In every New Wave song...

1. Telephones

2. Paranoia

3.

'There's a clock/picture/shadow on the wall
but it's not there...
at all'

Palm-muted power-chords played eight to the bar in the verse.

"Robotic jerkiness"

Depersonalization and alienation.

synth parts

the whisper of a skinny tie brushing against the neck of a rickenbacker

whoa WHOOOOAAa yeah yeah oh

An evocation of Meshach Taylor's Mannequin character (the patron saint of new wave)

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/FixedWetBlackfish-size_restricted.gif

Rinky-dink organ part

Band member holding a guitar cable between their teeth in the video / on the record sleeve

An 12-inch "Extended Version", which does nothing other than "extend".

Whoa, a guitar solo but it's only two notes, that's different

alternately, a guitar solo that's basically the guitar playing the vocal melody

Embarrassing attempt at rapping

Embarrassing attempt at jogging on the spot

Skinny ties.
Short hair.
Clean cut (no facial hair).

Brightly striped cap-sleeve t-shirts

Roto-toms or clear drums.

...or octabans

gated snare, bass way up front in the mix

SIMMONS PADS YO

Chorus pedal

and to man alive: bass line has octaves in it or else gtfo

fifths are dated

upbeat music/glum lyrics ironic contrast

Headbands

Also please consider whether your sleeve design will be actual Nagel, merely Nagel-influenced, actual Bauhaus, or merely Bauhaus-influenced

There are decisions to be made, lads

Some good advice and friends are needed

Pretentious sleeve notes, including a quote from a writer you've never read.

Hand claps and/or Synare and/or Clap-Trap.

Chorus and/or flanger on all guitars, always.

D

X

7

DX7 presets

This all sounds great to me, btw. Not sure if this is supposed to turn someone off of new wave, but give me an album filled with roto-toms and DX7 anyday over whatever the hell Da Baby is singing over this week.

unfunky rhythms to the point that it feels deliberate

I suspect New Wave means different things to different people and different nations?

I'm thinking Cars/Costello/myriad 70s bands trying and mostly failing to modernise themselves.

hmm, when I look at the wiki list of new wave bands it's broader than I would think -- some bands I definitely would not think of as New Wave (Men at Work, Blondie) even though I can see how they are adjacent to New Wave sonically, and others make me uncertain about how I define New Wave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_new_wave_artists

The first bands that popped into my head as New Wave were The Cure, Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, New Order

Same here, I think in the US there's a tendency to include 80s synthy pop rock like, I don't know, A Flock of Seagulls. I don't think the term was used very much, if at all, in the UK in the 80s.

(xp) Ha! As I was saying...

For instance I don't know if anyone ever called New Order a New Wave group in the UK.

Yeah basically synths, very defined and straight mid to uptempo backbeat, cold and glassy sonics, anti-musicianship (i.e. nothing calling attention to itself as technically impressive) of punk rock with a mellower vibe than punk rock, mood ranging from melancholic sadness to melancholic happiness. That's what "new wave" means to me. I was almost gonna say the synthesis of punk and disco, but I don't think that's right (maybe that's no wave), it's more like the synthesis of punk and easy listening.

What (if any) bands did people call New Wave in the UK? I was also like 5 years old when this stuff was coming out, so while I heard it on the radio, I had no conception of what genre it was.

seems new wave meant punk and now means the more pop-friendly side of post-punk or the punky side of synth-pop

it's all indie pop to me

Blondie, Cars, anything British that didn't quite fit into punk was wasn't made by old pub rock lags either

*but* wasn't made

er, Boomtown Rats maybe *shudder*

I don't know if New Order, for instance, were considered aligned with any genre? I mean, what genre were Echo & the Bunnymen or Teardrop Explodes? I'm sure they might have been. Also we also had New Romantic by then and I'm sure and other subgenres going on - like Goth?

ill-fitting Elvis Presley sample

Blondie to me is New York No Wave gone pop.

I'd have to look at an old NME or Sounds!

Hmm, I think of it more like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, all those late '70s/early '80s jittery, neo-power pop guitar bands, often with very dry/brittle production.

Same here. Basically dressed like this, wearing spectacles like these, playing guitars like these and doing this exact splayed knock-kneed stance wherever and whenever possible:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/MyAim_isTrue.jpg

I know now that New Wave already existed in 1977ish but it did not intrude on my consciousness until perhaps 1982.

