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| Oingo Boingo, one of LA's first big breakout stars of the new wave era |
In my previous post, I discussed how in spring of 1981 I
made my first willful attempts to seek out new wave music. Prior to this I liked the handful of new wave
singles that had broken through into Top 40/popular culture: “Heart of Glass” by Blondie (a new wave song in name only, a disco song in reality), “Candy-O”
and “Let’s Go” by the Cars, “My
Sharona” by the Knack (technically
powerpop), “Pop Muzik” by M (pop
dressed up in new wave synths and quirkiness), “Cars” by Gary Numan (one of the first REAL new wave songs), “Money” by the Flying Lizards, “Rock Lobster” by the B-52’s, “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders, “Whip It” by Devo, and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors. It was the latter song that caused me to
actively seek out this music, first by buying the Vapors’ first album New Clear Days on cassette and second by
trying to find stations that played new wave music on the radio. All of these songs had crossed over into Top
40 radio and were easy to find, but I somehow knew or found out that there were
stations that played ONLY new wave music and I vowed to find them.
And, because I was fortunate enough to live in Southern
California, I did. My first recollection
was of finding two stations on the far right of the dial that seemed to be
playing stuff that sounded different than the Top 40 stations. I have no sharp recollections of what they
were playing specifically the first time I listened to them but somehow I knew
I’d found what I was looking for.
The stations were, of course, the pre-metal KNAC, broadcast
out of my home town of Long Beach, and the now-legendary KROQ, and both would
become the de facto radio stations for me and pretty much all of my friends for
the next several years. KNAC, 105.5 on
the radio dial, has been much lamented by oldsters like myself because at this
point in the early 80’s they played a bizarre, free-form format that mixed new
wave and punk cuts with old rockabilly and blues singles, reggae and dub, and
other pre-punk musical forms in an eclectic mix not frequently heard anywhere
else. It has since become super cool
among people my age who lived in that area to lament KNAC’s loss to metal in
1985-1986 and to claim that it was cooler than KROQ.
But the honest truth was, I and most of my friends listened
to KROQ more. And the reason was that
KROQ, while still a pretty wild and unprofessional station in that day, had
achieved some stability after several tempestuous ups and downs through the
70’s. In 1976 they’d hired Rodney Bingenheimer, the diminutive
bowl-cutted scenester from LA’s psychedelic and glitter pasts, and Rodney’s
show became a vehicle for artists from the emerging punk scenes in New York,
England, and even Los Angeles. Rodney
was one of the first DJs in America to play the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and other leading lights of those
scenes, and he would also famously play demos, singles, and tapes brought to
him by local bands. It’s hard to imagine
new music would ever have achieved the popularity it did without pioneers like
Rodney.
But Rodney was just one jock, and most of the other DJs at
KROQ were playing typical 70’s fare until about 1978, when they became
incorporating more and more new music into their repertoire. But they still adhered to a so-called “freeform”
format, which gave most of the decision-making power of what to play to the DJ,
and things weren’t played systematically.
An amazing artifact of this era is an hour-long tape of legendary LA DJ Frazer Smith from 1978 at the following
web site:
The artists being played represent predominantly OLD music (ZZ Top, Bob Seger, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith,
Led Zeppelin, Ace Frehley) a few prepunk pioneers (David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop), a couple of acts that kind of
straddled the ground between the old and new (Cheap Trick, Tom Petty) and from what I heard just a couple
examples of truly NEW acts, Elvis
Costello and Devo. But still, in 1978 NOBODY was playing Elvis
Costello or Devo on the radio (or Iggy
Pop for that matter), so even this was pretty surprising. Actually, to me what’s amazing is what a
smooth segue it is between “Communication Breakdown” by Led Zep and “Uncontrollable Urge” by Devo; despite being separated by a decade and a seemingly
insurmountable musical gulf, they both actually sound eerily similar. It is a reminder both of how innovative and
raw Led Zeppelin were in their earliest days, and how much more prosaic
so-called “new” music really was. It
also reminds me of the time I saw the legendary band Krotch (touted as “LA’s worst band” in the mid/late 80’s when I was
at UCLA) and they played as their encore (the only part of the gig I saw; it
took place in an apartment in Westwood after finals and we’d pre-partied too
long at our place before leaving) they played “Communication Breakdown” and
“Freedom of Choice” back to back and it sounded perfectly good and natural.
