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C O U R S E L E C T U R E American New Wave 1977-80 Notes taken on February 5, 2016 by Edward Tanguay |
arises at the end of the 1970s
embraces the punk attitude but takes the danger out of it for record companies turning it into a kind of a lifestyle choice and aesthetic attitude as opposed to any form of cultural rebellion or revolt
when you think about the Sex Pistols and the ways in which they would create scandals and get themselves arrested and banned
but if you run a record company, you don't want to have an artist like that
people like that usually can't sell enough records to make it worth the trouble being professionally connected to trouble they make
record companies were not so much interested in punk
but they could see that the music might be the next big thing
for people getting tired of hippy rock from the first half of the 1970s
the wanted to domesticate punk a bit
try not to take away its attitude but don't let the musicians get into trouble and embarrass the record company
didn't want to lose their profits in court defending things the musicians had done
New Wave was the solution
became a way of pushing back on hippy rock music in a way that would compete with hippy rock music record sales and for exposure on the radio
the hippy types knew this and at first, New Wave and Punk were not well thought of at all
American New Wave Groups
the group least likely to succeed
success once they turned away from punk scene
Tina Weymouth as bassist
women making a return to performing as more than the lead singer
students at the Rhode Island School of Design
understood art, aesthetics, irony
1978 More Songs about Buildings and Food
got them on the radio and into the awareness of the American music listener
using ideas from the past
using ideas of simplicity
music from 1950s, 1960s
they are using all of this in quotation marks
Debbie Harry looking like Marilyn Monroe
not because she liked how Marilyn Monroe looked and wanted to look like her
because Marilyn Monroe had already become a popular icon
Debbie Harry didn't look like her per se but was putting her in quotation marks
scaling their sound down to approach a sixties sound
but a sixties sound in quotation marks
the first New Wave album a rock listener would have bought if they were just testing the water
a cross between New Wave and Foreigner or Boston
initially we thought he was ironic
but he was never ironically quoting the Byrds and Roger McGuinn
he just really liked it
in the 1980s, he became a new traditionalist
looking back at music before Sgt. Pepper
Cars using the cheap Hammond or Vox Continental organ sounds
drawing stylistic markers from earlier music
we thought Tom Petty was doing this
he actually just liked that music
Roger McGuinn heard it and wondered when he had recorded it
1979 Album: Damn the Torpedos
Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh
1978: Are We Not Men? We are Devo!
I Can't Get No Satisfaction
come out in matching outfits
what we thought the future would be like in the 50s but we know it is not going to be like that so we can use this in quotations
two female backup singers
it's hard to listen to Rock Lobster and not hear the irony in it, between the kind of pre-psychedelic cheesy organ and the surf guitar licks
together with a kind of herky jerky like voice not unlike the Talking Heads
not so much a synthesis but a collage of pre-hippy musical references all being used in a very ironic way
more as a way of protesting hippy music than endorsing pre-hippy music
the song "incredibly infectious" and "memorable"
records it with Capitol Records (same as Beatles with Meet the Beatles)
wants the old logo that looks like the Beatles logo
pictures on album as if they are on the Ed Sullivan show
Fieger looking an awful lot like John Lennon
this copying of the Beatles worked