New Wave Outpost Forum

This CD is called Punky but Chic: American New Wave. It is the only one I've ever seen to have anything by the Laughing Dogs two Columbia LPs. It has "Get 'im Outta Town" which is a great song from their first album.

It also has other bands I've never heard anything from. Does anyone know anything about the dBs, Wire Train, Translator or The Dictators (whose song on the CD sounds like the Ramones doing a Beach Boys song if you can imagine that!)

I think "Translator" is a ska band. Wire Train is ok...I've heard one of their records.

Keepin the 80s alive

Translator is a guitar based California band (definitely not ska!), somewhat like Wire Train but with a tougher sound. They came from San Francisco's 415 label scene that also included Red Rockers and Romeo Void.

Wounded Bird reissued all four of Translator's albums last year...the first one with "Everywhere That I'm Not" is kind of a new wave classic, as is Wire Train's "In A Chamber".

The dB's are a guitar based power pop band from the south...they had some catchy tunes here and there.

The Dictators were one of the original NYC "punk" bands, concurrent with The Ramones, Suicide, Patti Smith, and Wayne County.

By the way, I had never heard "Get 'Im Outta Town" until a few months ago. I was a teenager in 1979 when it first came out and loved the power pop/new wave sound of the Knack, Blondie, Cars, etc. It is an absolute crime that record companies and radio stations, especially in the South where I grew up and still live, proffered junk like the Village People and Sister Sledge on us at the time on top 40 radio instead of this.
And that the AOR stations could not tear themselves away from playing Skynard 30 times a day to play something like this and 100 other songs from that time that are long forgotten.

Jimmi from the Laughing Dogs here.

Thanks for the nice comment about "Get 'im Outta Town".
We just put the video up on YouTube. It was filmed it in Times Square in 1979.
Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIO0KULkYxU


We played with the Dictators at CBGBs in 1976. Handsome Dick Manitoba was the lead singer. They were a good band.

Jimmi

In Dictators also played later Manowar and Shakin Street guitarist Ross Funniccelo and someone Mark''the animal'' Mentoza later with Twisted Sister.Good band but somewhere missing the point with their fondness to an early metallic/hard rock sound.