Article regarding New Wave on Long Island

[marie3]

Nothing we really don't know already, but nice to read in a current newspaper.
Here's the link if you want to take the new wave poll or read Belinda Carlisle interview: http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/mu ... 4262.story

August 16, 2008
New Wave redux rolls into Jones Beach
BY KEVIN AMORIM | kevin.amorim@newsday.com
August 17, 2008


We really did belong to a club. There were degrees of membership, of course -- hey, nice asymmetrical haircut! -- but one thing was for certain: if you were lucky enough to have lived through the new-wave music invasion of the early 1980s, Long Island was the place to be.

Sure, KROQ-FM in Los Angeles played a mix of modern rock -- still does -- but when Duran Duran hit the States for its inaugural club tour in 1981, the group gave its first radio interview to our own WLIR/92.7 FM (you can't write a mash note to new wave and not include the station that "dared to be different"). And the boys' debut U.S. performance? At Spit in Levittown. To quote the Scottish band APB, 'LIR gave us something to believe in with the synthesizer-driven pop the other commercial stations in New York never played. New Order, Depeche Mode, Ultravox, Yaz and Blancmange were early staples. There were fashion elements, which were apparent in the early MTV videos (see Duran Duran, Adam Ant). "They didn't look like the guy next door," said Jim Henke, vice president of exhibitions and curatorial affairs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland and a former writer and editor at Rolling Stone magazine. "MTV really burned these groups into people's brains."

And for the most part, the music was happy and smart and insulated us with an innocence during those Reagan years. Of course, you could also dance to it, and there was no shortage of clubs on the Island that pumped new wave from its sound systems -- Malibu in Lido Beach, Heartbeat in Oyster Bay, Paris New York in Huntington.

The sights and sounds of that era make a live reappearance Friday when the Regeneration Tour plays Nikon at Jones Beach Theater. Yes, the Human League, former Go-Go Belinda Carlisle, ABC, A Flock of Seagulls (that hair!) and Naked Eyes will all be on one stage. Ron Delsener never put on a show like this back in the day. But lest you think enjoying these bands 25 years after their heyday is somehow solidifying new wave as the next wave of nostalgia, there's more to it than that.

That sound is still so relevant," said Malibu Sue, a longtime WLIR disc jockey who now works the day shift at WMJC/94.3 FM in Farmingdale. "It captured sentiment and intelligence that other music did not. Somebody once said that it's music for the thinking man."

The man who was thinking of the future and setting things in motion for Long Island's new wave '80s was Denis McNamara, the program director who started at WLIR in 1974 as a part-timer when it was still a progressive rock station (trivia: 'LIR's other part-timer was Murray the K).

"It was the right time and right place," said McNamara, who now heads up the entertainment division of vTuner, an Internet radio guidance developer with offices in Manhattan and Northport. "There was a period in the '80s where the entire music industry was looking upon 'LIR and that 'LIR marketplace of New York and Long Island as one of the hippest music areas of the world. People used to refer to it as the gateway to America if you were an upcoming artist."

Years later, bands who got their start on the little 3,000-watt class-A station in Hempstead went on to seep into the popular consciousness. You may have heard Devo's "Whip It" in a TV commercial for the ever-popular Swiffer sweeper, or the lesser-known The The's 1983 gem "This Is the Day" for a recent M&M's spot. It's the little things, but they add up to a feeling that, hey, our music didn't just crawl away and die when hair metal sprayed it in the face with Aqua Net in the late '80s.

Don't worry, though, we'll get the last laugh Friday.

Party like it's 1983

Friday's Regeneration Tour concert will be Nikon at Jones Beach Theater's official 25th anniversary celebration - for rock shows. Eric Clapton played the venue's first rock concert in 1983. Concert promoter Live Nation will admit for free the first 500 attendees dressed in Members Only jackets, leg warmers and parachute pants (nothing really "new wave" about those fashions).

Some tickets are available at 1980s flashback pricing: $19.83.

Everyone in attendance Friday will receive a limited-edition poster celebrating the venue's 25 years of performances.

-Kevin Amorim

Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.