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

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".

Didn't Cheap Trick go way more synthy/keyby on Dream Police than One On One, though? (Though I admittedly haven't listened to the latter forever. Always seemed like kind of a retreat to me (especially after 1980's All Shook Up, which was both a much better album and a higher charter.)

Btw, pretty sure there are previous threads where lots of these issues have been addressed, just not sure what they're called. There was definitely one last year where we were talking new wave moves and Scott Seward, I think, mentioned how much he didn't like Cooder's Bop Til You Drop. Also one a few years ago where the idea was to come up with '70s artists who actually improved in the '80s. (Winners, I think: Rick Springfield and Billy Ocean, the former of whom almost definitely fits here.)

Eddy Grant made a new wave move in the early '80s too, right? (Though maybe not until 1983. And I'm not sure whether reggae dinosuars count or not.)

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 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

Even if you can't find a market that's interested, you can still be crossing over/trying to cash in.

Warrant went way more grunge in the '90s than Poison or Debbie btw. (In fact, I'm far from convinced that either of those latter two even went grunge at all.)

Didn't Cheap Trick go way more synthy/keyby on Dream Police than One On One, though?

"she's tight" vs. anything on dream police for toeing the new wave line. plus, geez, all of side 2: "saturday at midnight", "i want be man" (so devo!!!), "four letter word", etc.

way better record than all shook up, but that's just me...

how did i manage to not say "party line"?

Yeah, okay, I can see "She's Tight" I guess. (Also, I prefer their hard rock to their powerpop -- like the first and third albums more than the second one, too -- which explains my All Shook Up thing.)

fwiw, ZZ Top's first real new wave move was "Manic Mechanic" on Deguello (1979.)

And if we're gonna count Ian Hunter and Dave Edmunds, why not Iggy Pop on New Values and Soldier? (After all that artsy-fartsy Berlin B.S. Just kidding. Sort of.) (Speaking of which, if disco dinosaurs going new wave in the early '80s count, there's obviously Grace Jones on Warm Leatherette and Nightclubbing.)

grace jones compass point trilogy and iggy circa soldier are totally OTM (haven't ever heard new values - eep!) thought of grace jones earlier, but failed to nom for no good reason...

In the bigger picture, Cheap Trick's early to mid-Eighties albums weren't very good, if you were there. They weren't so much new wave-y as they were flashy pop. They'd lost some of their grit when Tom Petersson left to be in a band with his wife (can you remember the name?). An official No Prize if you do.

Nazareth just made a bad album -- The Fool Circle -- in 1981. Their 1980 one, Malice in Wonderland, had their last charting single, I think, "Holiday." That wasn't a new wave-y record, either, just a stab in a lot of different directions, most of them kind of lame.

Foghat did Boys to Chat, Girls To Bounce. That was another lame record which might have had a slight new wave influence, more accurately a stab at writing something that would get on the radio. It just alienated their audience.

Aerosmith basically didn't exist in 81. Rock in a Hard Place was their only early Eighties thing and it was missing both Whitford and Perry. It was just a bland hard rock LP.

Status Quo was in the middle of a run of records which spawned a variety of bland pop singles like "What You're Proposing" and "Something Bout You Baby I Like," none of which were released in the US.

Scorpions definitely weren't New Waving it in 1981. They were between Blackout and Animal Magnetism.

UFO didn't do New Wave. In 1980, George Martin produced them and a couple songs on it sounded more influenced by Bruce Springsteen. In 1982, they did "The Wild, Willing and Innocent" which was standard hard rock/heavy metal.

So for dino rockers, some of these acts were not much moved by New Wave. Some were on the up-tick, most notably Scorpions. Some on a downward slide like Aerosmith, Nazareth, Foghat, UFO.

Ted Nugent was still big in arenas but wouldn't do anything that was a concession to change until 1986 with Little Miss Dangerous</A>.

Sammy Hagar's [i]Standing Hampton sold big in 1981. Definitely not new wave-y. More produced and heavy (heading toward "I Can't Drive 55-land") than his early hard pop rock albums, like Red and Musical Chairs.

Budgie were in the middle of a resurgence because of the NWOBHM. But their early Eighties albums aren't any good.

Slade were in the midst of a minor comeback in England but had no release schedule in the US. Till Deaf Do Up Part and We'll Bring the House Down are screaming rock 'n' roll records. These came about as a result of a bang-up appearance at Reading in 1980.

New Values was a mediocre album, the last one James Williamson played on and wrote stuff for. And Soldier was just lousy hookless mostly mid-tempo hard rock with dumb lyrics. I stupidly bought both. New Values has a couple keepers on it.

Cheap Trick's "She's Tight" seems to owe more to the Beatles to me.

I was thinking Boston but "Amanda" didn't come out until 86.

No way on Iggy. He didn't have a new wave comeback album, he practically invented New Wave in the 70s (with the help of Bowie and Visconti), and New Values is a great album. I wrote it off as inferior to The Idiot and Lust For LIfe, but now think of it as an equal. Production isn't as interesting, but the songs are awesome.

^ this was my rationale for not mentioning iggy earlier. he seemed to have been at it forever, was as much an influencer as the influenced.

rescinding previous agreeance

he practically invented New Wave in the 70s

was as much an influencer as the influenced

Right. Which is why I prefaced by quasi-nomination of him with "if we're gonna count Ian Hunter and Dave Edmunds."

I'd forgotten Foghat, who to my ears definitely seemed to be heading in a new wave/powerpop direction circa Tight Shoes in 1980.

Believe George has elsewhere mentioned Gentle Giant making a bad new wave move toward the close of the '70s, too.

UFO didn't do New Wave. In 1980, George Martin produced them and a couple songs on it sounded more influenced by Bruce Springsteen. In 1982, they did "The Wild, Willing and Innocent" which was standard hard rock/heavy metal

Though its title seems to retain the Bruce influence!

xp Though as I hinted at before, if we're going to talk about somebody in the mid '70s "inventing new wave" (as in, what new wave as opposed to punk rock would sound like a few years later), I'd be more inclined to pick the Tubes or Sparks than Iggy, I think.(Actually kind of surprised that nobody mentioned Sparks til now, come to think of it.)

(But right, there were actually a few different "new waves," and the '79 one on rock stations wasn't quite the same as the MTV one a few years later.)

tom petty & pat benatar = OTM as examples of the context these bands were responding to. but not as old-timers suddenly changing their sound in the early 80s, right?

I think there's a old Sandbox thread about straight-up rock acts taking advantage of the "new wave" label. Dire Straits was another one that sorta fell into that tag just by being part of the pub rock circuit.

if we're gonna talk about inventing new wave in the 70s i'd be more inclined to pick eno

xp

Dire Straits never seemed new wave to me back then, but oddly enough Sniff 'n the Tears, whose sound wasn't very far from Dire Straits' sound, did. Maybe they just had a new wavier name. Which reminds me:

old guys coming back under new names and in new wave clothes

= Flash and the Pan, a/k/a Vanda and Young from the Easybeats (though that was in 1979, not 1981).

Also Moon Martin, formerly just some guy in the early '70s country rock band Southwind, but now wearing much crazier glasses. (Also in 1979.)

Great thread, also, great idea for a box set - I nominate Chuck to curate it.

Sparks made their comeback a couple years earlier, yet "Whoomp That Sucker" may have been the first Sparks album that was more new wave than disco.

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.)