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

>>that resaissance is horrid. plus totally not wavo

No, that's the 1977 prog Renaissance on Midnight Special. I couldn't find a vid for their wavo phase.

Lots more of these, I think; I just need to pour through my vinyl shelves. (Linda Rondstadt's 1980 Mad Love, full of new wave covers of bands like the Cretones, was her Glass Houses.)

Agree ZZ Top didn't hit their commercial stride til Eliminator, but El Loco is actually the weirder and more new wave album. ("Party On The Patio" is totally their B-52s song, and seems they were probably listening to Captain Beefheart, too.)

Geils' Freeze Frame also totally a post-Cars new wave album (and yeah, a commercial leap up from the somewhat new wave Love Stinks.)

You also had old guys coming back under new names and in new wave clothes like Donnie Iris (formerly of the one hit wonders Jaggerz) with Back On The Streets in 1980 and King Cool in 1981).'

Plus Marianne Faithful (Broken English, 1980).

More will popping into my head all afternoon, just wait. (Let's see...Golden Earring didn't go new wave til 1982, Slade not til 1984. How bout Steve Miller?)

Foreigner 4 with its Thomas Dolby guest spots and funk and rockabilly moves was 1981, too (though they were more new wave than people ever gave them credit for from the gitgo, with "Headknocker" on the debut and "Dirty White Boy" on the third album plus all those Cars-style post-Roxy synths and stuff.)

This thread is totally what I think of as your thing, xhuxk.

Didn't know Doug Sahm did a new wave-y album. And Craig Leon/Takoma too, wtf?? Eugene Chadbourne laps it up on AMG. Need to check this out. Added Sahm facticity: according to wikipedia, Sahm's son later drummed for the Meat Puppets

yeah, golden earring's cut (w the textbook twilight zone) came out in 82, didn't hit til 83, but i'm trying to rope in as much stuff as possible. plus great song, so okay w me

moody blues massive (and justly forgotten) long distance voyager is another one from 81, with the gemini dream, etc. they'd arguably been moving in this direction since 78's octave, though (steppin' in a slide zone). somewhere between disco, new wave and showtunez

and yeah, i think of foreigner as part of the moment that the dinosaurs were responding to, more than old dogs learning new tricks

Not sure if Hall & Oates are the brand of Rock in question, but their 1981 comeback set the benchmark (and for many, seems to be their only known material)

Also Styx, with "Too Much Time On My Hands"' post-Kraftwerk/Devo electropop on Paradise Theater.

And Olivia Newton-John with Physical. (And maybe Moody Blues with Long Distance Voyager? Haven't heard that in forever, but they were for sure dabbling in new waviness around that time.)

38 Special started making their Cars/powerpop move in 1981, too, with "Hold On Loosely" off Wild Eyed Southern Boys (though I don't think they really kicked it into full skinny-tie gear until Special Forces a year later.)

[xp -- made my Moody Blues nomination before I saw Dagmar's]

<3 Hold On Loosely

Joe Ely - Live Shots isn't New Wave at all in sound, it's roots rock, country rockabilly like all his other stuff, but it was recorded live in England opening for the Clash. (the cover is very two tone looking).

His 1984 one Hi-Res is the one with synthesizers and production. (cover is primitive computer graphics)

I suppose there has to be a "going disco" equivelent a few years earlier, but I don't know enough to pinpoint exactly what year that is. 78, maybe?

equivalent*

1981 (and awesome):
http://www.dragcity.com/catalog/records/dc80.jpg

And don't forget Ray Manzarek doing Soul Kitchen with X in 1980.

george clinton - computer games from '82 (not a big change in sound, but period production)

kraftwerk - computer world (not that they were really "70s dinosaur rockers", but you can really hear the influence of their offsprings here)

The Stones kept going from disco to new wave from 1976 to 1981.

Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" was 1981, and he'd already been into disco.

I wouldn't count Red Krayola... 1. Mayo + Art of Language had an arty album before that, and 2., the entire band of Red Crayola at the time were certified post-punkers.

xhuxk's styx nom for paradise theater is a good one, though too much time on my hands is an anomaly (most of the rest is unwave glop). came out in '81, total dinosaurs, 80s production, got tons of radio play. still, kilroy was here took it much farther

>>You also had old guys coming back under new names and in new wave clothes

Took me a while to remember the initials, but Jack Casady had a "new wave" band in 1981, SVT.

The Kinks' Give The People What They Want had all the new wave trimmings and got a fair bit of MTV and KROQ play in 1981.

from 80, but does "games w/o frontiers" and the melt album count?

The Stones kept going from disco to new wave from 1976 to 1981.

― james k polk

^ this, especially so on some girls and emotional rescue.