I have to say, if I’d have stumbled upon KROQ at this time
in the late 70’s, I probably would have liked it. I liked most of the artists they played even
if I wasn’t a fanatic about any of them—unlike most everyone else who lived
through the 70’s, at that time I was not obsessed with Led Zep, Aerosmith, or Kiss—and
there was enough “old and familiar” and “new and interesting”. And honestly, today this is VERY close to
what I like to listen to now, which is a mix of the best of both the pre-punk
and the post-punk era.
But at the time, the freeform format caused problems, most
notably that it didn’t allow listeners to get familiar enough with the new
songs through repetition that they would call in and request them and
eventually buy them. The radio industry
exists in a delicate synergy with the music industry—the music biz needs radio
to play their songs to make them known and popular and purchased, radio pays
licensing fees to the music industry to play their songs, but uses the
popularity of the songs to attract listeners, which of course lets them set
higher advertising rates. But if radio
stations aren’t pushing new hits onto the public, the whole machine grinds to a
halt.
About a year or so before I started listening to KROQ in
winter of 1981, program director Rick
Carroll had been (re)hired to clean up KROQ’s act. Carroll’s solution was simple but
effective: he stamped the Top 40 FORMAT
on KROQ’s “new music” SOUND. Top 40
stations are characterized by firm schedules that result in movement of songs
through “rotations”, from light to medium to heavy. Carroll left a little bit of choice to the
DJ’s—they were allowed to play a certain number of songs every hour of their
own choice. Initially this was four but
eventually moved to one, and then of course went to zero when KROQ went all
corporate around 1990. According to
anecdotes told by KROQ jocks years later, many of these DJ choice cuts ended up
becoming hits by artists like Depeche Mode
and Billy Idol.
Carroll’s “innovation” wasn’t exactly novel, but it provided
exactly the structure and regularity that had been lacking previously, and that
would continue to be lacking at their competitor KNAC. If you were a listener tuning in to seek out
the latest new wave hit, you could be fairly assured that you’d hear it within
the hour, and you’d likely hear other top new wave hits you might have
encountered only occasionally on pure Top 40 stations, and of course you’d be
exposed to the newest hits-in-the-making as well. People came, and stayed as the music struck a
chord with them so to speak.
Which is exactly what happened to me: I came in search of “Whip It” by Devo and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, and eventually got hooked
in everything else. In spring of 1981
KROQ was even then still sorting out what was truly “new” music and what
wasn’t. The web site below is a
compendium of the “Top 106.7 songs” KROQ would regularly compile and count down
on New Year’s eve, starting in 1980:
1980 is especially entertaining, containing as it does such
decidedly UN-new artists as John Lennon,
the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Van Halen, Queen, Bob Seger, Genesis, Rod
Stewart, Heart, Roger Daltry, J. Geils, Paul McCartney, and Journey. JOURNEY, people!!! KROQ was playing JOURNEY
in 1980. Of course, they were also
playing Devo, the Talking Heads, the
Police, XTC, the B-52’s, the Pretenders, the Clash, the Surf Punks, and the
Dead Kennedys! KROQ may have been
the only non-college radio station in ANY media market to EVER play the Dead
Kennedys! Of course, my two “favorites,
“Whip It” by Devo and “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors were #1, and #14 that
year, respectively.
1981’s list was quite a bit more new wave-centric, but still
managed to contain the Rolling Stones,
King Crimson, Joe Walsh, Genesis, and Foreigner. This is something that I vividly remember as
well, this mix of new and not-really-new.
In fact, two songs I remember specifically hearing on KROQ around this
time were “Let’s Get It Up” by AC/DC
and “Destroyer” by the Kinks (they
also played “Give the People What They Want” by the Kinks too). The Kink’s album came out in September 1981
and AC/DC’s in December of that year.
