New Wave

“It's every generation that throws a hero up the pop charts”

The first real New Wave song I heard, that stuck with me, was B52's “Rock Lobster.” My brother had bought the album, came home and put it on the turntable. He was earnestly excited at this new acquisition. I sat there on my bed, sort of perplexed as there was very little harmony or a beat I could groove too because it seemed sooo simplistic. And never mind the backup girl singers who were basically screeching. I had grown up on heavily layered 70's rock that kept getting more complex. I enjoyed that stuff as I knew it well. Rock Lobster reminded me of that old show, Dr. Demento that would play silly and simple novelty songs late Sunday nights on WAAF (remember the Cocaine Realty Building? WAAF Giraffe?). But my brother's response to the B52's looked as if he took them seriously. How can you take that shit for real? It's CRAP!

“What do you think?” he asked once Rock Lobster ended.

“Ummmm....” was all I could say. I had the same response to Zappa's “The Torture Never Stops” when he brought that album home. It took a bit longer for me to get my head around this New Wave stuff. Zappa's music, I came to learn and figure out, had a method in it's seeming screwy madness. It was complex as hell, chewable, with a hundred facets to approach and enjoy. New Wave reminded me of a 4 year old kid's colored xylophone that you'd whack away on. “Ding, ding, dingy-ding!” 

Perhaps that was the point. Simplicity. A revolt against 70's progressive concept rock. It was easy to jump around too and a new cohort of kids were coming into their own, they need their own music to rally around. That cohort was my brother's generation when they hit their late teens.

The house started to fill up with more and more New Wave albums. I'd see something like Gruppo Sportivo, a Dutch band that took the punk scene from London and made it their own. It was then that I first heard of Peter Gabriel as well. I was too young to have much money to buy albums so I'd have to rely on my brother, who did have a job, to bring newer ones into the house. For the longest time, he'd bring home Zappa, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull and all the greats, then the bastard started bringing home this weird shit. To me, it was like being deposited in a foreign country and I had to get used to eating strange cabbage filled thingies as that was their common cuisine. No, what it really was, was a 13 year old kid (me) being forced to move away from his local, parochial home town world view. “Dammit! It's not like HOME! The bed smells funny and the food tastes weird!” I had the same response when Dad would take us on vacations to the Cape and I found Hyannis, Eastham unacceptable because it wasn't home.

**

In one way, I'm glad New Wave did come along when it did. Fucking Disco music was dominating damn near every radio station around here. I can point to a specific month and year when it was impossible to avoid it, February 1978. I have a distinct memory of my going up and down the radio dial on my brother's stereo, in a futile attempt to find any rock songs. All that I could find was one disco song after another. I turned off the system and left the room in disgust. It was that bad. But thanks to New Wave, it started to unseat the Empire of Disco and throw it's ass into the gutter. Because New Wave arose, it allowed all other kinds of music to come back again too. Thank God! The final emancipation was when 94 WHJY went from a classical music station to AOR in 1981. Finally! More choice!

And I can't deny this. New Wave made me grow up even faster than I already was. High school/college kids love to form bands and play, emulate and hope to be just like their Heroes they hear on the radio. On top of that all, it's great fun! Since my brother and his friends formed a band, specifically in the New Wave kind, I could tag along as a roadie and get into the college bars at 14. That certainly opened my eyes more to what else was going on. It was then too, where I fell in love with audio equipment, how to use it, run a mixing board for the front and back of the house, and above it all, develop an ear for sound. All great stuff when you're in the 8^th grade! To this day, I tweak a system I have in my living room. I shoulda been a music engineer, one who couldn't play the riff of Smoke on the Water unless I looked at the fret board.

Today...I like Disco, New Wave, even the B52's. Huh? What did he say? This only makes sense because I am old now and all of that music from then is nostalgia to me. I can hear Donna Summer's “Bad Girl's” (which I detested in '79) and can hum along to it and remember that summer of '79 when I first noticed Gail's body was far more interesting in a bikini vs. what it was a year or so earlier. I know, nostalgia only remembers the good, not the ugly. It also is a bit pathological if you decide to move self, bag and baggage into it. But c'mon...every generation is in love with what they grew up with. Give it time. Even Grunge Rockers of the 90's are now pining away for the days when Nirvana was alive and racing up the charts.