1981 = year of 70s dino rockers w modren/wavo comeback LPs

Hell, Kimono My House (and everything else they did before they met Giorgio Morodor) was more new wave than disco.

What about the Queen album that nobody remembers, Hot Space? That was 1982, but close enough.

Well, except for "Under Pressure," but that's remembered more on its own than as part of the album.

Hell, Kimono My House (and everything else they did before they met Giorgio Morodor) was more new wave than disco.

I can agree with that. Except their 80s material was new wave in a less experimental and more "pop" way.

Hot Space is popular amongst disco and beardo-disco type fans. It's a really cool new wave funk type rock album.

And about inventing New Wave...there's any number of influences, glam, glitter, punk, art-rock, whatever. I'm not talking about just another influence. Those Iggy Pop records are the very moment that certain key strains of New Wave as we know it crystalize. The combination of the eno and krautrock sonic influences via Bowie/Visconti and the more raw and less ambitious songs of Iggy. The Idiot and Lust for Life both came out in 1977. Maybe I'm looking more at the UK post-punk aspect of New Wave. This has little to do with american punk bands drawing on power-pop and disco and tossing in some synthesizers. I'm talking about Joy Division/New Order, Magazine, Wire, the Associates, etc. Maybe that's not strictly the New Wave we're talking about here. I think much of the british New Wave derives from some of the post-punk trends.

With Sparks, the pre-moroder stuff is certainly influential, but like with Bowie, I think it's too ambitious for the average punk to new waver types. They may have wanted to ape it, but would probably have dumbed it down. No. 1 Song In Heaven is totally ambitious Sparks + Eurodisco, but their following albums I think they played more with simplifying the songs and making more awesome dumb catchy new wave songs, probably due to the influence of punk.

xp Uh, what about the Queen album that everybody does remember, The Game from 1980? (Doubt they would have done "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" in pre-new-wave days. Probably not "Another One Bites The Dust" and some other stuff on there too, even if "Dust" was more a Chic/rap-type move. And "Dragon Attack" was real funky in its own right.)

And yeah, Dan, my definition of new wave is a lot cheesier, crasser, more commercial and less artsy than the Brit post-punk stuff you're talking about (which was a part of new wave, sure, but not necessarily the biggest or most interesting part. And certainly not the part that got on the radio.)

agree w xhuxk that british post-punk and american new wave seem like very different beasts now, and did then. some american acts slot in well w the uk stuff (talking heads, frinstance), but when i think of new wave, i've got my mind on a much less arty vein of smirky dance-pop. at it's extreme: big square beats, shiny production, bouncy synths, tuff guitars, cute & quirky lyrics about modern problems & enthusiasms, absolutely shameless pop ambition. sci-fi themes a plus. begins shading over into synth-pop almost from day 1.

Uh, what about the Queen album that everybody does remember, The Game from 1980

What I love most about that album is how for YEARS, Queen was militant about their "no computers" "no synthesizers" policy and then the first 15 seconds of The Game is a Huge Dramatic Synth Intro that out progs everyone.

Kenny Loggins wasn't a dino rocker but has to fit in here. House at Pooh Corner in the 70s, Footloose in the early 80s.

Loggins and Messina is rather dino in this context

What about Mad Love by Linda Ronstadt?

http://991.com/newgallery/Jethro-Tull-A-276824.jpg

a little synthy

George Harrison's "All those Years Ago"

"Mad Love" by Linda Ronstadt is perfect to mention here because of the backing band, the Cretones. And the Cretones Thin Red Line which was Mad Love w/o Linda Ronstadt in 1980 really hits the groove of the thread. I'm astonished Thin Red Line hasn't been gobbled up for a deluxe remaster. Almost everything else from that time has been. The follow-up, Snap Snap was not so good.

Sparks' closest to abject new wave was Big Beat in 1977 in which they obtained Jeff Salen, guitarist from the Tuff Darts, whose debut was as campily new wave as it could be. "Fill 'Er Up", "Throw Her Away and Get a New One" -- virtually perfect genre stuff, all parodying Tuff Darts better than the Tuff Darts did Tuff Darts.

I interviewed Tom Petty at the Tower in Philly ca. 77-78 (the Hearbreakers were opening for Rush on the way up; can you imagine following 2112 and "Working Man"?) and he got pretty annoyed when the subject of new wave was brought up. This jibes with the reactions in the 4 hour long documentary out in the last couple years. They were trying to do British invasion as channeled through Florida bar band guys.

And the Tubes' chart pinnacle was "Talk to You Later" in '81 although they'd actually owned new wave onstage definitively from What Do You Want from Live in '77 at the Hammersmith Odeon. They reproduced the show in the US where they had a smaller following. They spent a fortune on stage gimmicks for near empty theaters. They just didn't go over in the US until the much milder "Talk to You Later" single.

