Found this in Sounds (UK music paper) from 1978. I was a young kid, kinda bored of older kids music like Led Zepplin, Stones, Who and all the other huge bands of the time, when New Wave started hitting the radio. DEVO, The Cars, Van Halen, Blondie, Sex Pistols, Dire Straits and many more started getting established on our underused FM band. What kid didn't want a boombox to play (and record!) all this great music.
Devo never really troubled the U.K. charts. Blondie did really well. Having a lead singer who was as hot as Marilyn Monroe definitely helped. In fact, since she was adopted, there were rumours that Debbie Harry was a secret child of Marilyn's. With Dire Straights musicianship was enough and Sultans of Swing were all over the radio back then.
DEVO had the goofy album jackets with mail order for all their weird clothing, I have no idea if it was real or not. The music was really going in a million directions in a good way, I think the "rawness" of bands like Blondie helped push them over the ultra-polished sonics of yacht and stadium rock along with disco. Of course we can't forget about the Talking Heads, I heard one of their early songs outside last night.
I thought, as a high school kid, Devo's first album was the best, and got me more into bands like B52s and Buzzcocks. Interesting though, I went from what is now classic rock (and a little metal) to "Pink Floyd" music (was there a genre name for this?) and then to New Wave and finally to dance music (some rap) like Madonna and other DJ remixes at clubs (discovering girls). Going back to Devo, to me at least, their first album was a one-album wonder like Get The Knack where every song is worth the listen.
"Prog Rock" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_rock Interestingly the term "New Wave" only seems to have started being used since the rise of sites like Wikipedia. Blondie were lumped in with Punk while anyone who first had success in the 1980s was deemed to be "New Romantic" or "Synthpop".
I can't argue with that. It is well documented that David Bowie was the New Wave / New Romantics hero and role model. At the same time "Prog Rock" was being derided as being all about 50 minute long guitar solos. Some "prog rock" bands like Genesis decided to move away from that formula and make chart topping singles.
As a pre-teen in the early 1980s, I and others definitely used the term "New Wave" to describe Gary Numan, Devo, the Cars, the Police etc. Some say the phrase was coined by the media or record industry to promote such bands, which might be true, but we still thought of New Wave as an actual genre. "Post-Punk," however, was a term I never heard until maybe 15-20 years ago.
My exposure was pretty limited, it was all word-of-mouth, record stores, or sometimes magazines. Radio was barely playing any of it (outside of college stations). Luckily back then sharing cool new music was hot and we all had tape decks but I owned Freedom Of Choice Vinyl (I think I still have it?). New Wave/Old Wave got popular here around 83 when people started getting sick of all the synths band when it got repetitive.
If memory serves, which is rarely does, so take this with a grain of salt, New Wave, KROQ and Punk Rock were all used interchangeably to represent groups like Psychedelic Furs, Lene Lovich (new toy), M (Pop Muzik), B52s, Devo, The Flying Lizards (Money), and The Motels, but some were kind of New Wave and Rock, like Blonde, The Cars, and the J.Geils Band.
I'm with you, anything that wasn't Rolling Stone, Who, Led Zepplin and the other arena rock banks. New Wave had a big net but punk was pretty specific, dirty, fast guitar and a lot of screaming, I love the Ramones but outside of their personality I didn't think they were "punk" music.
