New Wave

[Moff Chumley]

Let's organize the thread like this. 1) What do you think new wave is? 2) What are your top few artists/songs/albums? 3) Have you been to any good new wave concerts?

1) I think new wave is a combination of varying degrees of punk anger, pop songcraft, and synthpop instrumentation, with funk and ska optional. So on one end, you have early Elvis Costello, who's basically a slightly more complicated and soft punk with the occasional ska influence, and on the other end, you have the Eurythmics, who are basically pure synthpop.
2) Bands: Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, Oingo Boingo, The Cure, Talking Heads, B-52s
Songs: Watching The Detectives (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiNHe7BUqhc), It's Different for Girls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKr2n-9p7WM), A Forest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcV7O6q3ZGc), Dead Man's Party (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnjDuqOYPlw)
3) I've seen Joe Jackson, that guy has an AMAZING voice.

[Sneak]

I have absolutely no idea what new wave is...but then again, I don't really pay any attention to music classification at all.

But I do like the Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and Joe Jackson, so maybe I do like New Wave. :P

[Moff Chumley]

Here ya go. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_music)

[Raistlin1040]

Bands: Culture Club, A Flock of Seagulls, Oingo Boingo, a-ha, some Police, some Cure.

New Wave is usually poppier, has a lot of synth, less focus on guitars, or at least, the guitars aren't dominant. That's why I'm hesitant to classify The Police or The Cure as New Wave, even though they had New Wave songs, because they both were rockier.

[Oregano]

What about INXS? some people class them as New Wave but a lot of people don't.

[zeratul]

Bands: Culture Club, A Flock of Seagulls, Oingo Boingo, a-ha, some Police, some Cure.

New Wave is usually poppier, has a lot of synth, less focus on guitars, or at least, the guitars aren't dominant. That's why I'm hesitant to classify The Police or The Cure as New Wave, even though they had New Wave songs, because they both were rockier.

Isn;t the cure generally considered to be Cold Wave/ Early Goth? :smallconfused:

[Raistlin1040]

They're Goth, yeah. At least in their earlier stuff, they've drifted a bit towards general Alternative Rock since. They had some New Wave-y/Post-Punk songs though.

[Piedmon_Sama]

I came in here to say The Cure also, so I think enough people consider them New Wave to make it count. :V

Also The Talking Heads, that one song by the Eurythmics, The Police, Pat Benatar (you know... ironically), that one song by Men Without Hats, that one song by Soft Cell.... I think a lot of Peter Gabriel's solo-stuff fits under New Wave but Wikipedia disagrees with me.

[Moff Chumley]

I consider Goth to be a type of New Wave. I mean, it's basically Punk fueled by sadness instead of anger, with more pop derived structures and hooks and such. And listen to All Cats Are Grey, or Hanging Gardens or something like that and tell me it's really that different from Sweet Dreams or Radio, Radio, fundamentally.

[zeratul]

I consider Goth to be a type of New Wave. I mean, it's basically Punk fueled by sadness instead of anger, with more pop derived structures and hooks and such. And listen to All Cats Are Grey, or Hanging Gardens or something like that and tell me it's really that different from Sweet Dreams or Radio, Radio, fundamentally.

It depends on the type of goth. There's darkwave goth bands which are of course influenced by bands like Depeche Mode and Bauhaus type stuff, but there's a distinct difference between it and new wave as new wave in general has much more of a pop element than most darkwave type goth music.

[Moff Chumley]

I'm referring to The Cure, but Depeche Mode and some Souxsie (sp?) and the Banshees falls under that category.

Also, 80s King Crimson is pretty New Wavy.