And Starz did Attention Shoppers! in 77-78, a complete sell-out to new wave. It cost them all their momentum and a good deal of their, at the time, growing fanbase. It's the poorest album in their catalog which was given the deluxe treatment by Ryko a few years ago.

And then there was the rhythm section of Hot Tuna, Jack Casady and Bob Steeler, who went new wave in SVT. SVT's No Regrets is a huge departure from Hot Tuna's blues and boogie rock but it was still essentially hard rock, only dark and twisted with virtually no tuneful hooks.
Ryko reissued that, too, and I reviewed it but can no longer remember what the hell I said. If you wound up liking the Wipers later, you would have found something in 1981 SVT and I did although it's no longer a keeper of an album.

With Sparks, the pre-moroder stuff is certainly influential, but like with Bowie, I think it's too ambitious for the average punk to new waver types. They may have wanted to ape it, but would probably have dumbed it down. No. 1 Song In Heaven is totally ambitious Sparks + Eurodisco, but their following albums I think they played more with simplifying the songs and making more awesome dumb catchy new wave songs, probably due to the influence of punk.

Ironically, from then on, all commercial success eluded them.

How about Dave Edmunds' "Information" album from 1983?

Now, Edmunds always worked closely with new wave acts such as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello, but his own musical style was still very retro in a 50s/pre-beatles-60s way. Until he worked with Jeff Lynne and produced an album with a couple of tracks shock full of synths.

Also Robin Gibb's "How Old Are You" album from that same year (1983). Another Jeff Lynne production, I believe, but it sounded more modern in an early 80s/synthy new wave way than The Bee Gees' own 80s work ever did.

This was a couple of years later, but does this fit in to what you're talking about?

I love that song – maybe his last good one.

"Mad Love" by Linda Ronstadt is perfect to mention here because of the backing band, the Cretones.

This is a good example; "How Do I Make You" is snotty EL Lay punk. But wasn't it 1980?

has anyone mentioned Rosanne Cash's Seven Year Ache?

awesome! didn't know Lester Bangs was one of the lawyers at the end of the vid.

xp

information got talked around upthread, geir. good record.

guess i've gotta check out mad love & the cretones. plus more tubes, cuz all i've heard = 1st lp, & "outside inside" era - neither of which i like. do like "talk to you later" tho.

prince was mixing up new wave and funk circa 80/81. maybe zapp, too, though that's a stretch. any evidence of this influence on older funk/disco acts at this time? cameo didn't go this way til 85/86. mentioned george clinton's computer games upthread, but the influence is subtle there. rick james' street songs?

"lawyers in love" ist rad! falsetto vocals & "ooh-sha-la-la" whistling bit = SO GREAT, then spooky organ gives u chills. "the russians escaped while we weren't watching them, like russians will."

Shalamar made a blatant (post-Prince) new wave move (incl haircuts) on The Look, from 1983, featuring their great funk-rock hit "Dead Giveaway" but (like Kool and the Gang's "Misled" and Phils Bailey and Collins's "Easy Lover") the music on that single was probably more Foreigner than new wave.

And oh yeah -- duh! -- the Village People's new romantic album Rennaissance was '81, right?

Rick James talked about "the kind of girl you read about in new wave magazines" on Street Songs. (His music had actually been referred to as "punk funk" in the late '70s, which never made much sense. And in the early '80s, magazines like I think Musician were talking about a new genre they called "funk'n'roll," which consisted primarily of, um, Prince and the Bus Boys, I think. And maybe the Time and, uh, Prince Charles and the City Beat Band.)

busboys are a good call. goofy lyrics, campy midcentury retro vibe (esp on the debut), danceable but kinda square, lotsa synths. but they pretty much stand alone, right?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51F8T3B821L._SS500_.jpg

This was '82 tho.

most interested in 81, as there seems to have been a LOT of activity during that year, but 82 is cool

Van Halen's Fair Warning featured their first use of synth. And I believe 1981 was the year Genesis discovered funk (to Geir's horror).

'Nother big '81 new wave move I thought of by an arguable aging proto-new-waver: Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice" (though I guess stuff like "Kiss Kiss Kiss" on Double Fantasy the year before may have prefigured that, dance-oriented-rock-wise.)

Disco guy going new wave in 1980: August Darnell (formerly Dr. Buzzard, now Kid Creole).

Jazz guy probably playing to new wave crowds around the same time (though more New Yorky new wave crowds than country guy Joe Ely was playing for): James Blood Ulmer. (Neither changed his sound much.)

Another r&b guy making a rock (if not new wave) move circa 1982: Ray Parker Jr., with "The Other Woman."

