New Wave Music

[starskin]

I found my cassette tape of Adam Ant's Manners and Physique! Now I just have to wait until my boyfriend gets out of his studio so I can hijack the tape deck.
Some great tunes on there. The title track, of course, but I also love 'Room at the Top' (video[/color]) and 'Bright Lights, Black Leather'. Yeah, I know it's a 1990 release, but I still consider it a new wave album. So there!

[Casino Bride]

woodchipper said:

I've got the Pet Shop Boys on rotation at the moment, to be followed by New Order and the Smiths. The music is the only part of my teenage years that I care to revisit!

Me thinks New Order + Smiths + Pet Shop Boys calls for Electronic. At least the first album. That's what I've been re-visiting this week.

[woodchipper]

casinobride said:

woodchipper said:

I've got the Pet Shop Boys on rotation at the moment, to be followed by New Order and the Smiths. The music is the only part of my teenage years that I care to revisit!

Me thinks New Order + Smiths + Pet Shop Boys calls for Electronic. At least the first album. That's what I've been re-visiting this week.

Definitely! Unfortunately my copy is packed in a box somewhere at the moment or I would put it on. As it is I'll make do with Pet Shop Boys' Discography.

And Ultravox was great.

[dwanollah]

Ultravox was the bomb diggity.

Falco, it turns out, with the exception of a couple of songs, was not.

[woodchipper]

dwanollah said:

Falco, it turns out, with the exception of a couple of songs, was not.

Learned that the hard way, did you?

[biondetta]

Heh. I almost mentioned Falco, because I recently downloaded some of the songs of his that I used to love. However, while getting those, I gave a listen to some of the other songs on various albums ... and decided to just stick with the three or four songs I already knew and liked.

[starskin]

For all you Depeche Mode fans, here[/color] is a fantastic website with an extensive archive of interviews, reviews, etc.

[kore]

I'll give it a look Starskin. Thanks!

[ratscabies]

Wow, fun thread. I am down with the assessment that New Wave is a cleaned up version of Punk. That's what we all thought back in the day in my neck of the woods, and our neck had it's 9 days of notoriety and influence.

Akron, Ohio. Yes, Akron. It's not just for tires anymore. (Actually, it's not really for tires at all anymore, but I digress.) Back in the late 70's, WE were Athens, or Austin, or Seattle.

Starskin, for your thesis/dissertation, I must insist you do at least a small bit of research into Akron. A list of Akron bands (Some of whom were actually famous) that had Major label deals back in the day:

Devo-Stiff/Warner Bros
Tin Huey-Warner Bros.
Bizarros-Mercury
Rubber City Rebels-Capitol
Chrissie Hynde (Pretenders, though she had to move to England to get noticed)-Sire
Rachel Sweet-Stiff (now she's a TV producer-"Dharma & Greg"; "Sports Night", etc)
Waitresses-Polydor
Dead Boys-Warner Bros (which begat Stiv Bators' solo "Disconnected" album on Bomp! records, and the Lords of the New Church (with Brian James of the Damned) on whatever label they were on)

Also from Akron:
The late Robert Quine, twisted guitarist for Lou Reed and Richard Hell and The Voidoids.
Marti Jones (and her former band Color Me Gone) on A&M (more jangly like REM; Marti is married to REM producer Don Dixon, and they live in Canton,OH now)

When Stiff Records released their "Akron Compilation" album, they had a contest in England, and the lucky winner won a trip to Akron to see the top local bands performing at the Bank, a wonderful old club that I will remember fondly as the first place I ever played a paying gig (when I was 16 years old, opening for the new band led by the Dead boys drummer, Johnny Blitz).

A bunch of these people are friends of mine, so I am obviously biased. Two very good documentaries on the Akron scene, "It's Everything, and Then It's Gone" and "If You Aren't Dead, Play!", produced by the local PBS affiliate are available here, as long as you are on a PC. I can't get my Mac to play them.

I'll stop preaching now.

I also used to love the Paul Collins Beat ("On The Highway"), the Silencers ("Remote Control/Too Illegal") and a NYC band that used to play CBGB w/ Blondie called Tuff Darts, that made one unheralded record for Sire with a very young Bob Clearmountain engineering. Wonderful, obscure stuff. And has anyone else ever heard the wonderfully awful "Sit On My Face, Stevie Nicks" by the Rotters? Used to get advertised in the back of Trouser Press all the time, can't believe I ever found a copy of it....

[starskin]

Thanks for the recs, ratscabies! New wave is interesting to me because all of this strange, fun, dark, experimental (often all at once!) music was coming out of the most unlikely places made by the most unlikely people. I think that's its main appeal, at least for me.


Speaking of Depeche Mode. I'm wondering if I should buy a biography of the band, since I'm going to be devoting a lot of space to them. The only thing is, there are several bios out there, all claiming to be 'the authority'. I've looked on Amazon at them, but none of them seemed to be a must-buy. I worry about not having a book on DM in my bibliography, but at the same time, I'd rather not waste the money if I can get all the info from a magazine archive. Any recommendations there?