Who was the first New Wave band? - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

wooolf

Gender: Male
Age: 45

Daydreamer wrote:

Quote:

Typical 'dark' new wave bands:
The Cure, Joy Division, Bauhaus, DAF, Front242, Siouxsie, Anne Clark..

What's the difference between new wave and post-punk then?

To my understanding the term 'post-punk' appeared later, and is indeed used for bands that make the kind of music that I understand to be new wave.

So: new wave is the post-punk from the period when punk was still alive Wink

But that's just my understanding, don't know if it's officially correct (or if an 'officialy correct' definition really exists for that matter Smile

)

bobbyb5

Gender: Male
Location: New York

Tilly wrote:

These are all great answers I think. The one band I haven't seen mentioned yet is ...

Tubeway Army by Tubeway Army

I was actually going to say that as one that comes to many people's minds. Tubeway Army.

Repo
BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

But, if I' had a gun to my head and had to pick just one I'd say...

Hardcore Devo: Volume One by Devo

bobbyb5

Gender: Male
Location: New York

Tilly wrote:

But, if I' had a gun to my head and had to pick just one I'd say...

Hardcore Devo: Volume One by Devo

Or Are We Not Men We Are Devo.

bobbyb5

Gender: Male
Location: New York

Out of all the bands named so far the earliest ones would be Devo then Blondie then Talking Heads. So those would be good choices for "first New Wave band". All the rest came after.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Wh3n1nR0me wrote:

New York Dolls I think is usually the answer.

Ding ding ding.

That's what this says:
New wave first emerged as a rock genre in the early 1970s, used by critics including Nick Kent and Dave Marsh to classify such New York-based groups as the Velvet Underground and New York Dolls.[32] It gained currency beginning in 1976 when it appeared in UK punk fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue and newsagent music weeklies such as Melody Maker and New Musical Express.[33] In November 1976 Caroline Coon used Malcolm McLaren's term "new wave" to designate music by bands not exactly punk, but related to the same musical scene.[34] The term was also used in that sense by music journalist Charles Shaar Murray in his comments about the Boomtown Rats.[35] For a period of time in 1976 and 1977, the terms new wave and punk were somewhat interchangeable.[22][36] By the end of 1977, "new wave" had replaced "punk" as the definition for new underground music in the UK.[33]

Also interesting:
In the United States, Sire Records chairman Seymour Stein, believing that the term "punk" would mean poor sales for Sire's acts who had frequently played the club CBGB, launched a "Don't Call It Punk" campaign designed to replace the term with "new wave".[38] As radio consultants in the United States had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad, they settled on the term "new wave". Like the filmmakers of the French new wave movement (after whom the genre was named), its new artists were anti-corporate and experimental (e.g. Ramones and Talking Heads). At first, most U.S. writers exclusively used the term "new wave" for British punk acts.[39] Starting in December 1976, The New York Rocker, which was suspicious of the term "punk", became the first American journal enthusiastically used the term starting with British acts, later appropriating it to acts associated with the CBGB scene.[33] Part of what attracted Stein and others to new wave was the music’s stripped back style and upbeat tempos, which they viewed as a much needed return to the energetic rush of rock and roll and 1960s rock that had dwindled in the 1970s with the ascendance of overblown progressive rock and stadium spectacles.[40]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_wave_music

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

I've always been confused by this genre and now I know why.

This was insightful.

Genre's for me are this double edged sword - on one hand you have the ambiguity to the point that it almost doesn't even make sense or really exist and on the other hand you have a mediocre way to categorize sounds. And then of course there's the asshat who claims to be a specialist on the genre, which is too ambiguous to begin with, yet they don't recognize that ambiguity and try and claim dogmatic truth.

Daydreamer

sethmadsen wrote:

I've always been confused by this genre and now I know why.

This was insightful.

Genre's for me are this double edged sword - on one hand you have the ambiguity to the point that it almost doesn't even make sense or really exist and on the other hand you have a mediocre way to categorize sounds. And then of course there's the asshat who claims to be a specialist on the genre, which is too ambiguous to begin with, yet they don't recognize that ambiguity and try and claim dogmatic truth.

I've also been confused, both by this and the post-punk genre.
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wooolf

Gender: Male
Age: 45

wooolf wrote:

But that's just my understanding, don't know if it's officially correct (or if an 'officially correct' definition really exists for that matter Smile

)

I guess it's officially INcorrect according to Wikipedia..
Wikipedia indeed classifies most bands I named as post-punk.

In our little corner of the world, we just called the punks 'punkers' & the Robert Smith lookalikes 'wavers'. These days, those who look like 'wavers' are called 'goths'.. And they don't listen to new wave anymore, do they? Confusing indeed.. Smile

Maybe it also has to do with locality? E.g. different meanings in U.K./Europe vs U.S.? Hence the general confusion?
(edit:the wikipedia article on new wave has a paragraph on the UK/US difference)

elo269megv
Punk Rock Detective

Gender: Male
Location: Michigan

So then who would you say were the first post-punk bands?? d'oh!