Next Phase, New Wave

     Musically, high school was an odd time.  First of all, there weren’t a whole lot of Springsteen fans at the Prep, so I was on my own there.  Second, quite a few of my friends were more into classic rock than I had been during it’s heyday in the 1970’s.  Third, there were kids in my circle that were into music that was pretty deep underground. Then there was the radio.  In 1977, my call sign WIBG went disco so that sent me scrambling for something else.  I made the switch to FM and never looked back.  My first stop, at least for the next few years was WiFi 92.  Wifi was a top forty radio, but with a decided FM spin.  Not too heavy on the disco, but I remember hearing some great new music here.  During the summer months, I used to take my stereo speakers and point them out my window while I was working in the back yard.  There was also WPST (Trenton) at 97.5 and WSTW (Wilmington) at 93.7, but I would be listening to these later on.

  Popular music from 1978 – 1979 was mostly stagnant.  Sure there were bright spots but some of the biggest hits of that time were stale sounding even back then, like Eddie Money’s Baby Hold On to Me or  Toto’s Hold the Line.  The best stuff was coming from the left of the dial – Obscure new bands and a fresh batch of one-hit wonders were bubbling out of the seedy clubs of NYC like CBGB and the Ritz, and from college towns across the country.  Across the pond, you might have thought London was set to burn down any minute with the likes of the Clash and the Sex Pistols ripping it up.  Back home, the Philly scene was just a year or two from really taking off.


     New Wave really started back in 1977.  Now, I know I might be pissing off a few purists out there, but I’m combining New Wave (Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson, Talking Heads) Punk (Clash, Ramones) and what I’d call Resurgent Power Pop (J Giels, Cheap Trick, Shoes) all under the “New Wave” umbrella.  Just check out the albums released in 1977:

• My Aim is True – Elvis Costello Debut
• This album featured Alison, Mystery Dance and (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes.  Watching the Detectives was also released as a single around this time.  The Attractions didn’t backup Elvis on his first album, though.  Those duties fell to an unknown band out of the San Francisco area called Clover.  Clover would go on to become Huey Lewis and the News.
• Rocket to Russia – Ramones
• Sheena is a Punk Rocker, Teenage Lobotomy and Rockaway Beach.  
• Talking Heads 77 – Talking Heads 
• Psycho Killer!
• The Clash – The Clash Debut
• Never Mind the Bullocks – Sex Pistols
• Lust for Life – Iggy Pop

The New Wave kept gaining traction in 1978 with these releases:

• Outlandos d’Amour - The Police Debut
• Can’t Stand Losing You!
• More Songs about Buildings and Food - Talking Heads 
• The Talking heads laid claim to their cover of Take Me to the River.  I couldn’t believe this wasn’t an original when I first heard it.  
• Excitable Boy - Warren Zevon
• This album still serves me well, over 30 years later.  Lawyers Guns and  Money is a great bar band staple, while Excitable Boy and Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner are great songs to sing along with in the car. Werewolves of London seem the be the song that gets played the most  from this album.  In 1987 I was in San Francisco, when I happened to notice a Trader Vic’s.  I immediately went in and had myself a Pina Colada.  I know it wasn’t the one in London, but it was good enough for me.  Now all I have to do is Stand on a Corner in Winslow Arizona!
• Easter - Patti Smith  
• Because the Night was a ferocious song, originally written by Springsteen and tweaked by Smith, enough to get her songwriter credits.  This remains one of my favorites from that time.  “Love is an angel disguised as lust” is  one of the song’s best lines.  This hit the charts in a big way, too.
• Road to Ruin - Ramones 
• I Wanna Be Sedated just about defined the Ramones, to me.
• Generation X - Billy Idol hits the scene! And watch out what you say about him!

