"they made so many bar bands dress up like the cars." -skot

"they tried to sell that [sue saad and the next] album SO HARD when i was a kid. ads everywhere for months. that and polyrock."

from a facebook conversation. this is just a thread about that period in music -- new wave media saturation, bands that never quite made it as much as their labels hoped they would, etc.

from the same facebook thread, xhuxk namechecks ellen foley, who was positioned for new wave fame via that one album with the clash (which isn't very good) (aside from that and her meatloaf collab, i haven't heard anything else of hers).

The one 33-1/3 proposal I made many years ago for Black Vinyl Shoes was going to (among other things) delve into this very point: why did the Shoes miss when lesser new-wave bands flourished? Their label stuck by them through three albums, so someone must have thought they'd catch lightning in a bottle at some point.

xpost And here we were talking about "Looker" on Twitter earlier...

the shoes were amazing; i'm sorry that proposal didn't make it. how much promo did they actually get? i was a baby when they were active.

xp: "looker" is what got me thinking about sue saad.

Anyway, 'that period' is such a weird jumble for me, and even with the inevitable glow of nostalgia there's something wonderfully weird about that period of the early eighties that's Not The Eighties (in the same way that The Nineties has a couple of years of nobody knows what before easy signifiers start really coming to the fore).

i think we're in that period of the 2010s when we're not sure where we're going next -- lots of one-hit wonders, lots of career artists who've run out of steam. it reminds me of the early '90s, which is fine.

you were mentioning cod reggae earlier...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgavsuuZQ0E&feature=related

i actually like bar band fools the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iG9ezE_BEo&feature=related

and of course i love psycho chicken. that goes without saying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnBlst3T7bY&feature=fvwrel

I have to believe there was some push behind the Shoes' first Elektra album. It made it to #50 on Billboard, and "Too Late" went to #75 on the singles chart. Those were the days of major Hit Men-type payola, too--there was probably a lot of cocaine behind those chart positions. And according to Wikipedia, "When MTV went on the air on August 1, 1981, the channel aired four of Shoes' videos: 'Too Late', 'Tomorrow Night', 'Cruel You' and 'In My Arms Again', making Shoes one of the first bands to be shown on MTV." They were so close to a Thriller moment.

Kidding, yes. But why the Knack and not them, I'll never know. (Tosses a BP hanging curve for xhuxk.)

post-cars feeding frenzy in boston must have been pretty fierce. maybe not nirvana/seattle fierce, but a lot of bands got picked up and went nowhere. the atlantics and other bands like that.

i really enjoy that willie alexander album from 1978 that mca put out. that could have done more. dmz i guess were a tougher sell? i dunno, i love that album too. nervous eaters big label album is pretty bad though. and the stuff they did before and after it was really great!

anyway, i own sooooo many bar band turned new wave records it ain't even funny. and i love a bunch of them. maybe i'll make a list of some faves.

Rob Sheffield's great "Next Cars" list from Radio On:

TS: Lone Justice or Cruzados or Drivin' & Cryin' or Green On Red or Del Fuegos or Jason & The Scorchers or Long Ryders or Bodeans?

And I'm gonna skip Clemenza's why the Knack not the Shoes question. Am learning not to go down rabbit holes in my old age. (Plus I'm sure I've already said it all before, somewhere, once or twice.)

Also said plenty on the Fools, Willie Alexander's Boom Boom Band (not to mention Sue Saad etc etc etc) on Rolling Hard Rock threads in the recent past, obviously.

TS: Robin Lane & The Chartbusters v. Pearl Harbour & The Explosions

Doug & the Slugs Vs. Frankie & the Knockouts

i got two albums by The Rings and blaaaaah...

and i will lisren to almost any marginal powerpoppy stuff.

Yeah, the one Rings album I got was marginal. But at least I kept it, which says something. (Probably that they were more or less as good as the Sherbs.)

sex execs not great either. despite promising cover art.

Just having some fun, Chuck. We hashed all that out here:

The Best 50 Powerpop Albums according to RYM

(How I found the right thread: searched "crunchy.")

i told you that robin lane came in my record store, right? someone introduced her to me. she's nice. lives right up the road.

also the guy from till tuesday who looked like a girl had a duo covers thing he did with his wife at a local restaurant...every tuesday night. but i never went :(

is that skot the skot from 400 blows? they rule.

I have actually been playing my Robin Lane & the Chartbusters records lately. Favorite song might actually be "8.3," from their live LP -- which is about an earthquake, and which my better half compared to Siouxsie and the Banshees. But nothing else I've heard by them sounded anywhere near that punk or hard rock.

Also, Skot, you will be happy to hear that that first Human Sexual Response LP really grew on me -- irritated me first couple times through, but I kind of love it now.

they were ahead of their time. by a year.

don't tell her i said this but...yeah...her records aren't that amazing. people love her live though.

dying at "the guy from till tuesday who looked like a girl"

this is my favorite boston thing right now. so amazing. and i love it more than any mission of burma too. yeah that's right i said it. this band should have taken over the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKa-HZkX58

Canadian entries: The Kings, Payolas. (They may have actually sold a lot of records in Canada, I don't know, but they each had songs that sort of hovered around the edges of US rock radio and college radio.)