The first two new music songs I can explicitly remember
hearing on KROQ were “Bang Bang” by Iggy
Pop and “Red Light” by Wall of Voodoo. I’ve already posted about “Bang Bang”, which
was released in June 1981 and came off one of Iggy’s least well regarded
albums, Party. “Red Light” by Wall of
Voodoo presaged the memorable strangeness of their subsequent hit, “Mexican
Radio” and its accompanying video. “Red
Light” is majestic and quirky at the same time; its swirling synths and
syncopated beat recall the les strident elements of LA’s seminal synth punk
band, the Screamers, but instead of Tomata Du Plenty’s harsh, barking
vocals, Stan Ridgeway’s western
drawl gives this song a country-ish feel despite the novelty of the
synthesizers and knocking, pinging drum machines.
There were several other songs from this era I can recall
hearing on KROQ early on. One was “We
Want the Airwaves” by the Ramones,
which sounded dark and threatening to me.
I had no idea then about the Ramones’ critical role as one of the
founding touchpoints for all of punk music; I didn’t hear their buzzsaw
fast-and-furious first album for another 3 or 4 years when my friend John
finally purchased it circa 1984 or 1985.
“Airwaves” is miles from the minimalist simplicity of their first (or
second, or even third or fourth) album; at over three minutes it was
practically “Stairway to Heaven” compared to the brevity of their early work—no
song on their first three albums was longer than two minutes and 45
seconds. And what sounded ominous and
threatening to me in 1981 today sounds kind of desperate and even sad; by 1981
the Ramones were sensing that the window on their shot at the brass ring was
closing if not already closed; far from being a threat, “We Want the Airwaves”
was more an empty threat, a desperate appeal or plea to give them a chance,
which unfortunately they never really got.
I also remember hearing “Do You Remember Rock n’ Roll Radio?” from their
prior, fifth album End of the Century
from May 1980, and “She’s a Sensation” like “Airwaves” off Pleasant Dreams, on KROQ during this early era.
I also remember two B-52’s
songs being played back then, “Private Idaho” and “Give Me Back My Man” off
their second album, Wild Planet,
which came out in August 1980. “Man” is
very twitchy and twangy but unlike the shrill campy Farfisa on “Rock Lobster”
it has a knocking, almost industrial sounding keyboard but is most notable for Cindy Wilson’s magnificent vocal, which
starts out almost chirpy but by the time it builds to her plaintive shout,
“GIVE! ME! GIVE back my man!”, is as passionate and heartfelt as anything from
this era. The odd lyrics stood out too: “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you candy,
I’ll give you anything I have in my hand”.
It bespoke of a strange world (one where at the very least people
bartered fish and/or candy for their lovers).
“Private Idaho”, with Fred
Schneider’s weird yelping and again the strange lyrics about potatoes, also
sticks in my brain from this time.
My favorite B-52’s song, and indeed a song that makes my own
personal Top Ten (it might hover near the mythical Top Five), is “Planet
Claire” off their 1979 debut album. I
don’t really recall hearing it on KROQ at this early date, but I do remember
distinctly hearing it later, around ’84 or ’85, one night when I was driving
around with my friend Steve in his dad’s huge old Cadillac; the eerie 50’s
horror movie organ, Ricky Wilson’s savage,
slashing guitar chords, and Fred Schneider’s increasingly agitated vocals all
melded with our cruising along in a giant smooth driving dinosaur car. One of the things I love about these early
B-52’s singles is how they often swing from campy 50’s cheese to punk anger in
a matter of seconds. In “Rock Lobster”,
it’s toward the end when Fred Schneider shouts “LET’S ROCK!” in a wild, angry
voice; the goofy beach blanket bingo party is over and things are getting
manic. In “Planet Claire”, its when Schneider
yells “BUT SHE ISN’T!”, which again signals a darker shift in the song itself.
One problem I have with my memories of this time is that,
like in the “Planet Claire” example above, KROQ continued to play these songs
for years afterward and so I’m never 100% sure if I’m remembering hearing them
from that time or from hearing them at a later date, when I was both listening
to KROQ more and was better versed in songs and band identities. For example, I can distinctly remember
hearing two Police songs, “Don’t
Stand So Close To Me” and “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” on KROQ but I can’t be sure
it was back then or later. I probably
did hear them at least once back then, but the first Police song I have a firm
memory of hearing on KROQ was “Spirits in the Material World”, which was
released in November 1981; I can still remember being puzzled by the way they
said “In Ma-ma-terio”.