For me (as for, I suspect, a lot of white suburban American teenagers), New Wave began with Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love" and the Human League's "Don't You Want Me."

From there, we went backwards a bit to catch up on Talking Heads, Blondie, Elvis C., Joe Jackson, the Cars, etc., who had been making music in that frenetic-yet-melodic vein for a while but who hadn't quite sorted into a school

Post-punk and synthpop and New Wave overlapped but were not necessarily synonymous. New Order, Flock of Seagulls, Pet Shop Boys, Thomas Dolby, OMD, and Depeche Mode had elements of all three. But yr New Wavers didn't necessarily embrace Ultravox, Erasure, Falco, or Kraftwerk with the same zeal.

The goth/industrial complex - the Cure, Ministry, NiN - strikes me as more New Wave-adjacent. But they were embraced all the same by some of the same audiences.

Then there came a brand of pop-rock that worked within a New Wave framework but still delivered rock-esque satisfactions. Here I am thinking of Tears for Fears, INXS, Crowded House, Simple Minds.

Of course I love all of this music inordinately and will stan for it until I am in my grave.

I did toy with 'Cold Wave' in the title but thought that was a bit niche.

to Left - I submit to you that REM and Indigo Girls were indie pop but were not New Wave.

Pixies were not New Wave, nor was Sonic Youth

Replacements = indie pop yes, New Wave no

Yeah, I usually think more of what Josh in Chicago described as well as bands like the Cars, the Police, Talking Heads, the Knack; Blondie, B-52s. People also use the term to refer to British synthpop, though.

Blondie to me is New York No Wave gone pop.

I think no wave was in part a reaction against these bands? From the group description of the No Wave FB group:

The term "no wave" is in part a punk subculture satirical wordplay rejecting commercial elements in general, that was based in the specific rejection of the then-popular new wave genre. No wave music was a reaction against new wave acts, like Talking Heads, signing with record labels, and the use of Chuck Berry guitar riffs commonly used by new wave music groups in the late 1970's.

I don't really know what they're talking about wrt Chuck Berry riffs tbqh.

Despite some of the revolting accouterments, there is real musical value in much of punk rock. More and more, the punkers find themselves being referred to as members of yet another New Wave. Sex Pistols Manager Malcolm McLaren regards that as highfalutin, calling the phrase "Establishment language, more descriptive of a new hairstyle than anything else." In truth, New Wave does seem an apt catch-all label for the energetic and varied kind of music that has emerged in recent months from some of the young American bands. The Ramones stick close to basic rock 'n' roll, but they get better all the time. Last week their latest single Sheena is a Punk Rocker made the Billboard Hot 100 chart, the first New Wave song to achieve that eminence.

Haha there was an (online) appendix to Simon Reynolds' post-punk book called something like "mountains of abuse heaped on Chuck Berry", where the likes of Magazine and the Pop Group slagged off punk bands for just rehashing 12-bar blues riffs.

I remember circa 1980 there were a spate of TV segments on local "magazine"-type programs or on talk shows about how to achieve a new wave haircut, and the soundtrack would usually be "Rock Lobster" or Devo.

I think in the US there's a tendency to include 80s synthy pop rock like, I don't know, A Flock of Seagulls. I don't think the term was used very much, if at all, in the UK in the 80s.

This is OTM. What might have been called New Pop, New Romantic, post-punk, etc. in the UK came under the umbrella term new wave in the US. But I also remember (US) music writers struggling to come up with something to call the newer British groups of around 1983/1984 because even in America the term new wave was starting to seem passé.

But I mean, which classic punk bands were playing blues progressions and double-stop riffs?xp

The funny thing is, man alive's answers still made perfect sense to me even if we were thinking of different sets of bands.

jello biafra's disgust at dead kennedys being called new wave instead of punk c.1980 probably means something somewhere in here too but i find it hard to care about the politics of it all. nirvana's ironic(?) "new wave" polly maybe reflects a similar attitude idk

feel like new wave is halfway between post-punk & synthpop, with a self-consciously "arty" vibe.

i don't really think synths are a pre-requisite for a band to be "new wave," the police and talking heads didn't mess around with synths in their early albums.

voodoo chili otm.

