Which New Wave Band Was the New Waviest?

[sbr]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

[garbon]

Human League!

[Jaron]

Human League!

I love Human League!

[garbon]

I love Human League!

How could one not?!

[Jaron]

I love Human League!

How could one not?!

Me not know.

[sbr]

I love Human League!

How could one not?!

He's only human.

[Savonarola]

Didn't Joy Division/New Order invent the damn thing?

The Modern Lovers had broken up two years before Joy Division was even formed.   




Even the Talking Heads were formed a couple years before Joy Division. 

[dps]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

Then your junior high was a couple of years behind the curve.  New Wave had already peaked by the fall of '80.

[Jaron]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

Then your junior high was a couple of years behind the curve.  New Wave had already peaked by the fall of '80.

I was a baby. Am I a new wave baby?

[citizen k]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave. There's one far worse band I can just picture in my head but their name is escaping me right now...The video for their most famous song has them on speed boats looking all horribly eighties....

Didn't Joy Division/New Order invent the damn thing?

Maybe they laid some of the foundations in bringing synthesizers to more mainstream notice.
Joy Division certainly wasn't New Wave, it was one of the founation bands of goth, it was post-punk through and through, the opposite of New Wave.
New Order....iffy. But they lacked all the horrible tackyness of New Wave even if they did have the sound.

from wiki:

The term New Wave itself is a source of much confusion. It was introduced in 1976 in Great Britain by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren as an alternative label for what was also being called "punk." The term referenced the avant-garde French New Wave film movement of the 1960s. The label was soon picked up by British punk fanzines such as Sniffin' Glue and then the professional music press. For a period of time in 1976 and 1977 the two terms were interchangeable. By the end of 1977, "New Wave" had replaced "Punk" as the definition for new underground music in the United Kingdom.

In the United States, Sire Records needed a term by which it could market its newly signed bands, who had frequently played the club CBGB. Because radio consultants in the U.S. had advised their clients that punk rock was a fad (and because many stations that had embraced disco had been hurt by the backlash), they settled on the term "New Wave". Like those film makers, its new artists, such as The Ramones and Talking Heads, were anti-corporate and experimental. At first most American writers exclusively used the term "New Wave" to describe British Punk acts. Starting in December 1976 The New York Rocker, which was suspicious of the term "Punk" became the first American journal to enthusiastically use the term starting with British acts, and later appropriating it to acts associated with the CBGB scene.

Soon, listeners began to differentiate some of these musicians from "true punks". The music journalist Charles Shaar Murray, in writing about the Boomtown Rats, has indicated that the term New Wave became an industry catch-all for musicians affiliated with Punk, but in some way different from it.

Music that followed the anarchic garage band ethos of the Sex Pistols was distinguished as "punk", while music that tended toward experimentation, lyrical complexity, or more polished production, was categorized as "New Wave". This came to include musicians who had come to prominence in the British pub rock scene of the mid-1970s, such as Ian Dury, Nick Lowe, Eddie and the Hot Rods and Dr Feelgood; acts associated with the New York club CBGBs, such as Television, Patti Smith, Mink DeVille and Blondie; and singer-songwriters who were noted for their barbed lyrical wit, such as Elvis Costello, Tom Robinson and Joe Jackson. Furthermore, many artists who would have originally been classified as punk were also termed New Wave. A 1977 Phonogram Records compilation album of the same name (New Wave) features US artists including the Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads and The Runaways. David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy was also a major influence in the style.

Later still, "New Wave" came to imply a less noisy, often synthesizer-based, pop sound. The term post-punk was coined to describe the darker, less pop-influenced groups, such as Gang of Four, Joy Division, Devo, and Siouxsie & the Banshees. Although distinct, punk, New Wave, and post-punk all shared common ground: an energetic reaction to the supposedly overproduced, uninspired popular music of the 1970s.

The term fell out of favour in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s because its usage had become too general.

[sbr]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

Then your junior high was a couple of years behind the curve.  New Wave had already peaked by the fall of '80.

That is entirely possible, and I would be very happy for that to be true; I was a rocker (Motley Crue baby  ) and didn't like the Wavers much, except for the one chick I had a crush on since second grade.

[Jaron]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

Then your junior high was a couple of years behind the curve.  New Wave had already peaked by the fall of '80.

That is entirely possible, and I would be very happy for that to be true; I was a rocker (Motley Crue baby  ) and didn't like the Wavers much, except for the one chick I had a crush on since second grade.

Did you try waving at her?

[sbr]

Duran Duran, Spandeu Ballet and all that sort of thing defines New Wave.

Bullshit.  New Wave was pretty much over with by the time those groups came along.

I have no idea if Yi's asking which act was the best, or who best exlemplified New Wave, or simply who our personal favorites were, but if it's the second, I'd vote Devo.

  Duran Duran was the peak of New Wavism in my Junior High School.

Then your junior high was a couple of years behind the curve.  New Wave had already peaked by the fall of '80.

That is entirely possible, and I would be very happy for that to be true; I was a rocker (Motley Crue baby  ) and didn't like the Wavers much, except for the one chick I had a crush on since second grade.

Did you try waving at her?

I danced with her at one of the 8th grade dances but our choices in music was just too big of a barrier at that age.

[PDH]

The Wiki quote reads like a student paper...probably was...

[Habsburg]