Need pix of the brothers!

[ilan]

I do some jazz blues walking bass line, in either G or F. I don't know why, that is what usually comes out of me when they say 'play some bass'. Man, I'm boring. How did that happen?

[uwe]

That's actually a surprisingly non-disco bassline.  Coulda been a post-punk song.

When punk and disco had a baby, they called it new wave dance pop.

When I'm asked to soundcheck a backing voc mic and play bass, this is what I start with ... always has people smiling:

[Granny Gremlin]

When punk and disco had a baby, they called it new wave dance pop.

Nein, my friend.  Punk was officially a subgenre of New Wave (it was only later that New Wave came to represent synth pop to the exclusion of Punk or anything sans keyboards; as someone who claims to have been an avid NME reader back then you should remember that).  When Punk and Disco had a baby, obviously it involved a lot of drugs.... it was a fugly damn baby.

[slinkp]

I always thought the term "punk" predated the term "new wave", but turns out it's not so.  The history is rather muddled... as usual, etymology is fluid and depends on who you ask. The Wikipedia page is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_music

And of course this all reminds me of this, from "The Decline of Western Civilization" (the first one):

[exiledarchangel]

IMHO this is what happens 9 months after a drunk punk stick it to a disco chick.

[gearHed289]

I didn't hear the term New Wave until well after I heard of punk in the summer of '77. I was reading Creem, Hit Parader, and eventually Circus. Maybe they weren't hip to the terminology?

[Dave W]

I didn't hear the term New Wave until well after I heard of punk in the summer of '77. I was reading Creem, Hit Parader, and eventually Circus. Maybe they weren't hip to the terminology?

Same here. I don't care what Wikipedia says.

Creem writers knew all the terminology and in some cases originated it.  Dave Marsh was first to use the term "punk rock music" -- referring to ? and the Mysterians -- and in the same issue, Mike Saunders was first to use the term "heavy metal music" referring to Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come.

[Granny Gremlin]

It was more of a British vs an American thing from what I have gatherred.  The scene self-referenced that way at least some of the time, and the commentators definitely referred it that way.  I wager Kickboy in that vid up there is mostly right however.

There was a pic of cool chart of Brit punk band membership from the late 70s in the liner notes of RamoneswMania (for some weird reason).  It was by some major Punk historianand the title was something like Diagram of the New Wave.

[wellREDman]

as I knew it and used it back then New Wave was definitely after punk,

it  was the term they/we used to distance themselves from the increasingly thuggy thing that punk became.

 before the new wave moniker stuck they had tried post-punk and positive punk both of which were too much of a mouthful

 I always understood it as new wave (of punk)

[Dave W]

Kim Wilde didn't warn us that a new wave was coming until 1982. Especially if you were in "East California" 

[Granny Gremlin]

as I knew it and used it back then New Wave was definitely after punk,

With all due respect wellREDman, you're even younger than me (and supposedly, well red, as opposed to well read which is something entirely more repectable ;P ... wait, I wonder if that means the same thing over there) and the term was coined before both our births (which in your case was itself "definitely after punk," n'est pas? so you could not have heard it earlier); inarguably the meaning drifted a bit over time.

There was a pic of cool chart of Brit punk band membership from the late 70s in the liner notes of RamoneswMania (for some weird reason).  It was by some major Punk historianand the title was something like Diagram of the New Wave.

So I remembered wrong - it was in the liner notes of Generation X - Perfect Hits (Billy Idol was actually really good at one point) not Ramonesmania (which makes so much more sense, but the error is excusable as both feature a colage of band paraphernalia on a yellow background).

It's by Pete Frame (writer for Sounds, NME, Melody Maker and Rolling Stone; founder/editor of Zig Zag; A&R man for  B&C Charisma Records), dated 1977.  Also the title is cut off (I have seen the full thing somewhere but I can't seem to find it with a quick google just now) but he does refer to the first wave of London Punk as "New Wave" music mutliple times in the sidebars that are visible around the tree diagram.


See the first sentences in both the  bottom middle and left side paragraphs:








Also, I just remembered that there is the line from I'm so Bored of the USA from the Clash's first record (predates any form of synth pop, but not electronic music generally) that goes "I'll salute the new wave, and hope nobody escapes," which seems to be somewhat in line with Kickboy's feelings on the matter.

[uwe]

I read the NME and Melody Maker (Sounds was more difficult to get in Germany for some reason) religiously from 1976 on to up about 1979: The term punk came first (in their use), but it pretty quickly became reserved for bands with spiky hair (Ramones were a honorary exemption), safety pins and buzzsaw guitar playing. Anything else that wasn't old school (or BOF for boring old farts = 90% of what was visibly and audibly inspired by the early 70ies music scene) became to be lumped in with "New Wave" (which then spawned the New Romantics movement, bands like Japan, Visage, Ultravox and early Duran Duran), i.e. acts as diverse as Blondie, Talking Heads, Suicide, Tom Robinson Band, Television, Lena Lovich, Joe Jackson, Thomas Dolby, Elvis Costello, Toyah (now the wife of that proto-punk Robert Fripp), Stranglers (initially referred to as punk, but true punks hated them), The Jam (initially qualified as punk too, but they didn't fit the mold either), The Police (bottled off at a German festival opening for Dire Straits and Barclay James Harvest as being "punks"), yes, even Kim Wilde or The Cars and The Knack, The Romantics or The Tourists (pre-Eurythmics)



or bands with a Frank Zappa background and a prog rock (UK, the band) pedigree like these guys (and gals) here:



Basically the differentiation was: If you didn't wear flares and didn't have long hair, you were New Wave. And a certain way to move about or dance (the way Annie Lennox did in the Tourist vid, neither Linda Ronstadt nor Suzi Quatro would have moved and looked that way).