Also, nobody has answered my Steve Miller question yet. "Abracadabra," pretty darn new wave, was '82. In '81 he put out Circle Of Love, which I've never heard, but one of its tracks, "Macho City," wound up on one of those Disco Not Disco compilations a few years ago. So he counts, right?

Re Rosanne Cash, Seven Year Ache from '81 was indeed new wavey in the pubby Carlene Carter sense (in its hair and song choices) (and also the best album she would ever make), but what did her two earlier LPs ('78 and '80) sound like? (And how am I so sure it's her best if I don't know those two?)

http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/443/cover_14571823112005.jpg

Anyone heard this? Apparently Peter Hammill's stab at new wave.

Jon Anderson & Vangelis "The Friends of Mr. Cairo"

and I just discovered a band The Monks UK that has members of the Strawbs doing fake punk. Suspended Animation is from 1981 and was big in Canada. They did go new wave early (in 1979) though.

I had a cutout of that Hammill album once; thought it was okay, I guess, but remember nothing else about it. It does remind me though that Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe had a new wave (I think) band called Red Noise; that was around 1978 or so, right?

dunno about circle of love. "heart like a wheel" was the big pop tune, and that sounds exactly like mid 70s prime SMB. "macho city" sounds a lot like NYC nu/no wave, though: all awkward, jittery white boy funk. hard to say whether it's a funk/disco move or a punk/wave one. i guess, circa 81, that can be a hard distinction to make no matter what

abracadabra, though, is fully waved. check out synth bass on "keeps me wondering why"

xp Also, Col. Bruce Hampton (of the Hampton Grease Band) put out what I assume were his two new waviest LPs with the Late Bronze Age in '80 and '82. (Both reissued on CD a couple years back; they're good.)

no mention of Jethro Tull, who kinda tried the new wave thing with 1980's A, either.

The cover of A was posted way upthread.

never heard tull's A. dunno why, as i got some use out of both stormwatch and broadsword (both absolutely miserable records)

I'm not sure I'd count Bill Nelson because Be Bop Deluxe bordered on New Wave, and his entire '80s career was pretty darn new wave! I mean, he palled around with Yukihiro Takahashi and YMO.

Also, I wouldn't call Belew a "dino rocker." Didn't his career start in the late '70s as a guitarist for Frank Zappa? I don't think of his solo albums or his Talking Heads work as a "rebirth," but more of his core. His solo albums and Bears albums are jerky, XTC/Talking Heads-esque new wave. In fact, I think his unique guitar style was quintessentially new wave and in fact influential in the new wave scene. When I think of a new wave guitar solo, I think Adrian Belew.

Excellent call on the Jon Anderson, though!

Also, unless my control-F just isn't working, I can't believe nobody has mentioned one of the most definitive examples of this (especially since I've seen it mentioned on ILM fairly often elsewhere): Robert Palmer's Clues, which first charted in October 1980, according to Joel Whitburn.

Tim Curry "went" new wave in 1979 with "I Do the Rock," though maybe his Rocky Horror stuff before then counts as new wavey to begin with (more post-glam, I'd think); fairly sure I knew a guy in college who also had one of his singer-songwritery '70s solo albums, but I could be totally wrong about that.

agree about belew, but think he's more a bridge-type guy than either the one thing or the other: the grey area where edgy 70s future-prog starts to overlap with the arty/punky stuff that would become "new wave". there's no clear line between the things. plus i really just LOVE "big electic cat".

I can't believe nobody has mentioned one of the most definitive examples of this ... Robert Palmer's Clues

― xhuxk

WAIT! "johnny & mary" holy crap!!!! i've been trying to figure out what this song is for YEARS! i head it in a wamu in brooklyn about 3 yeas ago, but couldn't make out any words, and have been looking relentlessly (though cluelessly) for it ever since. thank you thank you thank you chuck! so freaking great, and one of the secret lipstick traces behind this thread.

embedding of the actual vid disabled :(

I'd like to hear Mad Love. I remember reading once that L.R. almost ruined her voice recording it.

Howard Werth went from:

to:

on LA punk label Dangerhouse, of all places.

Robert Palmer's "Johnny & Mary": C or D?

listening to mad love right now. fantastic! - about as note-perfect new wave as anything on this thread, and another one i'll have to pick up a proper copy of. with the r palmer, she's making a real strong case for 1980.

ha, missed that "johnny & mary" thread, though i might not have connected the song in my head with the thread anyway. agree with geir: palmer's best moment (or, at least, the one i love best)

Though it's from '82, Arthur Brown's "Requiem" is totally synthed out and worth seeking.

also, i'm a bit late, but jkpolk OTM way upthread about rod stewart's tonight i'm yours - another iconic new wave move from 81 (though, yeah, not terribly shocking given the goofy pop/disco he'd gone for a few years before).

plus "young turks", of course