  The worst part about this was that I didn’t even know this music existed at the time!  It wasn’t until late 1978 when the radio would start catching up to what was happing in a rather vibrant counter-culture scene. Even then, the Billboard charts don’t even begin to do justice to the impact this music was having.  1977 was the start of a fantastic musical arc that would stretch out for a decade, until it came to a screeching, fatal halt one cold November morning in 1987.  People talk about the 80’s and maybe you picture the “Wedding Singer” or “Miami Vice” version of the 80’s but to me, the eighties really started around 1978 and 1979. When I first heard Peace Love and Understanding, and Is She Really Going Out with Him? and Cruel to be Kind and Best Friend’s Girl and on an on – It was like someone breathed some fresh air into music again.  

1979 - New Wave Hits its Stride


     This is the music I love and identify with.  Maybe it was timing and synchronicity.  Being in the right place at the right time, but the music was simply wonderful.  Whether it was the nerd-quirky insight of Elvis Costello, or the pure pop from Nick Lowe, New Wave music was fresh, smart, sarcastic and insightful.  The early days of New Wave are even reminiscent of the birth of Rock and Roll - Bands and fans looking for something new, looking to rebel against the entrenched musical culture of the times went out and created something new for themselves.  The music had a Do-It-Yourself feel.  Bands would release singles in between album releases, pumping out the music as fast as they could.  It seemed like most of the New Wave practitioners hailed form the UK, setting the stage for a new British Invasion.  I don’t know what was going on culturally across the pond, but it was fertile breeding crowd for new music.  However, in the States, the clarion call for New Wave would be signaled by a slick looking band with a rocking raunchy hit.

  The Knack were something else for the time.  My Sharona had an opening riff something that was instantly recognizable.  It somehow combined a wicked bluesy turn with a modern Power Pop crunch. Oddly, the song featured a lengthy guitar solo, which was definitely not typical of the New Wave or Punk, but feel of the song overall was just right.  Then there were the lyrics - holy cow - I think the censors were working over time with this one, but I don’t think I ever heard a lyrically edited version of this song.  Never gonna stop, Get it Up,  and Running down the length of my thigh...  Pretty bawdy stuff for radio.  And back then it was common for bands to hit the day time TV talk show circuit - John Davidson or Mike Douglas had bands on all the time.  The Knack must have been making everybody sweat!  Who cares? I loved it.  The follow up single from Get the Knack was just as good.  Good Girls Don’t really was about every adolescent teenage boy’s dream.  That song was a staple for me and my buddy Dave, when we started hitting the Open Mike circuit in the late 80’s.  My Sharona stayed at number 1 for a few weeks, amidst a sea of dance music and let the world know that something else was coming and would not be denied.  The Dinosaurs were dying (and in some cases, literally as well as figuratively) and a new breed was ready to take over.   

Doug Fieger recently passed earlier this year away at 57, but My Sharona’s legacy lives on, if only to remembered as the song that provided the break-through hit for a young accordion player named Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al’s delicious parody, My Bologna, would mark the beginning of a wonderful, multi-generation spanning career.

There were two other singles that hit number one that year that fell into the New Wave camp.  Blondie’s Heart of Glass marked the start of a strong career for this band that made their marks in the clubs of NYC.  Heart of Glass, though was a cheeky take on relationships and lyrically was a fit for what New Wave was selling - and the Debby Harry fronted band was odd enough not to fall into any established musical genre, but the overly produced Heart of Glass was still a bit too close to Disco for my tastes.  

The other number one was a one-hit wonder from the alphabetically monikered “M”.  The song was Popmusik.  This was one of my favorites from that time.  I was thrilled to find this still available on iTunes a few months ago.  It’s a quirky, bright Brit-pop tune that also featured a programmed drum track and layered keyboards. 

New York London Paris Munich Everybody talk about Popmusik!

Coupled with the release of Gary Numan’s Cars, both songs showed that audiences were ready to embrace synth-pop under the big umbrella of the New Wave.  Cars  was a cool song for the time.  Numan’s nasally vocals matched with the synth driven music was great ear candy.  Lyrically dystopian and dripping with alienation, the song was far moodier than the bright Popmusik and helped to open the door for bands like Ultravox, Soft Cell, OMD and others.

There’s a lot more music from 1979, so I’ll have to cover more in the next entry.




Next:  1979, One Song at a Time!