What killed New Wave???

[toyah]

it was over before it started because, for music, it meant nothing,it was meant as a decoy term away from 'punk',signifying nothing;
it was then adopted by the early 80's 'rosko'(disco posing as 'rock' )records by the likes of Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Dead Or alive, etc

[Seona85]

People change. It's unfortunate that after new wave, it wasn't for the better. : (

[Frank_Chickens]

A very comprehensive reply and far more succinct than mine could ever be to this thread. Enjoyed reading that.

Welcome to the forum Seona85, with posts like that I'm sure you'll fit in just fine. [:)]

[Seona85]

Thank you : D. I enjoy new wave not only as music, but as a study. It was so much more than many people think it was. It was such a smooth and even music scene for a while. You could play Freur's Door-Doot right before something much harder like Silent Running and it wouldn't sound clunky because there was something in the music at the time that just made it all gel. Nothing has come close since. It's good to see so many people who didn't even live through the 80s getting into new wave now. Just shows how good it really was. Utterly timeless.[8D]

[soundstory]

[quote][i]Originally posted by toyah[/i]
<br>just being PUNK!!!!!
[/quote]

hahaha, keep in up !!! [:D]

[Panorama]

New Wave is not dead, it lives on in all of us, and in music fans that discover the amazing music we all love.

<HR width="185" align="left">
"Photography with a Vision"
http://www.cooganphoto.com

[newyawkdoll]

This is my first post. I am a huge Wave fan I was just browsing the forums, and landed on this thread, so here goes...[:)]

Nothing really "killed" New Wave, in my opinion. New Wave was an umbrella heading for a music period, and that music consisted of pioneering sounds that left their imprint on the culture. What was considered "New Wave" pretty much evolved into College Radio music, which is where most of the music was played in the first place. This became the big plethora of "Alternative" music, or "Indie" in the UK.

Guitar Power Pop continued in the underground for a few years before the 90s "Pop-punk" like Weezer brought it to the mainstream. Synthpop became incorporated into EBM, Electro-Industrial, House and Hi-Nrg Pop of later in the decade. 2nd wave Ska disappeared shortly, before reappearing as an influence on 3rd wave Ska. Gothic Postpunk became "Darkwave". It was just an evolution of times. Some of genres being mentioned here, a la Hair Metal, Grunge et al, they had no connection in New Wave's "demise". The term did fall out of favor, naturally, because something with "New" in the title can only be used for so long! Just as the punk of the mid-70s had to evolve, so did the New Wave stuff.

[newyawkdoll]

[quote]suppose the other thing to keep in mind about new wave is that it has more variety than other musical movements. To me, NW includes ska revival, powerpop, mod revival, synthpop, goth, british postpunk (controversial), new romanticism, art rock (devo, heads), FM rock crossover (u2, cars, pretenders), dance music, rockabilly revival, krautrock, electronica, etc. Some if not most of these genres kept going or morphed into something else. For example, ska had a third wave in the 90s.

i love the Alan Cross series ongoing history of new music. He has a series of shows called '30 years of punk'. He argues that classic punk ended in 78 and then morphed into other forms of punk, eg grunge, emo, pop punk, ska punk. NW is kind of like that. NW proper ended in 85-6, just like punk proper ended in 78, but as others pointed out it kept going in other forms. [/quote]

I like this response here. [:)]

As for New Wave being an American term, wow, this the first time I've heard this. I've spoken to loads of British people about New Wave and they pretty readily use the term to describe what they listened to. What British folks might tell me is that the term fell out of favor around 1980, especially since "postpunk" had come into use. It's quite true that America used to the term for a longer period, and applied it to a much bigger variety of music. But I can't imagine that acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Nick Lowe, Squeeze, XTC, Boomtown Rats or even The Jam were only being called Punk in the late 70s.

[Screen 13]

[quote][i]Originally posted by plagiarism[/i]
<br>To me, some of the biggest factors in the demise of NW are:

1. The bandwagon effect. Dinosaur acts such as Steve Miller, Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, etc. had all put out NW-inspired albums by 83 or so.

2. Genuine NW stalwarts had run out of ideas/dropping turds.

3. MTV had stopped being about breaking new artists. Instead, they were all about showing World Premiere Videos
[/quote]

Agreed to a point. Here's a little fleshing out, coming from The Midwest, where a lot of interesting things flop. Point 1 is where most of it ran in fear once they finally saw most of these bands (as MTV was not everywhere at that time) and decided that this New Wave thing was way too out-there, but liked the sound enough to get the train-riders on the top. The Industry was finding out how to use synths to create this music for a Mainstream audience and once Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" (With Arthur Baker re-mix on the "12) made it big, the clock was ticking fast to the whole Mega Rock Album/"World Premiere Video" stuff. Cue the downfall in '84 and the horror of 1985 (with of course a few exceptions...).

