{"id":8570,"date":"2011-08-02T10:44:45","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T14:44:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=8570"},"modified":"2011-08-02T10:48:50","modified_gmt":"2011-08-02T14:48:50","slug":"the-fine-line-of-new-wave-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-fine-line-of-new-wave-cool\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fine Line of New Wave Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/v6TaZ5rS23o?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Among those of us who lived through the <strong>New Wave<\/strong> era, that is, the minor boom of fun, late-&#8217;70s power pop\/punk rock bands, <em>not<\/em>, as VH1 retro programmers, <em>Entertainment Weekly<\/em> writers,\u00a0and youthful bloggers might have you believe, early synth-pop bands from 1983-1985, did\u00a0you take great pains to examine where these bands fell along the fine line of &#8220;cool?&#8221; I did. Let me explain.<\/p>\n<p>Despite what 98% of my fellow students would have said regarding my tastes in music circa 1979, I knew it was <em>cool<\/em> that I liked punk and new wave bands. I wasn&#8217;t cool\u2014don&#8217;t think I was deluded into thinking such a thing\u2014but my tastes were cool. That being said, it took only a few weeks of delving into this new music scene to realize that I, as a young rock nerd, had to uphold certain standards of excellence within this genre. Leaving out the punks, almost all of whom were <em>cool<\/em>,\u00a0with possible reservations over the suspiciously phony <strong>Stiff Little Fingers<\/strong>,\u00a0judging the coolness of\u00a0artists\u00a0loosely categorized\/marketed as &#8220;new wave&#8221; was\u00a0open to much interpretation.\u00a0<strong>Elvis Costello<\/strong>, <strong>Rockpile<\/strong>, and <strong>Graham Parker<\/strong> were <em>way cool<\/em>. <strong>Blondie<\/strong>, despite what really cool cats in the New York punk scene had been whispering, were <em>cool<\/em>. <strong>The Police<\/strong>, when they first appeared on the scene, were <em>pretty cool<\/em>, even if the writing was on the peroxide bottle that they might have bigger fish to fry than empowering awkward teenage boys with a sense of cool. <strong>Tom Petty &amp; the Heartbreakers<\/strong> and <strong>Cheap Trick<\/strong> clearly were so cool that we tried to drag him into our New Wave Army, whether they wanted to serve on the front lines for us or not. <strong>The Cars<\/strong> would surely pull their lesser new wave cohorts into the mainstream, no?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JqsdOT5Xht4?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Joe Jackson<\/strong>, as has been discussed here, hit the scene as something just short of <em>way cool<\/em>, then he managed to merely toe the line of <em>cool<\/em> while pretty much thumbing his nose at the kids who fell for his schtick in the first place.\u00a0<strong>The Records<\/strong> also walked the equator of <em>cool<\/em>. A teen had no chance of impressing the 1979-era Cool Patrol roaming American high schools, but the few of us who dug &#8220;Starry Eyes&#8221; were confident that the children of all those young dudes would one day grasp that band&#8217;s simple brilliance.\u00a0(We were dead wrong, of course, but confident at the time.) <strong>Brahm Tchaikovsky<\/strong>, on the other hand, promised perhaps even more <em>cool<\/em> when new wave fans fell for his minor his &#8220;Girl of My Dreams,&#8221; but did anyone buy that album and find a second halfway listenable song on it? Let me know if there was a hidden track I missed. That album was direct from\u00a0<em>Turd City!<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>When you were 16, where did you draw the <strong>Equator of Cool<\/strong>?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bands like Athens, Georgia&#8217;s legendary\u00a0<strong>The Producers<\/strong>, who were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/have-you-guys-seen-this-before\/\" target=\"_blank\">recently featured in these hallowed halls<\/a>, fell way short of new wave&#8217;s rapidly developing standards for <em>cool<\/em>, at least as I and my 4\u00a0friends were concerned.\u00a0The pastel suits and choreographed shows of enthusiasm weren&#8217;t <em>cool<\/em> by any genre&#8217;s criteria. Shoot, those moves would have been considered dorky in <strong>Lawrence Welk<\/strong>&#8216;s band. And listen: for those of you feeling a building sense of outrage that I&#8217;d criticize the music of well-intentioned, tuneful\u00a0bands because they weren&#8217;t <em>cool<\/em>: we&#8217;re barely talking music here; we&#8217;re talking about what it took for teenagers with outsider music tastes to get by in the &#8220;mean streets&#8221; of our nation&#8217;s high school hallways, circa 1978-1981. (<em>Townsman andyr:<\/em> Please do not blow my characterization of our high school as anything but &#8220;tough.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I know plenty of fine Townspeople dig this band, but <strong>The Knack<\/strong> destroyed all hopes of the New Wave genre ever gaining certification by the Elders of The Cool Patrol. Doug Fieger and his ass-kisser, journeyman\u00a0bandmates sealed the deal on charges of &#8220;phony Beatlemania.&#8221; <strong>The Clash<\/strong> and other crumbling punk rock\u00a0bands\u00a0happily stepped on the backs of once-worthy heroes working a more gentle approach. <strong>The Romantics<\/strong>&#8216; &#8220;What I Like About You&#8221; and <strong>The Go-Go&#8217;s<\/strong> would outlast the shame of the era, but\u00a0New Wave artists were immediately tainted. Costello had already been distancing himself. Parker ditched the Rumour and attempted to align himself with <strong>The Boss<\/strong>. Fans of the coolest to the mildly cool\u00a0among these bands either got duped into hanging their hopes on The Knack or quickly and quietly hung their heads in shame. There was no fighting the fight any longer. <em>Shame<\/em> was our ultimate fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among those of us who lived through the New Wave era, that is, the minor boom of fun, late-&#8217;70s power pop\/punk rock bands, not, as VH1 retro programmers, Entertainment Weekly writers,\u00a0and youthful bloggers might have you believe, early synth-pop bands from 1983-1985, did\u00a0you take great pains to examine where these bands fell along the fine <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-fine-line-of-new-wave-cool\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[484,264],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}