To me, it's both entertaining and somewhat disheartening to have all of these arguments.
Let's really face it: "New Wave" was invented by Stein at Sire Records to market music and come up with something more respectable than punk.
New Wave as a a genre, if you can call it that-really only ran from ca. 1977-1982, when I was working in college radio , no one was really using that phrase from 1983 on.
It's a slippery category at best-How are the Talking Heads and Ramones similar at all?
It's kind of like garage rock:- some garage-o-philes will only listen to music that was pressed on 45s in Muscatine, Iowa and totally ignore Paul Revere and The Raiders and Tommy James, who for MY money rocked as hard as some as those obscuro-mondo bands. This is for people who consider The Remains too mainstream for them to bother with( for the uninitiated-the Remains were a somewhat successfull Eas Coast Band, who toured with the Beatles on the Fabs last American tour, but could never get into the national charts.
At best, one can say it was commericially viable music that embraced some of the early punk ethos.
To me-"New Wave" (as slippery a concept) was the music I got into that was slightly off the beaten track when I was a young man growing up in Central Wisconsin in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When I got into college radio, I found that the bands I liked were echoing stuff that was done about 20 years prior.
It's kind of like this whole "lost bands" thing-who can say?
Let's have the discussions-but let's remember it's the music that brings us back here.
What IS so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