Loads of "New Wave" bands had, at their core, a four-piece guitar-centric rock band.

Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways it's still rock and roll to me

I feel like a certain pop sensibility is important in distinguishing New Wave from postpunk. Some bands can wear both labels (Talking Heads e.g.) but in general the postpunk canon doesn't have a lot of U.S. chart presence, where the New Wavers do.

Also, some bands — looking at you, Psychedelic Furs — started postpunk and became New Wave by adding synths and glossy production.

A less fun thing about New Wave is the predominant whiteness. With few exceptions - Thompson Twins, Fine Young Cannibals - it's a pretty pallid lineup. But they're often drawing from R&B / disco influence.

Imagine the Naked Eyes song "Promises, Promises"* without the Nile Rodgers-style guitar. Imagine the Police without reggae, etc.

* = this is like my favorite song ever in the history of ever

I've posted the Sire records New Wave sampler (Richard Hell, Talking Heads, Dead Boys, Saints) that introduced me to the concept in 1977. By the next year I had an A&M "No Wave" sampler with Joe Jackson, Stranglers, Dickies. By 1981 Urgh! A Music War was released, MTV debuted, and anything that wasn't classic rock was "new wave," including Tom Petty and Robert Palmer. I had friends who thought I had "gone new wave" because I hated Molly Hatchet. It was a weird time.

Wait, what?

Richard Hell and Dead Boys are punk. Tom Petty and Robert Palmer are basically classic rock.

Joe Jackson has sometimes been characterized as "piano punk" but no; that's new wave.

Talking Heads are themselves first and foremost but I have no problem shelving them under new wave according to my criteria (roughly, frenetic-yet-melodic and existing 1977-86)

Weird time indeed.

I'd say Blondie were new wave

Robert Palmer did "Johnny & Mary" which I'd say is New Wave really, but then I always held quite a broad definition of it anyway

oh and another thing is video game noises and bleeps and shit that sound like a phone going off and make me anxious

conspicuous lack of old waves

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/images/Archives/magazines/1970s/1979-02-xx_NewWaveRock/1979-02-xx_NewWaveRock-1.png

I love this place. Went into a deep discussion of what "new wave" means in less than an hour. Hugs!!!

Okay Evan, how about the notorious Naples tsunami of 1343?

Is that old enough for you? Or do you need older waves?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis?wprov=sfla1

The whole first half of that 1979 article was devoted to questioning whether Tom Petty was new wave: https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/magazines/1970s/1979-02-newwaverock

maybe we can pen a collective letter to that 1979 issue of new wave rock and settle it once and for all

May i add: If your band had a 40 year old bar band veteran in the lineup, you might be "new wave".

did your bass player play with willie "boom boom" alexander at a frat party at BU in 1972? You are new wave.

is this new wave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HPBLLiB-nk

I first recall seeing the term New Wave on the front cover of Sniffin’ Glue magazine in 1976. I also remember Malcolm McLaren scorning the term in an interview not long after, saying he preferred Punk Rock. It was briefly synonymous with punk, then drifted towards the Costello/Dury/Lowe end of the spectrum, before landing god knows where later on.

The two classic rock/AOR warhorses I'd always heard were once frequently tossed in under the New Wave umbrella were Petty and Dire Straits, fwiw. I think, a la the punk revolution, that stuff on the radio had become so clean and predictable and safe that literally anything that deviated from the Eagles and Boston and Fleetwood Mac was considered, well, practically deviant. Which I suppose is ironic, given Petty's connections to both the Eagles and, eventually, Fleetwood Mac, but iirc they just didn't know how to market him, which shows how conservative radio was. Dire Straits, I really have no idea where that band fit in, or who their fans were. I looked it up, and in 1978 Dire Straits was opening for the Talking Heads in the UK; later that year they were opening for Climax Blues Band and later after that, Styx. Petty back then was billed with everyone from Be Bop Deluxe to Patti Smith to Blondie.

Incidentally, back to the hair metal book I'm reading, every act and pretty much everyone involved repeatedly cites Quiet Riot as the band that "save rock and roll" or whatever from new wave, because as they said every label was focused on chasing the next Duran Duran or next Police; the Quiet Riot album was in fact the album that knocked "Synchronicity" from the top of the charts. This is 1983, just a few years into "new wave," which shows how much MTV and its endless stream of one-off colorful acts had really revolutionized the industry.