For Point 2 - I have to say look at 1984. While they may not be total failures, there's a list of albums to think about. Human League's Hysteria, Culture Club's Waking Up With the House on Fire ("The War Song" - need I say more?), Spandau Ballet's Parade, David Bowie's Tonight (Sorry...), Visage's Beat Boy, and Duran Duran's Arena. Throw in The Go Go's Talk Show, Missing Person's Rhyme and Reason, Men Without Hat's Folk of the 80's 3 (I think it was 3), and the mostly-filler hype of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (Great singles, though), you can see where things were changing fast. There were some mighty fine singles on most of those albums, but with an industry ready for a full album of at least five potential singles and videos (The era of bloat!), they were not the sounds the industry was looking for.

But did it really die? The first popular wave did. In the long run, it just went into many different directions. In short, it turned into something better, and something more than the Mainstream can take.

In other words, a debacle, or even a series of them, can't kill off a music. Hell, Punk would have died totally if The Clash's Cut the Crap would have been allowed to stop Punk, but it didn't.

There were also those who checked out albums by Thomas Dolby (The Flat Earth), Icicle Works (Who got chucked out of Arista even as they had a Top 40 album...sign of the industry, or what?), Talk Talk (It's My Life, with more adventurous songs), Echo and the Bunnymen (the beautiful Ocean Rain), Dexy's Midnight Runners (1985's Don't Stand Me Down - a career kill, but a head-turning one!), and Soft Cell (This Last Night in Sodom) who thought, "hey, this is starting to get interesting!" and moved onto more interesting and underground sounds once they read the news about them - the few who had that "what else is out there?" cell in their minds. I was lucky enough to be one of those people - Cue the interest in Industrial, Folk singers like Billy Bragg, Gothic (Alien Sex Fiend!), Hardcore (It may have faded quite a bit, but it still survived!), Cowpunk, Garage Punk, New Psychedelic, Indie (C-86, Creation Records, and beyond), and whatever else was called adventurous, alternative, and just plain left-field.

Sadly, however, most of the US Pop trends moved to some very bland happenings, thank (no thanks, really) to an industry who got used to the then-new way of selling their music, with one New Wave band moving into a audio textbook for Arena Rockers (U2), but there were those who were getting adventurous thanks to some of the other happenings of '83/'84. those who were reading the UK weeklies and the then-interesting US college Rock publications were getting to know some very interesting sounds from it's alternative scenes and finding out that they were of stronger stuff than the Pop of the day. You could just see the local Dance Pop fan sell off his stack of records once getting a hold of something by Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. There was the interest in harder synth sounds, and one can chart the progress of Ministry for that, an era when the Blancmange records were sold off and traded for Wax Trax and anything from Belgium (While secretly keeping a couple of Depeche Mode albums, like the great Black Celebration, in their collections...but never told anyone).


To me, New Wave was a Fork in the Road - you either went further or just turned off at the next exit. Sadly, most of them took off to the Safe and Sound Muti-service Gas Station and Mainstream Fast Food line. Thankfully, people like me kept moving into other interesting sounds. There were those like me, however, who thought that putting College Rock into a two-hour format was the mark that said to me that the industry was no longer wanting to sell anything beyond the "norm," and decided to take the roads less traveled (at least in The US). That brief moment of New Wave was that inspiration.

I know this is a ramble, but I had to get something written...

[Screen 13]

[quote][i]Originally posted by newyawkdoll[/i]
<br>[quote]suppose the other thing to keep in mind about new wave is that it has more variety than other musical movements. To me, NW includes ska revival, powerpop, mod revival, synthpop, goth, british postpunk (controversial), new romanticism, art rock (devo, heads), FM rock crossover (u2, cars, pretenders), dance music, rockabilly revival, krautrock, electronica, etc. Some if not most of these genres kept going or morphed into something else. For example, ska had a third wave in the 90s.

i love the Alan Cross series ongoing history of new music. He has a series of shows called '30 years of punk'. He argues that classic punk ended in 78 and then morphed into other forms of punk, eg grunge, emo, pop punk, ska punk. NW is kind of like that. NW proper ended in 85-6, just like punk proper ended in 78, but as others pointed out it kept going in other forms. [/quote]

I like this response here. [:)]