The Police ended up being one of the bigger success stories
of the new wave/post-punk era, delivering hit after hit from their first 3 or 4
albums. They quickly transcended the new
wave “ghetto” and their songs were played on both Top 40 and classic rock
stations (like KMET and KLOS). I’m not
sure to this day what it was about their sound that melded better with Rush and Bob Seger than the music of their new wave brethren but somehow it
made that leap. I find it interesting to
see bands in the 21st century who are incorporating Police/Sting influences. Two obvious ones are Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” and “Locked Out of Heaven”
by Bruno Mars. The latter is so similar to the lite reggae
sound of early Police that perhaps not surprisingly the Grammy Academy had Mars
and Sting perform a medley of songs together (including this one and “Walking
on the Moon” by the Police) at the 2013 Grammies. Gotye’s song fascinates me. Sonically it does contain some Police-like
elements, although what it reminds me of more is the melancholy timbre of “Senses
Working Overtime” by another new wave success story, XTC; I also get elements of Fischer
Z’s “So Long” in the vocals. The
lyrics are captivating; Gotye’s lead chorus makes it seem like he is the
aggrieved party because she callously sends a friend to collect her things
after their breakup, but when Kimbra
gets her turn to tell her side of the story, we find out that this guy is a
strange passive-aggressive asshole, pushing her aside and making her feel
guilty for their disagreements. But then
we get to the kicker; as the snare drums build up a steady rumble in
accompaniment, Kimbra’s vocals rise and soar in accusation and we find out the
truth: he was stuck on a former
lover. So who is this guy? Some strange masochist who always pushes his
current lover away, then pines for them when they’re gone? I’ve known a lot of “the grass is greener”
romantic types, who are unhappy with their current partner and pine for former
lovers, but then continually repeat the cycle, and this seems like what’s going
on here.
There are two bands I recall hearing a lot back then as well
as later but I’m pretty sure I first heard them back then. The first was the Pretenders. The
Pretenders followed up “Brass in Pocket”, their smash hit from 1979-1980, with
a series of outstanding singles that made them, along with the Police, one of
the most successful exports of the British punk/post-post punk scene. Their cover of Ray Davies’ “Stop Your Sobbing” was another hit, and while it
wasn’t a huge crossover smash like “Brass”, “Mystery Achievement” is one of my
favorite songs by this incredible band, one I still love to hear today—its
crisp, chunky guitar/rhythm at the chorus and the tapping, insistent drum and
bass interludes make it a marvelous song.
“Tattooed Love Boys”, with it’s chiming, questioning guitar line and
similarly from this first album, also got played by KROQ back then too. But the song I totally love, and which I also
heard around this time, was “The Wait”.
I love everything about this song, particularly Chrissie Hynde’s guttural, super sexy “UUHHH” that starts up the
song after a brief instrumental interlude, followed by her heavy breathing and
sing-songy lyrics. These early Pretender
singles often made highly effective use of Chrissie panting, sighing, etc., and
her heavy breathing after the solo is both sexy and captivating. The sound of it was so wild and tough and
sexy to me then (and now). The
rapid-fire, stuttering staccato of James
Honeyman-Scott’s guitar, and specifically his chunky pick slides proceeded
by shrieking feedback, show that he was
one of the great guitar talents to emerge from the English punk scene. I love the repeating regularity (“DUH!
Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh”) of the main guitar refrain; it reminds me of the tight,
crisp guitar on the Police’s “Synchronicity II”. This is one of the songs that really ignited
my passion for this “new” music.
In August of 1981, the Pretenders released their follow-up, Pretenders II, and it was even more cram
packed with future KROQ cuts. The first
single was “Talk of the Town”; this was a softer, more romantic Chrissie Hynde,
yearning and vulnerable rather than the tough talking mama of the first
album. When she pouts, “I want you; I
want you but now”, it’s hard for any red-blooded man not to feel
responsive. This truly was pop
music—sweet, affecting, but still anchored in Honeyman-Scott’s infectious
guitar lines. “Message of Love”, their
follow-up, was tougher sonically, with its bass-heavy main groove and martial
drums (Martin Chambers’ drumming is
exceptional here, how he not only keeps the beat but drives the whole song
forward with such infectious exuberance) but again the message was decidedly
un-punk—rather, it was optimistic (“We fall but we keep getting up, over and
over and over and over”) and almost as nakedly romantic as “Talk of the Town”,
especially in the first lyrical stanza:
“Now the reason we’re here;
Every man and woman
Is to love each other
Take care of each other.
