EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
History of Rock, 1970-Present
John Covach, University of Rochester
 |
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 |
•
New Wave
•
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
•
fun stories to tell
•
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
•
New Wave
•
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
•
urban alienation
•
American New Wave Groups
•
Blondie
•
out of CBGB
•
1978 Parallel Lines
•
Heart of Glass
•
Debbie Harry
•
the group least likely to succeed
•
success once they turned away from punk scene
•
Talking Heads
•
out of CBGB
•
David Byrne
•
Tina Weymouth as bassist
•
women making a return to performing as more than the lead singer
•
older
•
students at the Rhode Island School of Design
•
understood art, aesthetics, irony
•
1977 Talking Heads 77
•
Psycho Killer
•
rhythmic patterns
•
1978 More Songs about Buildings and Food
•
Take Me to the River
•
got them on the radio and into the awareness of the American music listener
•
American New Wave
•
irony
•
using ideas from the past
•
using ideas of simplicity
•
music from 1950s, 1960s
•
naive lyrics
•
they are using all of this in quotation marks
•
Debbie Harry looking like Marilyn Monroe
•
not an accident
•
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
•
Talking Heads
•
scaling their sound down to approach a sixties sound
•
but a sixties sound in quotation marks
•
The Cars
•
Ric Ocasek
•
1978 The Cars
•
My Best Friend's Girl
•
Just What I Needed
•
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
•
Tom Petty
•
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
•
New Wave
•
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
•
sounded like the Byrds
•
1977: "American Girl"
•
Roger McGuinn heard it and wondered when he had recorded it
•
1979 Album: Damn the Torpedos
•
Don't do Me Like That
•
Refugee
•
Devo
•
Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh
•
1978: Are We Not Men? We are Devo!
•
produced by Brian Eno
•
U2
•
I Can't Get No Satisfaction
•
come out in matching outfits
•
Bob1 and Bob2
•
full of irony
•
art school students
•
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
•
B-52s
•
Fred Schneider
•
two female backup singers
•
1979: B-52s
•
"Rock Lobster"
•
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"
•
The Knack
•
out of Los Angeles
•
Doug Fieger
•
1979 Get The Knack
•
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
•
matching suits
•
narrow ties
•
Fieger looking an awful lot like John Lennon
•
this copying of the Beatles worked
•
#1 album in 1979
•
"My Sharona"