As for New Wave being an American term, wow, this the first time I've heard this. I've spoken to loads of British people about New Wave and they pretty readily use the term to describe what they listened to. What British folks might tell me is that the term fell out of favor around 1980, especially since "postpunk" had come into use. It's quite true that America used to the term for a longer period, and applied it to a much bigger variety of music. But I can't imagine that acts like Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Nick Lowe, Squeeze, XTC, Boomtown Rats or even The Jam were only being called Punk in the late 70s.
[/quote]

From what I remember, New Wave was really a selling term used as early as the Late 60's. I think Mercury used it around '68 when they had albums like Basic Blues Magoos and Left Banke Too (Dumb title for an alright album...).

As for The Jam being called Punk, they are sometimes, but mostly in a "Are they?/Are they not?" kind of way. Alex Ogg's definitive encyclopedia of the A-Z of UK Punk of '76-'79, No More Heroes, had a good entry on them. The bands who tried (and usually failed) to follow in their footsteps, however, were never called that as they never had the intensity of albums like In the City or a lyricist like Paul Weller.

[Screen 13]

[quote][i]Originally posted by TragicMagic[/i]
<br>Stock Aitken-Waterman started killing real music in the mid 80's (for me anyway).

[/quote]

For a while they also slowed down Late 80's Indie in the UK, as most of their productions were on PWL, cited by some charts as an actual Indie...sad. Their dominance covered up a whole lot of interesting music in the Late 80's. Not entirely, but you know what I mean...seeing Jason Donovan next to something like Sonic Youth (I think then on Blast First in The UK then...could be wrong) was quite a nightmare for me.

[pellerman]

Ever since music has been made, at least going back the last several decades from about the 50's or so, music has always gone through transitions. One style became prominent, then faded, and other styles took over. This is just a natural phenomena of the music industry. With that being said, it stands to reason that new wave would inevitably die. However, new wave has managed to live on in other genres and inspire musical styles since the 80's. A lot of the club music of the 90's has its roots in 80's synth pop. The same can be said for the most successful hip-hop from the '99 - '07 era. A lot of alternative music from the '02 - '05 era has a very new wave sound too.

My biggest hope for the music industry today is that the era of cookie cutter music comes to an end and there's a return to the creative spirit which shaped the music scene of the 80's.

[Screen 13]

I hope so as well.

I have a feeling that the Industry is going to give up on anything new all together unless if it knows it's going to bow down. It will sell on Retro and MOR and that will be all from them. The music that sells to Housewives, Wal Mart customers, and teenyboppers will be called a hit...but it will not really be that much of one when compared to the mega sellers of The 70's to 90's. I'm of a firm belief that Soundscan does not count everyone - When the system was first put into the charts back around '91, I could only imagine a few (count on one hand, possibly) Indie stores were even connected to the system.

The rest of the music world, the one led by people who actually listen to music, will possibly get up from the wreckage the industry has put Music in through the last decade and start really getting into it again...in fact it already has.

[Frank_Chickens]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Screen 13[/i]

For a while they also slowed down Late 80's Indie in the UK, as most of their productions were on PWL, cited by some charts as an actual Indie...sad. Their dominance covered up a whole lot of interesting music in the Late 80's. Not entirely, but you know what I mean...seeing Jason Donovan next to something like Sonic Youth (I think then on Blast First in The UK then...could be wrong) was quite a nightmare for me.
[/quote]

Technically, SAW is indie as they released it on their own lable
produced it themselves and acts like Kyle and Jason appeared briefly on the independant charts before going over to the network.

This may not be type nor the definition of indie that appeals to you or I but sadly it is one that cannot be ignored.

The only three songs of theirs I liked were The Upstroke, Cocoon and Roadblock, the latter proving they really could mix it up if they tried but the clarion call of the primary young female demographic must always be answered first.

[Screen 13]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Frank_Chickens[/i]
<br>
Technically, SAW is indie as they released it on their own lable
produced it themselves and acts like Kyle and Jason appeared briefly on the independant charts before going over to the network.

This may not be type nor the definition of indie that appeals to you or I but sadly it is one that cannot be ignored.

The only three songs of theirs I liked were The Upstroke, Cocoon and Roadblock, the latter proving they really could mix it up if they tried but the clarion call of the primary young female demographic must always be answered first.
[/quote]

PWL was the label, and I begrudgingly think that Roadblock is a pure 80's happening, but once the Teen Idols started to happen...

They knew how to promote, especially when MTV arrived in The UK by then (Aug. 87), I will give it that, but that's all.