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New Wave was often referred to as the “thinking person’s Rock.” Despite that lame and somewhat dubious description, New Wave expanded Rock’s reach without the ’70’s arty pretensions. The earlier Punk movement railed against the establishment, a stagnant music scene and a lack of opportunity for young people. Admittedly, New Wave took the angst and rage and toned it down, adding a more thoughtful approach. It varied from the highly theatrical Talking Heads to the literary references found in Police lyrics. That’s not surprising since Sting had been a school teacher. In the end, thanks in a large part to MTV, New Wave had an enormous impact, re-establishing musical and lyrical creativity that had been missing through most of the ’70s.
Was Robert Smith ever happy? At age fourteen, The Cure frontman, stated his ambition was to “sit on a mountain and die.” Don’t set the bar too high there, Robert. Just a scant seven years later (after failing to locate a suitable mountain) he was quoted saying he “didn’t see that there was much point…
“Heart Of Glass” was one of those transition songs. It came along as disco’s excesses consumed the genre. The Blondie song had a New Wave feel with a dash of Punk but you could still dance to it. As the group progressed its Rock tendencies emerged in the songs “Call Me,” “One Way Or Another”…
Beware of novelty songs. It may be fun to do one. But bands rarely think it could be what they are remembered for. Despite other great performances, the Bangles and “Walk Like An Egyptian” are eternally linked. The Bangles had two #1 songs, the aforementioned novelty track and the dreamy ballad “Eternal Flame.” Based on…
In most cases, a band has to rule its home turf before it conquers the world. That’s exactly what happened with the Cars – Ric Ocasek (vocals/guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass/vocals), Elliot Easton (guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards) and David Robinson (drums). In ’77, amid the disco onslaught, a demo version of “Just What I Needed” became…
Not since the Beach Boys, nearly two decades earlier, had a band been more consistently happy and upbeat. It shouldn’t be surprising since The Go-Go’s lead singer Belinda Carlisle was a high school cheerleader – in Hollywood, no less. Ironically though, The Go-Go’s began as a L.A. Punk group. Carlisle, Jane Wieldin (guitar), Charlotte Caffey…
There are some groups so “on trend” it’s scary. MTV, launched in the early ’80s, was initially in dire need of content. Equally important, they needed to find musicians who “got it.” Artists who understood making a video was more than standing in front of a camera lip-synching. Enter Duran Duran from Birmingham, England. Duran…
The great thing about alcohol is briefly, very briefly in fact, all things seem possible. With a buzz on, drinking away the evening in a Chinese restaurant in Athens, GA, future members of the B-52s, who had little or no prior musical experience, decided to form a group. The name came not from the lethal…