What defines New Wave?

[Freedom_Of_Choice]

I've been really getting into some New Wave music lately(Devo, mostly) and it's a welcome respite from the crap that most of my peers are listening to these days. However, I'm still new to this genre and I'm still not sure what defines New Wave. What makes a band new wave as opposed to a band that isn't?

[Frau_Blucher]

MikeP gives a nice shot at it here. I'm sure there'll be further comment...

http://www.nwoutpost.com/nwhist.html

[WolverineSyr]

What defines new wave?

Hair dye and shirts buttoned to the collar with a brooch holding it all together.



[i]just kidding!!!![/i]

[WolverineSyr]

um, no...I'm really not...

darn you K - always one step ahead..

[DavidRavenMoon]

[quote]Originally posted by Freedom_Of_Choice
[br]I've been really getting into some New Wave music lately(Devo, mostly) and it's a welcome respite from the crap that most of my peers are listening to these days. However, I'm still new to this genre and I'm still not sure what defines New Wave. What makes a band new wave as opposed to a band that isn't?
[/quote]

That was my feeling in the late 70's. 70's Rock music had gotten quite bad, with bands like Journey epitomizing what I consider the worst of the 70's. For me it was hearing the B-52's for the first time on New York radio station WPIX, which for that summer at least, became the first radio station to play only New Wave. Some of my faves at the time, and what I consider authentic New Wave, would be bands like The B-52's, Talking Heads (up to Remain in Light), XTC, Lene Lovich, Squeeze, Devo, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Adam and the Ants, The Cars (first three albums)... it was a New Wave of music!

After a while the record companies tried to cash in and signed up all these crappy bands that remotely looked new wave. Then you started hearing new wave style music on TV commercials... it was the beginning of the end!

New Wave is not to be confused with 80's music in general, which was influenced by new wave, but wasn't. Kind of the way you heard phony rock music in the 60's done on variety shows on TV, with all the horns and stuff...

New Wave was all about discarding the old stale sound of the 70's for something fresh and new ... even if it tended to sound a bit like the 60's, with the Farfisa and Vox organs and Beatlesque power pop. But it was more a stylized concept of 60's music than a direct copy. Then there's the stuff that's more experimental and weird...

What a great time for music it was! [:D]

[Sean]

The hardest question to ever respond to but once you are a New Waver, you know what is New Wave. The clear cut New Wave bands are very easy to spot out but the ones that are fine line are always up for debate. Most of the bands that are discussed in here are New Wave except for the folder that is specifically catered for non-New Wave. If you give us a list of bands, I'm sure that most of us in here can tell you what is New Wave and what is not. Most 80's comps you buy these days are filled with New Wave bands but as DavidRavenMoon mentioned, not all of the 80's was New Wave.

[FreeWave]

New Wave really means a variety of things.

First and foremost it should be seperated from what was around at the time. It came around as a reaction to disco and classic rock of the 70's (which were steadily dying). New Wave took off in the 80's but it really started in the late 70's.

Second it was the first "alternative" music after punk. It also was the first music to feature sythesizers as well as guitars. It also wasn't afraid to be pop-oriented. The first many years this music did chart very well and was popular. Later on when The Smiths & Echo turned the genre more serious and more introspective the genre really started becoming "Alternative", especially post 87.

Third I think New wave is best when its inclusive not exclusive. The New Romantics, Goth, Synth-pop, Ska, Rockabilly, Post-Punk, etc all are part of the overall New Wave movement. While many pop artists picked up on a lot of the sound many of these guys never were officially "New Wave" artists. That's what was so exciting about the time is that this stuff cross-pollenated with many other types of music. Modt New Wavers weren't afraid to pick up Thriller, Liscence to Ill, or Hall & Oates.

That's severely lacking from today's "Indie" music which has quite bit more snobbery to it. Especially with the fact that successful artists = sellout. That just wasn't the case back then.

[Frau_Blucher]

Despite previous threads, a clear concise definition seems extremely difficult. I'll take an analytical crack and look forward to some holes being punched into it. People seem to point to three elements being vital to new wave:

1) it's Pop music first and foremost in one way or another
2) it embraces Anti-establishment values
3) it's Experimental in some way

1) Pop: this seems very true. Even punk is Chuck Berry on speed. Some disonant post-punk might argue against this, stuff like The Pop Group perhaps most ironically. But by and large, all the various sub-genre's are Pop in most respects.

2) Anti-Establishment: whether societal or record industry-wise, there certainly seemed to be a lot of this in the dress, politics, attitude, and DIY/small-label ethics of most artists.

