guided By Voices was not a massive hit.
Agreed, and I’m not even really much of a GBV fan.
Mod, I hear your anguish. I really don’t know if my tastes or yours are cool, but I do know how little I care. Free yourself from the tyranny of cool, my brother, free yourself!
Gotcha. That makes a certain amount of sense. I don’t know the song in the context of an album. Always liked it, though.
But I’m so close to reaching my goal!
I know, but it is an asymptotic approach you are making: always getting closer, never reaching. Yes, you can quote me on that.
I saw Pete Shelley’s solo tour to promote HOMOSAPIEN back in the day. It was the first show I ever saw where some of the music was prerecorded. At the time many (myself included) were a bit annoyed. This guys kept yelling “Is it live or is it Memorex”.
I also didn’t really love the album at the time fresh off my wanting more guitar driven Buzzcocks type songs. I have to say..I since have purchased the album and it does have some fine tracks.
I, too, eventually came around to liking that song, but I’ve never heard another lick off that album or any other solo Shelley track. I’m constantly amazed at how much music I’ve never heard!
So are we.
You know why that “Starry Eyes” record never went anywhere? Because it’s TOO FUCKING LONG! Seriously, five minutes? Really? If that thing were a tight 2:20 it would’ve been aces. But it ain’t worth five minutes of anybody’s time.
I remember going to the cool (read: soon to go out of business) record store in San Jose, Costa Rica in 1977 and just staring at the album covers for Ramones Leave Home, Never Mind the Bollocks and My Aim Is True, thinking: the world has completely gone insane. Those covers frankly scared me. They looked nothing like this:
http://turntabling.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/bad-album-covers-jay-ferguson-thunder-island.jpg
THAT was what a rock star on an album cover was supposed to look like!
I actually heard the Pistols as an impressionable 13 year-old, and it struck me as dull and unimaginative “hard rock.” Nowhere near as fast and angry and disobedient as “Cat Scratch Fever” or “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” by Ted Nugent. Now HE was cool. Or so I thought.
Flash forward a couple of years, and somebody came home to Swaziland from England with a home-recorded C-45 of “Inflammable Material” by the Stiff Little Fingers on it. “Alternative Ulster” completely blew my mind. I’m going to pull an E Pluribus on you, Mod — anybody who doesn’t get that first SLF album is bat-shit crazy.
Anyhow, just a few thoughts about my early experiences with punk and the new wave.
The only other cut from the album I can remember is called “I Don’t Know What It Is” and it sounds a lot like Homosapien, only not as clever. But it’s quite ok.
I just downloaded 4 songs from that album. I’ll show that nasty BigSteve!
BTW, HVB: Bite me, when it comes to Stiff Little Fingers’ first album! I totally dig the greatness of “Alternative Ulster” and “Suspect Device,” but the hectoring sets in early. I can see why you’d dig the entire album more than I do. You know I’m really subtle about expressing my beliefs.
Good, Mod. We’re all pulling for you.
Numan has also said that he is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, a disorder of social interaction, so perhaps there is a key there.
Also, according to “Rip It Up” (my bible of this period), the lyrics are from a sci-fi novel that he tried to write and the “friends” are “cyborg buddies or sexpals.”
Mr. Royale and I both have pretty catholic musical tastes, and I would say his are much more wide ranging than mine. Both of us are pretty open to hearing new music, either meaning present day or new to us. I just asked him the “at what age did you stop caring what others thought of your musical tastes” question and we both had pretty much the same answer: we do still care, to a point. Mr. Royale writes his music blog and still wistfully looks at the number of hits/comments people make. I’m always trying to share my interest i music with other people, often to minimal effect. I guess I can guiltily say that I do care about what people think, although more in terms of wanting to discuss favorite music rather than convince someone of it’s merit.
I gotta call bullshit on anyone that says they “don’t care what anyone thinks about what they listen to” and then spends time telling people what they listen to on music blogs. Everyone cares what other people think, it’s which other people that matters. I’ve got a nephew that says he just likes ALL music, but he doesn’t buy any or own any music. Whatever comes on the radio is fine by him. So I don’t care what he thinks, but people that have similar tastes to me and actually seem to care what they listen to have opinions that matter to me.
I listened to Blondie’s Parallel Lines today. There’s a band that wasn’t quite Punk, but was definitely the New Wave. I thought they were cool as hell when I was in high school. One reason was because they were new, they looked cool to me and one of the coolest things is that girls actually liked them. What more could you ask for?
2000Man, yes, probably we all care what a select few people think, to some extent. But I really can’t be worried about whether anyone else likes “Changing of the Guards” off Street-Legal or Jackie McLean’s Destination Out album or “Homosapien” by Pete Shelley. That said, it is nice when one encounters people who do like these things and it is even fun, sometimes, to argue with those who don’t. Hence this forum.
Yes, my position was that I didn’t care what uncool people thought. And btw I love Changing of the Guard. That whole album really.
I only ever cared about other people’s tastes in as much as, I wanted to let people who didn’t like what I liked know just how wrong they were for not liking it, and why. I always knew I was right: what I liked was cool, and people who didn’t like it weren’t cool, or at the least, not sharp enough to get it.
I’m not particularly proud of feeling that way, but I guess it’s better than pretending to like stuff just because it’s supposed to be cool, rather than actually believing it to be cool.
Hey, I went out thrifting and what should I find for 99 cents but the first Records album — the one with “Starry Eyes” on it. Funnily enough, I had no recollection of this post or the “Starry Eyes” track, so I had to judge the thing by its cover. Had I looked at the track list for the free EP included with the album, I would’ve snapped it up toot sweet — covers of “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby…” and “See My Friends”? Hells yeah! As it was… man, I don’t know why I plunked down my money. The band shot just gave off a Knack vibe or something — though nobody’s wearing uniforms. Don’t know why it set off my power pop alarm. Weird. Anyhow, it’s pretty good, so far.