When love walks in the room
Everybody stand up
Oh its good good good
Like Bridgitte Bardot”
It’s hard to believe that it had been
just a few short years since the Pistols
arrived not to praise rock but to bury it, especially all of its romantic
tropes about love. But in songs like
this the Pretenders were never sappy; the message of this song is that love is
what keeps people trying and striving in life, not just romantic love but the
love of friends and so forth. We all
help each other up when we fall or fail. It’s hard to argue with a message like
that.
Continuing this amazing streak was the
song “Day After Day”, another hopeful, uplifting song; I can definitely
remember hearing this on KROQ at this time period too. This song is another guitar triumph by James
Honeyman-Scott, from the skirling guitar line that introduces the song and
repeats throughout to the soaring majestic chorus elements.
“The Adulteress”, the fourth single
from this album, is heavy and chugging, almost metallic; Hynde confesses to
“the greatest crime in history” (adultery) and it’s not clear if she’s ashamed
or proud, at least initially (later the song seems to turn bitter, and then almost
tragic) but there’s something almost noble and defiant sounding about it
notwithstanding Hynde’s breathy, sensual delivery of the main lyric. This is another song I distinctly remember
hearing on KROQ at this time because very shortly after this another strongly
sexual song by a female new wave singer became popular, “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void, and I can remember hearing
this song first then wondering if “Never” was by the same band/woman. “Bad Boys Get Spanked”, also off this album,
was also played on KROQ to the best of my recollection, as was “Pack It Up”; I
still recall Hynde’s opening lyrical salvo, “You guys are the pits of the
world”, and her harsh and specific denunciations of her former lover and his
shortcomings (including his “appalling taste in women” and his “insipid record
collection”).
The third (along with the Police and Pretenders) of the “Big Three” of early KROQ was a local LA product,
Oingo Boingo. Originally formed in the early 70’s by Danny Elfman’s brother Richard to make scores for his movies,
Boingo later came under Danny Elfman’s control and began gigging around LA in
the burgeoning new wave scene and immediately achieved recognition and success
as one of the most frantic and entertaining bands on the LA scene. They were
signed by I.R.S. Records in 1980 and released their debut album, Only a Lad, in June of 1981. I can remember four songs off this album
being played on KROQ. The first was the
title track, a twitchy, quirky romp that quickly became a huge hit on the
ROQ. Despite its pedophilic subject
matter, “Little Girls” was also extremely popular. The first song I remember hearing by them was
“What You See”, with Elfman’s alternatingly furious and frantic vocals and
strange high pitched yearning vocals making it sound very schizophrenic. The other song I distinctly recall hearing
around this time was “On the Outside”, which I still love, with Elfman’s yelping,
strangely affected vocals and a jaunty beat.
Boingo were clearly NOT raw amateur punks bashing away on their
instruments; every song on this album was technically very proficient and the
production is crisp and clean.
Boingo’s follow-up, Nothing to Fear, was released the next
summer, in June 1982, and it continued
their success. The horn-accentuated
“Nothing To Fear”, the danceable “Grey Matter”, with its strange xylophone
elements (which presage the more well known song “Dead Man’s Party” from the legendary
80’s Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back To School), the almost plaintive
“Private Life” with its galloping guitar and repeating elements, and the manic
“Wild Sex (In the Working Class)” were all hugely popular on KROQ the next
year. I still love “Grey Matter” the
best, particularly its strange, almost siren like synth beginning, before the
drums and xylophone elements build on it, and the ominous, chanting background
“grey matter” vocals.
Other, random songs I remember hearing
at this time: May 1981’s “Follow the
Leaders” by Killing Joke; their
later song “Eighties” was also big on KROQ in 1984 and almost became a
pseudo-anthem for the station, but its blend of funky bass and almost danceable
synths with furious blasts of strident guitar noise were clearly a new and
exciting sound. I wasn’t a particularly
huge fan of Killing Joke at the time, certainly not enough to seek out their
albums, but definitely liked these songs, with their mixture of
synth/industrial elements and harsh, punky guitar—it’s not hard to see how
influential this band and its sound were on future industrial bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails (indeed, its actually hard to envision Nine Inch
Nails existing without KJ’s trailblazing)—and much later in life I became a big
fan of their edgy post-punk (“Wardance” and “Requiem” are my favorites by
them).