(song is from 81)

yeah, matt, i'd say the weirder peter gabriel solo albums count! thread is slipping away from the cheezeball synthpop sounds i most love towards discofied post-punk whatever, but it's still rock and roll to me

weird... wmg is totally anti-"IGY" video which is a great one!

This is one of my favorite eras. Rock got tight and shiny, but it hadn't yet gone into "Boys of Summer" synth production overload.

Something like Point Blank's "Nicole" is just a rock song, and a sell-out to their southern rock fans (perhaps), but it fit right in on the radio with The Kings "Switchin' to Glide" or Donnie Iris.

it is hard to remember that these old-timers trying to cut their hair, get hip and fit in were really only in their 30's and not that old at all.

xpost to dan hmmm yeah, but the whole project of reconceptualizing Red Krayola as a New Wave Band & associating with the Rough Trade axis seems to me like both A) an idea naturally arising out of their preexisting mix of avant-grade approaches, AND B) a willful, market-savvy means of getting into people's ears -- not that there's anything wrong with that!

i wonder why the 80s were so friendly to an older generation of artists getting hip to the new techniques and styles? i can't think of a another time when this happened to such a degree.

^^^ Is this what yr after? Dave Stewart was in various prog rock things (Egg, Hatfield & The North, National Health), Barbara Gaskin was in Spirogyra (folk rock)

i think there's a difference, between the bands that were just tuning into the sound for a song or two, (like styx) maybe indulging in some big boom drums, and those who REALLY latched onto the synthpop/new-wave thing as if life depended on it. primo stuff is all sharp, boingy-sounding tunes, lyrics about your modern disaffections, undisco dancebeats, and an almost desperately "youthful" giddiness. alice coopers "clones" perhaps being the unbeatable apex.

Chris Barrus OTM: when I was a kid I thought the Kinks were a new wave band.

Moody Blues, as mentioned above -- ELOish "Sharp Dressed Man" premonition.

I'm old enough to remember this time period as kid who lived on rock radio. The DJ's kind of had to apologize for playing Talking Heads, Duran Duran, U2.

I remember one of the DJ's trying to justify Billy Idol by pointing out how similar this music was to The Doors.

I'd never really seen Robert Plant, so when videos started getting bigger and bigger, seeing him with a perm and suspenders didn't seem strange. I don't know how the kids 5 years older than me felt.

Have you ever seen the early Johnny Cougar videos? wacky keyboard player.

xxx-post - GOD YES!!! that's fantastic (gaskin & stewart thing). that's EXACTLY the sort of thing i like to imagine exists out there, somewhere.

i wonder why the 80s were so friendly to an older generation of artists getting hip to the new techniques and styles? i can't think of a another time when this happened to such a degree.

― M@tt He1ges0n

kind of the million-dollar question here. doesn't seen to happen anymore. someone mentioned the "grunge explosion" upthread, but i don't remember many 80s dinosaurs getting a new lease on life with the yarling bigmuff. just didn't happen. and nu-metal didn't seem to provide many cash-in opportunities for long-in-the-tooth headbangers.

Here's another from 1981...

http://www.hunter-mott.com/discography/sleeves/short_back_n_sides.jpg

someone mentioned the "grunge explosion" upthread, but i don't remember many 80s dinosaurs getting a new lease on life with the yarling bigmuff.

yeah i mean there was neil young, but that was more just neil young making neil young records and the press said he was the godfather of grunge. bowie made some drum n bass shit but that was just bowie being bowie not really a trend.

That Ian Hunter is great. An example of a guy using elements of punk and new wave while keeping his integrity. (but not his hair)

yeah but honestly ian hunter's general MO was pretty in line with powerpoppy new wave to begin with.

xpIan Hunter, fwiw, already seemed pretty new wave with You're Never Alone With Schizophrenic in 1979, though yeah, the haircut counts for something. (Also weird to think of people like him and Roxy Music as "going new wave," since they were already pretty new wave to begin with, before new wave ever happened. I used to call them "old wave" back then.)

Even better example of proto-new-wave old wavers going new-new-wave in the early '80s might be the Tubes (whose 1981 album was The Completion Backward Principle, with "Don't Want To Wait Anymore." Though for them, the whole switch in sound was maybe more like an MOR sellout, actually.)

Not sure I understand how Cheap Trick, Benatar, and Petty (all mentioned above) fit into this, to be honest. They'd all been sort of new wave from the beginning, and if anything, to me, the 1981 albums mentioned above make them seem less new wave (less frantic tempos & blander hooks, for instance.)

Anybody mentioned Kim Carnes yet? "Bette Davis Eyes" definitely an '81 biggie; not sure about the album.

