What Was the Last New Wave Record?

[elviscaprice]

Again your back to the question of what is really "New Wave". I think the mentality of the movement of the music is where one could try to define "New Wave". In that sense, it still is alive and well today. agree q89747.

Again, it would seem that the 4AD label captured this mentality more than any other label over time. Disagree Blir. What label or bands would you define as "New Wave"?

Now in terms of when "New Wave" influenced ourselves or we "New Wave", that's a personal preference.
Guess making this post qualifies everything I say as personal, lol. I'm guilty!!

[SwampThing]

[quote][i]Originally posted by elviscaprice[/i]
<br>That's also an oxymoron. When was New Wave ever apart of popular culture...? [/quote] I suppose when corporate owned record labels, radio stations, magazines and movies recognized the genre (Which was fairly early on). Who disagrees with the notion that "new wave" was part of 80's popular culture?

[quote][i]Originally posted by elviscaprice[/i]
<br>... what is popular culture? [/quote]

"Pop culture is, put simply, the events, people, fads, and trends that capture the public imagination. It is also a term used to describe current cultural trends, and cultural trends of the past that have achieved enduring status." (I stole that quote off the internet)

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[elviscaprice]

Well put Swampthing!!
Which leads exactly to what I was getting at. True "New Wave" never became "pop culture" just pop music that borrowed from "New Wave". New Wave was already moving other directions by the time "POP Wave" became a public trend. New Wave was always meant to be an underground movement or obscure. Popularity only moved "New Wave" into other directions, thus the fractionalization of New Wave into other genres.
Thus labels like 4AD, which kept going in obscure directions were the true New Wave of the 80's.
My personal 2 cents of an opinion. Just a rambling fool who obviously needs to find better things to do than keep posting about yesterday. LOL

[bpdp3]

To answer the original topic, I always recall someone citing When in Rome's "The Promise" as one of the final new wave records and I could never really argue it.

I thought the Information Society debut was a misunderstood new wave record (maybe too many urban dance beats??)

For me, true 'new wave' was over by around '82. ('new wave' being something like the Vapors, not Husker Du, although the two co-habitate in my collection nicely). The stuff in the mid-80s was something else altogether.

Any 'last gasp' was taken in 1988. I know this is true because every shred of my being was (and is) filled with a fasciniation with collecting new wave records. And by 1988-89 I was onto other things; 'new wave' records just weren't around.

[djcraig]

It's a fascinating and utterly unanswerable question. Did releases from bands like The B-52's stop being New Wave after the 80s?

It's easier to try to discern when the New Wave Era ended. When KROQ started adding Soundgarden and other bands that were the antithesis of New Wave to their playlist, I knew the dream was over. It was like they turned their back on all that had happened during the 80s and regressed right back to 70s inspired Metal.

De-evolution embodied.



<a href="http://www.djcraig.net/los_angeles_dj">DJ Craig</a>

[SallyLightfoot]

Just as difficult to pick the first New Wave record.

I think New Wave records still come out, it's just that starting around 1983 they were absorbed into the mainstream and began to lose their (already loosely defined) characteristics.

New Wave was a small eddy or whirlpool in a stream. Never separate from the stream in the first place, it lingered briefly and then was swept away in the current.

[geoffolehane]

I don't think there has been a last new wave song. I have to agree with some of the posters that it is still alive in some of the newer bands like Shiny Toy Guns, Interpol, Midnight Juggernauts, and others.

[Fastnbulbous]

Given how open-ended the term is, everyone pretty much has good points. I figure most people know the origins of it being this board's namesake -- Seymour Stein wanted to market his NY punk bands on his Sire label to radio, but knew "punk" would limit their commercial potential, given William Burroughs' definition. So he borrowed from French New Wave cinema to market the Talking Heads (appropriate), Richard Hell & the Voidoids (really pre-punk, as some of the songs date back as far as 1972 when Hell was in Neon Boys, then Television, then the Heartbreakers) the Dead Boys, Rezillos and the Ramones (ironically the epitome of punk). Malcolm McLaren was rumored to have tried to use the term for the Sex Pistols to, but I haven't seen anything to verify it. For the record Blondie's 1976 debut seems like a good choice for the first new wave album.

I've always thought of 1983 as being the cut-off year for both post-punk and new wave. Several key bands were broken up by then, like The Police, Blondie and The Jam, while others had taken a different direction after that point, like Elvis Costello and Talking Heads. By 1983, U2 had already gone stadium rock, and it seemed the best albums were from indie rockers like R.E.M., Violent Femmes, Minutemen, Husker Du, and Wipers, and some metal. I'm not sure of release dates, but I'd say either Power, Corruption & Lies, Dazzle Ships, Speaking In Tongues, Porcupine or You And Me Both.

[Fastnbulbous]

Let's look at some albums from 1984. Ocean Rain is one of Echo & the Bunnymen's best. Sweeping strings and romanticism, it can fit comfortably alongside big arena rock while still retaining some darkness. They could have/should have been in a John Hughes movie like the Simple Minds. My flac files for Porcupine and before are tagged "post-punk," while Ocean Rain and after are "alt rock." Mirror Moves and Ricochet Days also seemed to strive for the same thing to a lesser extent. Heartbeat City hit it big on MTV. Perhaps because the songs were pounded relentlessly into my skull, I don't own it, despite the fact that I love all their earlier albums.

To me, The Smiths, Lloyd Cole, Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout and the Blue Aeroplanes are all jangly alt pop that have as much to do with new wave as R.E.M. and the Replacements. Probably the most new wave sounding of the new groups to emerge were The Icicle Works, especially "Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream)." But like Modern English with "I Melt With You," most of their other stuff is more an extension of brooding post-punk, closer to the more sophisticated alt rock of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, as the new wavers and post-punkers have grown up, for both better and worse.

[Sean]

Tough subject and I don't think everyone will ever agree. My opinion, the last New Wave single of the 80's is "Living In Oblivion" by Anything Box and their album "Peace" would qualify as the last album of the 80's.

[SonicBoom]

IMO it was New Order's Republic. From 1993.