3 posts tagged “new wave”

How's Monday treating you? Mine presented me with 5:30am dogshit cleanup and a dead car battery. Then there was work...so here's a song about that.

You know Elvis Costello, right? Sort-of-but-not-really punkish icon of British rock/pop, revived the chunky Buddy Holly glasses look basically single handedly (and anyone who mentions Rivers Cuomo here gets bitch-slapped, OK?), thumbed his nose at SNL and their parent corporation on live television, produced the first Specials album, worked with everyone from Burt Bacharach to No Doubt...what hasn't he done?

So yeah, the debut track from his first album has one of the best masturbatory euphemisms I've ever heard ("Now that your picture's in the paper / Being rhythmically admired..."), and it should be mandatory listening every Monday morning.

Even their own liner notes can't resist making the inevitable Joy Division comparison. Well, the liner notes to the recent re-release of most of their catalog on Domino Records. At one point, Scottish post-punk band Josef K was a footnote in the history of independent music from the British Isles, and I guess they still kind of are. The Entomology disc that collects much of their music has brought some attention, and some well-placed press, but don't expect them to reunite for a million-selling comeback album and stadium tour anytime soon.

About that Joy Division comparison though...is it really that apt? Sure, there's a definite dark and gloomy edge, and the deep vocals of frontman Paul Haig are in the right ballpark, but I'd probably place them a little closer to Echo & the Bunnymen. Either way, that's good company to be in, I suppose. Though of course, both of those groups were together longer and released more material (and Echo & the Bunnymen are still releasing material these days). But neither holds the distinction of recording two albums in a single year (and discarding one of them, at that).

Though it was made famous by Blondie, "Hanging On The Telephone" was originally written by Jack Lee, of the proto-new wave trio The Nerves, a band that toured with Blondie prior to the release of Paralell Lines in 1978, an album that finally made the song famous. The Nerves, despite arguably laying the groundwork for the rise of new wave and power pop in the late 70s and early 80s, never found much of an audience or any commercial success to speak of, and disbanded before their song was immortalized by Debbie Harry and Co. Many people don't even realize the song wasn't originally a Blondie tune. But this original version is easily the equal of it's more famous sibling version, though not quite as glossy and hi-fi as it would become in the hands of producer Mike Chapman. Interestingly, both versions kick off with an ominous busy signal setting the mood.

The song had a slight resurge of interest lately, when a fragment of it, as performed by Chan Marshall (AKA Cat Power) appeared in a Cingular wireless commercial in the US. A full-length version of that performance has yet to surface, and some have claimed that a full version doesn't actually exist, and only the fragment heard int he commercial was recorded, which would be a shame. As a bonus, here's the fragment that was ripped from the commercial itself.