Also, if nobody's mentioned them, you had all these old prog guys like King Crimson (Discipline, '81) and Adrian Belew (The Lone Rhino, '82) coming back as reborn Talking Heads fans.

um, maybe albums like drama represent an evolving but overall consistent aesthetic that influenced new wave, and not the reverse? although i suppose that disrupts convenient timelines which diminish the dinos in favor of the young turks, so forget i said anything

dave edmunds' jeff lynne-produced information from '83

Yeah, but again, he was new wave already(Repeat When Necessary absolutely conisdered new wave in '79 -- even read Xgau's Pazz & Jop essays from around then; he even covered a Costello songs, right?); he just added ELO keybs later, big whoop.

Alice's Flush The Fashion a great LP, btw.

I think that After The Fire were pretty prog rock until 1980-ish, then they started doing this stuff ^^^

alternately: any other years that were defined by this kind of industry-wide trendhopping?

Didn't Debbie Gibson, Poison, and other 80s teen idols release "grunge" records around 1994?

― dad a, Monday, February 9, 2009 2:43 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

Disco beats in the late 70s & trip-hop in the late 90s. There's gotta be tons of examples of this.

yeah but it's not like those records did half as well as say, tina turner or bruce or steve winwood or whoever in the 80s

Notice that Cheap Trick are at the start of this thread. NOTICE

that's a good point about cheap trick, xhuxk. i count them here because of the significant overhaul of the sound circa one on one, seemingly in response to MTV culture, and due to their having made a home for themselves on 70s rock radio. i'm also drawing a faint line between jittery, power-poppy guitar music, and the shiny-happy post-cars danceparty sound. thus pride of place to acts who incorporate full-on synthpop sounds, a la pete shelley's homosapien.

that also goes as a response to yr. point about information. yeah, the earlier edmuds stuff was new wave, but it hadn't yet been reprocessed for MTV. i.e., it wasn't the NEW new, retrofitted for flash-in-the-pan pop stardom.

also lots of waved-out cover art on mostly unwave LPs:

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/elrayox.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/boptillu.jpg

Look, there is no way Cheap Trick are not going to claim my Beatles soul.

"If You Want My Love"

It's all your fault, ilx. I blame all of you.

I know you guys want to fight me down the pub, I know, but I'm going to have to take you on.

i am going to walk behind you with a pipe, ominously whistling "he's a whore"

i express solidarity with bimble in his cheap trick beatles love, if not in pub fights

maybe albums like drama represent an evolving but overall consistent aesthetic that influenced new wave, and not the reverse? although i suppose that disrupts convenient timelines which diminish the dinos in favor of the young turks...

― kamerad

i'm sure it cuts both ways, but it's hard not to attach a BIG part of the shift in yes' sound circa drama to trevor horne and geoff downes, who though they weren't much younger than the rest of the band, were closely affiliated with the emerging "new wave scene".

I've been into Judas Priest - Point Of Entry lately. I didn't like it much at the time, and while it was predictive of stuff like Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," it holds up. Way better than Turbo. I also have a soft spot for the albums by Saga and The Fixx from that period, Rupert Hine produced electro AOR prog wave!

Pretty Things on '80's Cross Talk fits right in here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tU3OgZT0DI

I had no idea that Andy Fraser of Free did this totally-80s song/video until today. The dance moves!

This is 1984, not 1981, and not exactly new wave but rather that dance-rock with gated drums and synths that was ubiquitous in the 80s. (Think Robert Palmer.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soE63vWxZnE

Civilian by Gentle Giant (1980) - strong Duke/Abacab vibes and sounds better now than it did then.

I feel like their previous two albums were their attempts at "punk" or new wave, and Civilian was more or less straight AOR with some prog trappings left over.

Alan Parsons Project - Pyramania (from the album Pyramid, 1978!)

No, really!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWTJmrPa5TQ

The only mention of Nick Lowe in this thread is Dave "Edmunds always worked closely with new wave acts such as Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello...," forgetting that Lowe was essentially a country/pub rocker for the previous 10 years.

Godley & Creme - Babies (1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQlieiOnui0

and my personal favourite.

Alvin Stardust - Luxury
B-side of I Feel Like Buddy Holly.
Released in 1984 but sounds like it was recorded a couple of years earlier. Would love to have a whole LP of this style

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UBQ8uQSTM

Tangentially related note: were there any big 60s or 70s stars who continued through the 80s doing the exact same style they became famous for? There must be some but I can't think of any. Seems like pretty much none of them took that path.

maybe The Kinks?

James Brown, perhaps?

James Taylor?

Just reading some debate about Jim Morrison as either being godfather of goth or godfather of punk up thread.
On one side black leather and gloomy portentous/pretentious lyricism on the other what could be more punk than presciently getting your Dad to start the Vietnam war so you could have more of a counterculture audience to be an icon to and then claiming your parents were dead to disown them.

Tangentially related note: were there any big 60s or 70s stars who continued through the 80s doing the exact same style they became famous for? There must be some but I can't think of any. Seems like pretty much none of them took that path.

good call imo