Speaking of the Tom Robinson Band, a classic:

[Granny Gremlin]

The term punk came first (in their use), but it pretty quicky became reserved for bands with spiky hair (Ramones were a honorary exemption) and buzzsaw guitar playing. Anything else that wasn't old school (or BOF for boring old farts = 90% of what was visibly and audibly inspired by the early 70ies music scene) became to be lumped in with "New Wave"

I wouldn't doubt this.  Obviously the Punk movement, being a diverse movement rather than a genre (something defined by aesthetic rules), presented certain problems for journalists.  It was easier to relegate the term Punk to something easily defined, and lump everything else into some other random catagory.  However, I still think Kickboy up there has a very good point.  Some journalists and other users of the term undertood all this and did use them somewhat interchangeably, at least until the second wave of American Punk (i.e. Hardcore and it's immediate predecessors, which is still what most people think of when the word Punk is thrown around today, but despite this modern usage, it can hardly be considered accurate, and indeed it is not unanimous, and I have seen it being walked back quite a bit in the last 5-10 years).

Also, major LOL at that Tourists vid.  Of course I remember hearing that song on the radio, and despite that vid having been recorded off of Canadian TV (Rage was an alt-rock show on MuchMusic - Canadian (english) MTV) I had never seen it and didn't realise this was a proto Eurythmics (Dave Stewart sure was shy back then; came out of his shell later).  So thanks for that little bit of trivia.

Basically the differentiation was: If you didn't wear flares and have long hair, you were New Wave. And a certain way to move about or dance (the way Annie Lennox did in the Tourist vid, neither Linda Ronstadt nor Suzi Quatro would have moved and looked that way).

You would have been a great NME writer, Uwe!  Yoiu have a knack for simplifying things, but it is a bit of an Obi Wan (true.... from a certain point of view) .  I believe the phrase you are looking for to define the dance/way the New Wave acts moved is "Jitterbug" (later on in the 90s, it got charicaturised as "The Carleton").



PS: added pics to my previous post - it's a cool chart if you're into that scene.

[uwe]

Have I ever admitted here that I like Wham! and George Michael? 

And thanks for posting the Peter Frame stuff, I used to study that religiously too. Heartwarming to see that again. 

Thank you, the knack for simplifying things is actually a professional disease of mine. It's my job as a litigator to boil the most complex cases down to a simple story and a few quips. It drives Edith mad the way I sometimes summarize an incident that took, say, half an hour or more, in three sentences and then answer to her question of "What else happened?": "Nothing, that's all that's relevant." 

When punk came along, the NME (which was pivotal in giving Punk a forum) thought it was the pinnacle of music journalism and acted that way. But if truth be told: Their articles were on a different level to either Sounds or Melody Maker (US music mags were even harder to get in Germany than Brit ones, so I rarely got my hands on a Rolling Stone, Creem or Hit Parader). I had never before read people - Charles Shaar Murray, Tony Parsons, Julie Burchill, Caroline Coon, Bob Edmands, Tony Stewart to name a few - writing about music like they did in the NME back then and really devoured it. If I'm honest, a lot of my posting style here in this forum owes a huge debt to what I read in the NME from 76-79.

The humor really got me, they would refer to Deep Purple as "Shallow Sepia", lambast Judas Priest as "an act studded with macho insignia, yet totally devoid of true male virility" and their cover single Diamonds & Rust as "ample revenge for all the terrible things her nibs (= Joan Baez) has done to Dylan songs over the years", painstakingly analyse Ayn Rand over Rush interviews ("hopefully you didn't go see them with your dole money, that wouldn't be in line with their philosophy at all" and excel at being damning with faint praise like "Alex Lifeson is a competent guitarist of the genre. I've been to too many Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Jeff Beck concerts to say more." or "Francis Rossi has a fine croon, but the guy who "sings" alongside him - Alan Lancaster - would have a hard time getting a job with Bachman Turner Overdrive".

All these quotes have stuck with me for nearly 40 years now! And there are a whole bunch of then (1976/77) in Germany totally obscure bands I got to know (and still like) via the NME: Strapps, Judas Priest, Dictators, Ramones, Starz, Moxy, Rush, Mahogany Rush, Doctors of Madness, Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned, Television, The Jam ...

[Highlander]

Uwe... Pete Frame Tree books...