Another song I remember from 1981 is
“Up All Night” by the Boomtown Rats. I’d somehow missed out on their strange
left-field hit “I Don’t Like Mondays” from 1979 but can definitely remember
hearing this song and its odd, repeating chorus of “Up all night”.
In addition, another song that stuck in
my consciousness was “Lunacy” by the
Plasmatics. I’d seen the album cover
for 1980’s New Hope for the Wretched,
in a Warehouse Records store, and it was clearly extremely punk: the band is situated around a car crashed
into a swimming pool; guitarist Richie
Stotts is wearing tights and a tutu and a blue mohawk and Wendy O. Williams has pink hair and
bare breasts with duct tape over her nipples!
What I wasn’t aware of was that this particular song was their attempt
to transition from punk to heavy metal; at that time heavy metal was so obscure
and uncool that its sound wasn’t really well known. Listening to this song now
I can clearly hear these metallic elements but at the time I just thought this
was loud, abrasive punk rock. At the
time it sounded raw and threatening; today it just kind of sounds turgid and
sad. For a long time the Plasmatics, and
this song in particular, were kind of a short-hand for the look and sound of
“real” punk for me, cartoonish as both were. But it fit well with what I had
“learned” about punk from episodes of C.H.I.P.S.
and Quincy.
Two other early KROQ staples I remember
from this time were “Lunatic Fringe” by Red
Rider and “Ever Since the World Began” by Gary Myrick. Red Rider had a subsequent follow-up single, the
lusher and softer “China”, but I like the strange, new wave tinged prog rock of
“Fringe” more. I wrote about Gary Myrick
in a previous post; I wasn’t a huge fan of his then but a few years ago I got
really heavily into his strange prog rock take on new wave. His unique vocals and his incendiary guitar
playing made him early on sound like America’s best answer to Sting and the Police; the stuttering guitar line from “Ever Since the World
Began” reminds me of “The Wait” by the
Pretenders crossed with “Synchronicity” by the Police. This album came
out I late 1980 and even at this early time Myrick had absorbed, and was in
turn influencing, the emerging new wave sound.
His song “She Talks in Stereo” off this album became a minor hit around
this time, but I prefer “World Began” as week as the fast and catchy “Living
Disaster”. But my favorite Myrick song
of all time is the shimmering, romantic and anthemic “Time To Win” off his
second album, 1983’s Language. This song was featured in the 1983 movie Valley Girl, when Randy and Julie
finally make out after having snuck out of a val party to attend a Plimsouls gig in Hollywood. I especially love the driving, soaring
chorus.
I also remember four Devo songs off their June 1981 New Traditionalists album getting heavy
airplay on KROQ when I first started listening:
“Going Under”, “Beautiful World”, “Jerking Back and Forth”, and “Through
Being Cool”. “Going Under” and
“Beautiful World” were my favorites of this group, but my all-time favorite
Devo songs are “Freedom of Choice”, “Girl U Want”, and especially “Gates of
Steel” off their previous album, May 1980’s Freedom
of Choice (“Don’t You Know”, “Ton O’ Luv”, and “It’s Not Right” were also
great deep cuts from this album). This
is of course the album from which “Whip It” emerged to become a massive hit
single but I still love “Gates of Steel” more, its frantic, insistent tempo,
the perfect blend of hard, punky guitar and perky synths make it a much more
fun song to dance to. Devo quickly got
pigeonholed as a “synth band” but particularly on this album they used
synthesizers to enhance the strong guitar sound of songs like “Whip It”,
“Gates”, “Don’t You Know”, and the title track; back then the synths sounded
weird and quirky and new wave-y but today I’m struck more by how hard and raw
the guitar sound was on these songs.