Dire Straits came out of, or certainly had connections, with the Pub Rock scene - as did people like Costello, Ian Dury, Graham Parker, Nick Lowe etc - so them getting tangled up in New Wave isn't all tnat surprising, although they didn't have anything musically New Wave about them.

Joe Jackson was a totally different scene, right? No pub rock connections.

I had honestly never thought of Quiet Riot as being the saviours of anything much, different strokes I guess.

(xp) I don't know his background but he has, er, the whiff of Pub Rock about him.

Quiet Riot were the saviors of Slade's bank account.

Ironic or non-ironic references to plastic, nylon, artificial materials. Could also mean that someone in the band owns a J.G. Ballard book.

I think "new wave" (in the UK at least) at the time was a catch-all term for bands that came after punk but were probably influenced by punk and Bowie/Roxy. I just read a couple of Joy Division interviews where there is talk of "new wave" bands and that is what Curtis/Gretton seem to be talking about when they say 'new wave'. Like, Gary Numan would be "new wave" - that's probably who Bowie is referencing in Teenage Wildlife with "the new wave boys". I think "post-punk" is a bit of a retroactive term, not used in 1979/80, but applied after the fact.

omg nothing about Joy Division or Dire Straits or even Nick Lowe seems New Wave to me. Gary Numan yes, Tom Petty no.

Clearly there is both enormous subjectivity and a UK/US schism going on here.

To nail it down I think you'd have to look at a few issues of NME from 1979... maybe I will next time I'm in the British Library!

Okay Evan, how about the notorious Naples tsunami of 1343?

Is that old enough for you? Or do you need older waves?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis?wprov=sfla1

― cardio free europe (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, May 11, 2021 6:11 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

They sound cool but are you sure they’re not a post rock band?

blame it on the bossa nova

Funny seeing the Honeycombs on this thread. I sat next to the guitarists son for the first couple of years of high school from like 1978.
They used to run a guitar shop in Walthamstow for years but I think the location's been leveled and built on again since then.

I don't like New Wave because it does have connotations of what the big music companies thought they could market at the time of punk and shortly afterwards. & tended to be other things repackaged with some semi trappings of punk and the new thing whatever that was. But does seem to be heavily commodified.

New Wave presumably comes from the French film scene. So has a consciously arty bent. I'm not sure how happy everybody at the time of punk was to be lumped under that term and some people may have been referring to themselves at the time as New Wave which may have then been picked up by the mainstream press as a term to use and therefore be seen as something to avoid using by those it had applied to because it had been latched onto. Which is like precisely what you don't want isn't it. Like you don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry grabbing hold of this thing you've been working at. It might distort heavily for one thing. Oh & lo and behold didn't it just?
But yeah also arty at the time presumably does mean Bowie & Roxy for Brits and apparently Australians since it crops up as being things the youthful Nick Cave was into in the Mark Mordue Boy On Fire prior to punk. Not sure what else would augment it that would be admitted to after the punk year zero. Or would the year zero thing still hold true by the time New Wave becomes the popular form.
I'd assume some of teh better Krautrock would be in there. Not sure how much funk/soul though danceability did seem to be a sub theme of the commercial genre. but then its going to make it that much more sellable if you can use it to dance to on the disco floor innit

I was listening to New Wave classic Beauty and the Beat last night and this song struck me as especially echt New Wave. You've got the futurism, the herky-jerkiness, lyrics about "quiet now/still of night," Belinda Carlisle's robotic enunciation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na1807jIHts

Never knew about this before (early 80s postpunk/arty new wave band fronted by Dennis Oppenheim's pre-teen daughter - 11 at the outset, 12 by the time of the first EP): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/13/chandra-oppenheim-interview

Listening to their EPs here, they're not bad, definitely interesting at the least: https://chandrachandra.bandcamp.com/album/transportation-eps

Twitching angsty adolescent lust
Feeling very detached at school
Dreams being physically absorbed by technology, fashion and capitalism
Pretending to be fine but totally neurotic and dangerous
Punk attitude and ironically looking for the meaning of life