New Wave Outpost Forum

So I've been going through the used vinyl bins fairly regularly for years now, and am always coming across unclassifiable releases from the '87 to '88 period. Quite often, they have a smooth/'adult'/almost jazz-influenced sound.

They all strike me as being early Sade/Swing Out Sister/Johnny hates Jazz type groups. Group photos always in B/W, guys wearing white t-shirts with vests, berets or wide brimmed hats,white socks with black shoes, usually British, kind of blue-eyed soul type stuff. Examples..

Animal Nightlife
Hue and Cry
Curiousity Killed the Cat
I'll think of a dozen more in within an hour...
Then Jericho
Immaculate Fools
these last two being less blue-eyed soul but always hanging out with the others in the used record bins....
Times Two
Bros
Is this stuff just disposable music-industry crap or does it have any value whatsoever to the devoted new-wave/eighties-sound collector? Am I being totally unfair to the musicians involved by lumping them all together in my mind??


I think if these groups had come out 6 years earlier they'd have all been in Haircut 100 or some more classifiably new-wave group - - How do you consider this period of music?? Late 80's one-offs??

Who would you add to this list, the list of too-late for new wave, late-80's 'hard to categorize' groups? Am I the only one who bothers thinking about such things??

Yeah, I liked some of these guys but regarded them as a kind of novelty branch off the adult-jazzy-pop family tree? More mainstream (and maybe mellower) members could have been The Blue Nile, early Everything But the Birl, Matt Bianco or even Simply Red -

That's actually an interesting analogy, between the bands/style I'd mentioned and the more recent downbeat/ambient techno stuff, like zero 7 or royksopp. In a sense both scenes are enjoyable, maybe somewhat innocuous (I mean, none of this stuff makes you

Found the artist for "Lounge Against the Machine" - Richard Cheese. Yeah, the name's pretty Beavis and Butthead, but the music quality is actually much better than what you'd initially connote. It's not at all like Weird Al Yankovic type crap. The songs r

Wow. You just listed off some of my required listening for the late 80's/early 90's.

For me, there was a lull in the 87 to 88 period. I idolized Kraftwerk but grew tired of waiting for the follow-up to Electric Cafe. Synthpop's flame was flickerin