Bands in the "synthesizer/electronic" chapter of the 1980 new wave guide I just bought for $2 off a seemingly homeless guy set up on the sidewalk of St Marks

yeah but this list is a lot more prescient/"lasting"/ILM-friendly than any of the other ones you've posted! ENO WON THE FUTURE

hah! i have a jean-michel jarre record, "oxygene." points for the exruciatingly '70s cover art, all things considered it's sort of incredible. olde tymey synthe-poppe. i think he was the son of the movie scorer maurice?

wait--wire...?

I LOVE OXYGENE, it ruled prog radio in the 1970s OUI OUI

xpost: synths ahoy after the first few recs, yeah

Right. And Tom Petty is "new wave."

"Breakdown" and "American Girl" were SO new wave it hurt, Alf!

man, what a list

can someone tell the thread about the flying lizards, m, athletice spizz '80, new musik, and snakefinger?

sorry, "tell the thread" is horrible...please replace with "talk about". i am not fully awake yet.

M = Robin Scott = pal of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood years before punk hit. Ever since I learned this, I've thought about of M as the Sex Pistols' Kraftwerkian alter ego.

New Musik were Brits, made famous for a week or two in the US by a 10-inch Epic "nu disk" EP featuring their tiny hit "Straight Lines," which rhythmically moved in as straight a line as any techno-pop at the time, probably, but was cute nonetheless. Their album was OK, too, but not all *that* Okay.

The Flying Lizards is David Cunningham and friends. Various singers, including Vivienne Goldman of Launderette fame. He was involved with the Cold Storage studios with the likes of This Heat and the Homosexuals, composed minimalist-type new music, runs the Piano label, was really into dub. The first LP is one AWESOME and includes the fluke hit single Money. The second album, Fourth Wall, is even more experimental, much of it featuring Patti Pallidan (Snatch, Johnny Thunders g-friend) and includes a great song composed and produced by Michael Nyman. The third album, Top 10, returns to the wacky dubbed out cover version style of Money to mixed results.

http://home.netcom.com/~logan5/

sorry, cunningham produced the song Nyman wrote. It's called Hands 2 Take.

Yeah, this is the first time I actually know most of the bands talked about in thos "1980 new wave 2$guide". I feel just a little bit less of an ass!

I've heard all of them apart from Snakefinger. That Brian Eno fellow's quite good.

Hopefully someone can enlighten me, the name sounds more like some country rock band than a bunch of electronic whizz kids.

wasn't snakefinger on ralph records at one point, along with mx-80 sound, the residents, and chrome? or am i confusing him with tuxedomoon? either way, i was under the impression he was a really strange, maybe electronically doctored, avant guitarist type fellow (probably from san francisco, or maybe he just seemed like somebody from there.) either way, his long fingers often turned into snakes!!!

Yeah, he was a Residents crony and had quite a few records on Ralph.

Nu Musik had a couple of hits in the UK. Living by Numbers and World of Water. If memory serves they were sub-depeche mode bleepy pop songs.

You can probably see Athletico Spizz 80 playing in London any time there's one of those punk supershows with 27 old punk bands performing. They aren't electronic/synthesiser based. Pop-punk with occasional hoover effects. "No Room" was a good single which scraped the charts. They were better as Spizzenergi and worse as The Spizzles, who made a really bad album that a mate of mine had.

thanks guys! these groups seem rather obscure for this book. was there a disco section, chuck?

As well as being best mates w/The Residents amd playing on their records and releasing a cover version of "The Model" on Ralph, Snakefinger was Phil Lithman, leader of Anglo pub rockers Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers w/Nick Lowe and Martin Stone of The Action, Mighty Baby and various dodgy rare book collecting exploits!

Wow, I had no idea. Were there any Chilli Willi records?

Copied from A11music:

"Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers were one of the main British pub rock groups of the early '70s, playing a laid-back yet rocking mixture of rock & roll, R&B, country, and folk. The band has its origins in a folk-rock duo formed by ex-Junior's Blues Band members Martin Stone (vocals, guitar, mandolin) and Phil "Snakefinger" Lithman (vocals, guitar, piano, lap steel, fiddle). Lithman moved to San Francisco in the late '60s, leaving Stone to play with Savoy Brown and Mighty Baby. The duo reunited in the early '70s, recording Kings of Robot Rhythm with vocalist Jo-Ann Kelly and various members of Brinsley Schwarz. Kings was released in 1972; that same year, the duo expanded to a band, adding Paul "Dice Man" Bailey (guitar, banjo, saxophone), Paul Riley (bass), and drummer Pete Thomas. During the next two years, Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers became a popular live act in Britain. The full band released Bongos Over Balham in 1974, yet the record sold poorly and the band split in February 1975. Thomas became the drummer for Elvis Costello's backing band, the Attractions, Riley played with Graham Parker, Bailey formed Bontemps Roulez, and Stone played with the Pink Fairies before quitting the music business. Lithman moved back to San Francisco where he began to work with his former associates, the Residents, under the name Snakefinger."

There's a 72 lp and a 74 one. Never heard either.

Never knew Martin Stone was in the Pink Fairies! He turns up (sometimes in disguised form) in various Iain Sinclair books.

Funny that the P-Furs were not a "synthesizer/electronic" band in 1980...but were about to become one. It's like the book could read the future!

What, no Suicide? Sir, you have indeed been swindled.

I was wondering why they weren't in the rockabilly chapter.

M was "London, Paris, Berlin, Munich— Everybody talk about POP MUSIC." Hopefully, that will be stuck in your head.
And I have the Flying Lizards around here somewhere on a tape my father made in the mid-'80s, but fuck if I can remember the song...

I believe their most famous song was a cover of "Money." It had this crazy percussion sound like a toy monkey banging his cymbals together.

The debut Flying Lizards single was a cover of "Summertime Blues", done in the same deadpan/low-fi style as "Money", and to my mind even better. Their lead singer popped up on that recent Richard X album, after many years of silence.

New Muzik was essentially a pop producer called Tony Mansfield (he later produced Capt Sensible's "Happy Talk"). Their sound was less Depeche Mode, and more Buggles/Korgis, ie. smooth sounding, high gloss production values.

Telex represented Belgium in the 1980 Eurovision song contest with a purely electronic track called, um, "Eurovision". Performed in a deadpan Kraftwerky style, it didn't do awfully well. They've just released a comeback album, which I am eagerly awaiting in the post from a friend at their Belgian record label.

I saw both Athletico Spizz 80 and the Psychedelic Furs in Spring 1980 (London Marquee & Lyceum respectively), and you couldn't call either of them "synthesiser/electronic" by any stretch of the imagination.

Re. A.Spizz.80: the concept was that the band changed their name at the beginning of each calendar year: Spizz 77, Spizz Oil, Spizz Energi, Athletico Spizz 80, The Spizzles. As Spizz Energi, their 1979 single "Soldier Soldier" was fairly heavily synth driven, hence the inclusion maybe.

Oh yeah! I remember it now!

OMD INVENTED EVERYTHING

Didn't Athletico Spizz 80 do some Star Trek related material- maybe a song called "Where's Captain Kirk?"

They did, and others too

... such as the immortal, "Spock's Missing"!!!!

That was Spizz Energi, but same difference. Easily their commercial peak. #1 on the first ever "official" indie chart at the end of 1979, and sold well for months and months thereafter.

Fischer Z 's 'So Long' single is one of the greatest records ever made.