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C_fVnE3xHY

And hell, Loverboy had a New Wave sheen on their first pass-through.

Plenty of Kings and Payola$ on those Rolling Hard Rock threads, too. (And my love of that new wavey Loverboy debut is, um, notorious.)

Where is the love for HOUNDS and STREETHEART and SHOOTING STAR and PRISM?

The Diodes, Demics, early Teenage Head, and Martha & the Muffins were about the best we had to offer to the world. (The middle two were probably more punk than new wave.)

AND LEST WE FORGET WHAT THE CARS WERE DOING BEFORE THEY INVENTED AMERICAN POWERPOPNEWWAVE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c568kysyKkc

lol milkwood. damn hippies. cheap trick were in a killer band before cheap trick.

its actually quite lovely stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi5Dx9S8pLA

I haven't been so moved since a high school photo of Ian Astbury wearing a Crime of the Century T-shirt turned up in these parts.

WE ARE GETTING CLOSER TO OUR GOAL OF WORLD DOMINATION

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG98jRi6H-M

i have a fondness for cap'n swing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOD-1g-xcUA

xpost

that was their steely dan/grateful dead move.

wait are we prog now or are we steely dan?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbqHcBUUL2o

ha yes and some of it has a distinct roxy music smell. they were covering all the bases. throw it at the wall and see what sticks.

I assume the proto-Cheap Trick band is Fuse (there were others):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzlwFNY6zOY&feature=relmfu

The whole album seems to be up on YouTube. I knew about them, but this is the first time I've actually heard them.

fuse album is great. those guys got around.

i love the pre-cars confidence in the song "Dream Trader"! they just knew it was only a matter of time...

I screened X: The Unheard Music last night, and died when the MCA guy was talking about this great band whom everyone in the label was rooting for to succeed on their third album for the label: Point Blank, Texas' own, POINT BLANK!

I imagine they thought the group having New Wave-style artwork on said third album (for the label, this was their fifth total) would at least partially do that deed:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513J9dWWs3L._SS500_.jpg

Apparently there were no singles released from the Shoes' 2nd and 3rd Elektra LPs. Wonder why.

the bands official website lists singles from both.

http://shoeswire.com/discography.cfm"> http://shoeswire.com/discography.cfm

"tomorrow night" and "too late" got a little airplay in detroit iirc

also the guy from till tuesday who looked like a girl

LOL i stared at a picture of til tuesday on the office wall at star hits for months thinking he was a chick. then we started calling him "girl bob" or w/e i think that even made it into the magazine a couple times

always wanted to hear the pre-cars stuff! cool thread

When I look at the Shoes' website, I'm reading it the same way as Tim--no singles from Tongue Twister or Boomerang (many permutations from Present Tense). I sure would like to have one of those 1,000 original pressings of Black Vinyl Shoes--I've got the standard PVC edition.

i missed the "elektra" modifying "2nd & 3rd" albums so i looked at present tense but tongue twister had at least one:

"Karen" b/w
"She Satisfies"
1981
Elektra Records
E-47130
7" vinyl single

sorry for the pedantry ;)

i loved the shoes but they didn't get much promo iirc. don't think they played out much, basically a studio/living room band. after present tense they did at least one promo tour in the midwest. i caught their gig in detroit at a big suburban rock club/singles bar. "new wave night" sponsored by one of the local radio stations that rarely played new wave. probably in late 79 or early 1980. they were good! pop but not nearly as powerful as cheap trick.

One great song from that era is Translator: Everywhere That I'm Not. This used to be on MTV a lot, too. This song has aged really well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEwwc1Vovkk

that whole album is really good. you can find it for a dollar. its a strange record!

Huh, that "Karen" single wasn't listed on Discogs. Very few copies seem to be around - only one on eBay. The few listings from record dealers I saw for it listed the copy they had for sale as a promo. Only thing to indicate that there were non-promo copies circulating is the photo here:

http://www.amazon.com/She-Satisfies-Karen-Shoes/dp/B003C27RBI

This all goes to wondering what Elektra were doing with the group for their last two albums on the label, of course. You would think that if you were going to sign Shoes that you would do singles.

I sure would like to have one of those 1,000 original pressings of Black Vinyl Shoes

Wouldn't the real holy grail be One In Versailles, or whatever it was called? (Probably got reissued at some point, but I'm too lazy to check.)

Does appear to be rarer--only 300 copies:

http://shoeswire.com/oneinversailles.cfm

I haven't heard it; just on the basis that Black Vinyl Shoes is one of my favourite albums ever, that's the one I'd rather have. It'd be right at the top of my list with the 1977 Baseball Abstract (75 copies!) and a few other things.

Shoes were awfully heavy. Marshall...half-stacks at least:

http://youtu.be/b9DfyEiw6yM

I've always loved/liked (more loved when it was newer, I guess) "Everywhere That I'm Not," but I've never known who did it. Actually, I don't think I've ever sat down and listened to it as closely as I am right now. It was always just something that popped up.