Summer of 1981 saw the release of three
albums that augured the REAL beginning of the new wave era: Duran
Duran’s first album, Beauty and the
Beat by the Go-Go’s, and the Psychedelic Furs’ second disc, Talk Talk Talk. Duran Duran’s album spawned two KROQ hits, “Planet
Earth” and of course “Girls on Film”.
The Go-Go’s hit it HUGE with “Our Lips our Sealed” and “We Got the Beat”,
but the songs I remember hearing played on KROQ at this time were the plaintive
“How Much More”, the bitter ode to LA “This Town” (surpassed only by X’s “Los Angeles in terms of it’s negative
assessment of LA), and most especially the dramatic, almost cinematic “Lust To
Love”, perhaps the first ever lament of going from fuck buddies to lovers. The Furs of course hit it big with their
single “Pretty In Pink”, which Molly
Ringwald loved so much she had John
Hughes make a movie for her based loosely on its lyrics. It is truly a marvelous song, particularly
the propulsive drumming and the grinding but still melodic guitars and of
course Richard Butler’s raspy
vocals. I never bought this album back
in the day (though I loved “Pink”) but recently downloaded several other songs
off of it: “It Goes On”, with its heavy
bass and skirling guitar almost reminds me of a Gen X song off Kiss Me Deadly
if it wasn’t for Butler’s raspy, older-brother-of-Johnny-Rotten voice; speaking
of Rotten, “Into You Like a Train” has the propulsive rhythm and atonal guitar
of classic P.I.L. and is a really
wonderful song, as is the similarly driving and atonal “Mr. Jones”, which also
features Duncan Kilburn’s wild
bursts of saxophone; the less frantic and more melodic “No Tears” shows off the
Furs’ more sedate side, which would also surface in later hits like “The Ghost
In You” and “Love My Way”. The Furs’
first album, 1980’s Psychedelic Furs,
didn’t yield any hits but there are a number of fine tracks, including the
droning, almost psychedelic introspection of “Sister Europe”, the wild (post)
punk punch of “Soap Commercial”, and the morose bombast of “Imitation of
Christ”, which is punctuated by the uplifting chorus. The Psychedelic Furs would have subsequent
hits, including the xylophone accented “Love My Way” (still one of my favorite
songs of the 80’s new wave era, but “Run and Run” and the exquisite title track
are also outstanding off this album, 1982’s Forever
Now, which is probably their most solid LP top to bottom) and three songs
off 1984’s Mirror Moves: “Heartbeat” ( the 12-inch remix of which was
a major club hit in LA’s dance clubs that year), the lush, romantic “Heaven”,
and the sweetly affecting “The Ghost In You”.
Another artist who went on to much bigger and better things
started in fall of 1981 with a couple of KROQ singles: Adam
and the Ants. In September 1981,
Adam released his single “Prince Charming”, backed with “Christian D’Or”, and I
remember hearing both of them on KROQ around that time. “Prince Charming” was, and still is, a very
weird song, with its weird yelling intro, buzzsaw guitar from Marco Pirroni, and strumming acoustic
guitar. The video was, of course, just
as strange, silly to the point of extreme pretension. But Adam’s insanely arresting fashion style—a
meld of colonial tricorner hats and Indian warpaint— demonstrated in this video
and in the videos for two of his other early hits, “Stand and Deliver” and
“Antmusic”, made him easily the match of his New Ro compatriots Duran Duran, who were also getting nearly
as much attention for their glammed up, Roxy
Music-influenced look displayed in their videos as they were for their
music. It was around this time that I
remember seeing music videos for the first time—recall that MTV didn’t make it
to the west coast until the mid-80’s.
Usually these were shown in between feature length films on cable TV to
fill in the time between half hours and my friend John would videotape them on
their Betamax and he and I would watch them obsessively.
I glommed onto Adam and the Ants pretty early—I think Prince Charming was the next album I
purchased after Blondie’s Parallel Lines and the Vapors’ two albums. But
the song I liked the best was the B-side to “Prince”, “Christian D’Or”, with
its wild buzzsaw guitar and its wacky lyrics listing all his fetishes. This is still the punkiest Adam ever sounded.