3) Experimental: Certainly the new wave CBGBs crowd, Punk, and Post-Punk were very experimental compared to what was going on at that time. But so was stuff like Terry Riley and Tangerine Dream...but they weren't pop. So was Prog Rock like Yes...but again, not Pop but more straight Rock. [I don't even want to think about what seperates Rock and Pop though] But even standard fare like Duran Duran was very innovative in their style elements.

The big argument might be when something is purely immitative rather than innovative? That's where a lot of 80s shite falls into IMHO and why nauseating new wave wannabees aren't really new wave at all despite some semblance of the sound. And this lack of experimentation may be why real new wave is considered dead as early as 1984 or even 82 by many. The experimental aspect may also be where synths fit in. Synths alone aren't a necessary ingredient for new wave IMHO - many of my favs use minimal synths but are undeniably new wave after all - Joy Division and Plimsouls for example. So maybe synths are a sub-category of "experimental" given their newfound accessibility and use at the time.

Then when does it all morph into Alternative? A lot of alterno also seems to fit these criteria. Maybe it was when new wave started to lose it's novelty and went back to a more guitar-driven mix of Pop and Rock? I guess that means Time may be the 4th element - when the "Wave" simply wasn't "New" anymore, a time sometime after New Wave was coined in the latter-Mid 70s.

[DavidRavenMoon]

Very nice post Blir! I agree with you totally. I myself came from the prog rock movement, and as I had said many times to "way too hip" people in the late 70's early 80's that called it "squiggle rock," it was the original alternative rock music.

I think 1984 is a reasonable year for the death of New Wave.. at least as far as any new stuff. I guess that's what happens when something unique gets assimilated into the main stream!

I used to think people were silly when their favorite underground band hit the big time and they screamed "sell out!" ... I figured we [i]wanted[/i] this great music to become main stream... But my wife and I were talking just last night about this, and she summed it up well by saying any music that is totally unique and experimental needs to stay small and underground... or the forces that be will dilute it to stop it from reaching the masses.

As Imani Coppola says, some people are the first to walk in the fresh fallen snow, and the others follow in those footsteps. But few remember who walked there first!

David

[pikeprof]

Good question-for me "new wave" is formed by the vertices and nexi of the confluence and conjunction of the following bands:

Cramps
Clash
Fleshtones
Jam
Gang of Four
Plimsouls
X
Echo and The Bunnymen
Undertones
Ramones

and I guess any band that would sound good on a mix CD with the above bands-
Not that I didn't dig the depeche modes and new orders of the day but they weren't specifically my cup of cocoa as it were- I always dug the "rockier" side of new wave.

[KYYX4ever]

And I myself dig the synthier side of New Wave.

Blir had some great points. The experimental forces at work in music in the late 70's/early 80's certainly helped define the genre.

To me, it was fresh and unusual, but you could dance to it. To me, it's the BEST music EVER. It was in turns melodic, silly, textured, simple, and unique. In addition (and I know some might disagree), it was also about the FASHION and ATTITUDE. Besides Disco, NW involved a lot of dressing up or dressing cool. Sometimes the fashion helped define the music, too, though not always.

[NuWaveRx]

[quote][i]Originally posted by Blir[/i]
<br>Despite previous threads, a clear concise definition seems extremely difficult. I'll take an analytical crack and look forward to some holes being punched into it. People seem to point to three elements being vital to new wave:

1) it's Pop music first and foremost in one way or another
2) it embraces Anti-establishment values
3) it's Experimental in some way

[/quote]

I agree mostly with your assessment. Perhaps I would amend #3, replacing Creativity as a core value of the music as opposed to Experimentation. Especially when taken in context of the music of the late '70s--primarily Arena Rock and/or Disco. The former genre in which musical virtuosity had become the core element and the later in which the music was grafted onto a formulaic rhythm. One of the elements that Punk demonstrated was that a lack of instrumental talent (compared to classic definitions to that point) did not deter one from making a meaningful statement with music. NW took this as a core value as well. What may differentiate Prog from the other music of that era was that, in many cases, the musicians had reached such a high level of musical proficiency, that Experimentation became the only place left for these musicians to go.

I believe Freewave is correct in saying that NW is by definition and "inclusive" term, and highlights your point #3 as well

[newroman]

Yeah, "new wave" has become over-used in the U.S. that I find it extremely annoying. New wave is really late '70s "melodic punk". Artists that typified new wave were Boomtown Rats, Elvis Costello, XTC, Squeeze, the Jam, the Police, Joe Jackson, the Stranglers, Blondie, Talking Heads, The Cars, and Devo.

What most Americans call "new wave" is actually synthpop, new romantic and alternative rock.