The final five new wave songs that made an impact on me as
1981 drew to a close were all sexual and/or sexually ambiguous: the decidedly UNambiguous novelty songs “Are
You Ready For the Sex Girls?” by Gleaming
Spires, “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” by Killer Pussy, and “Never Say Never” by Romeo Void; and the homosexuality associated songs “Homosapien” by
ex-Buzzcock Pete Shelley and “Johnny
Are You Queer?” by Josie Cotton.
Spires was a side project for Leslie
Bohem and David Kendricks of Sparks
and their song is a typically cartoonish raunchy romp. Shelley’s “Homosapien”
was a thinly veiled defense of homosexuality and an attack on homophobia, though
few of us junior high school louts knew it at the time. Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer?” was
more of a calling out of her boyfriend’s sexuality done in a catchy 60’s
kitschy manner. Cotton achieved a small
measure of local fame for her 60’s girl group-influenced take on new wave; in
addition to “Johnny” she also had another single “You Could Be the One” become
popular on KROQ (both were also featured in the movie Valley Girl, along with a slew of other new wave hits from that
particular year). “Never Say Never” was
a sensual blast of sexual energy that almost overwhelmed my pubescent sexuality
(or lack thereof); Debra Iyala’s
frank and sensual vocals opened up new doors in my young mind. What’s funny is that I endlessly fantasized
about what she looked like, this pouty, sexy, horny sounding new wave chick
with the sexy voice, and of course when I saw her it was something of a
surprise. Nothing against zaftig women
whatsoever, but she was NOT what I was expecting; I think I was picturing
someone who looked more like Chrissy
Amphlett of the Divinyls in her
first incarnation in the video for their song “Boys In Town” off their 1982 Desperate album; I frankly hated her
sleazy image in the “I Touch Myself” era but still love the punky energy of
“Boys” and her torn stockings, bangs-in-the-face punkette image from that
video.
So there it is. In
the space of about six months I went from totally clueless new wave poseur to
. .
. slightly less clueless new wave poseur. But we were ALL poseurs back then; all of us
were groping our way through the increasingly complex thicket of new
music. What amazes me is how well many
of those bands, and their music, has withstood the test of time. Obviously one-hit novelty songs like “Teenage
Enema Nurses in Bondage” haven’t aged well, though they are still a blast from
a nostalgia point of view. But bands
like the Police, the Pretenders, the
Cars, Devo, and the B-52’s all
enjoyed long and fruitful careers and their music from that time continues to
sparkle with wild energy.
1981 to me was the last year of innocence for new wave. In 1982 the floodgates opened, and for the
next 2-3 years the world was inundated with new wave. During this time even older, established
bands like Heart and Linda Ronstadt would add synthesizers and
quirky beats to their songs in order to keep up with the times. And the flood of new wave music that followed
inevitably contained both classic gems (bands like Depeche Mode, REM, and U2
emerged during this time) and forgettable crap (Mental As Anything, Roman Holliday, Haircut 100). But I would still argue that the new wave era
was more fun and more interesting than others that came before or since. Were there a lot of hokey, embarrassingly
silly novelty songs? Sure. But one thing you can say about new wave is,
it was unique—almost every band sounded completely different. From the synth pop and chirpy vocals of
pink-haired, fishbowl brassiere wearing Missing
Persons to the cableknit sweater blue eyed soul of Haircut 100 to the transgendered histrionics of Dead Or Alive, no two new wave bands
ever looked OR sounded alike. This is in
stark contrast to the glam/hair metal era that came after it, where every band
looked exactly alike (a combination of Dolls
androgyny, Van Halen spandex, and Judas Priest leather and studs) and
sounded alike (a mix of Aerosmith, Van
Halen, and Motley Crue). Each band would faithfully put out one single
that showed their hard rocking bad-boy side and that contained lyrics
celebrating mindless partying, rocking and/or rolling, or just plain sex, and a
second single that was a ballad that showed their softer side (“they taught us
how to live; they taught us how to love”).
Even the lamest new wave bands had their own gimmicks, look, sound,
etc., which isn’t something you can say for the monotonous hordes of metal
wannabes that replaced them on the charts.
Even grunge got to be fairly rote after awhile—Bush, Silverchair, Stone Temple Pilots, POTUS, etc., all sounded
like second-rate Nirvana
knockoffs. As silly and campy as many
new wave songs (and bands) were, the very uniqueness of the different sounds
still stands out.
