Most pathetic attempt to go punk/noowave?

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Twixt '79-'83 (when people realized that it wasn't going to make anybody rich) - too late to 'go disco', a very small number of famous-but-declining stars tore their t-shirts, spiked their hair (cf Roseanne Cash) and wore things with lots of zips, produced tracks that were so stripped-down and raw that it took expensive sessioneers to make them properly 'street'(some limp powerchords and filched Devo synths did the job - plus loads of 'Bette Davis Eye' handclaps), and filled lyrics with references to TVs and clones etc.
So what's the 'best' of this forgotten genre (which lives on in Garbage and Mel C's "Goin' Down")? Peter Frampton ('The Art of Control'), Linda Ronstadt ('Mad Love'), Rolling Stones ("She's So Cold", "Where the Boys Go")? "Owner of a Lonely Heart"? Michael Des Barres on 'WKRP'? The latter-day careers of P. Gabriel and R. Fripp?

Disqualified for being fantastic - Alice Cooper ('Flush the Fashion'), Melissa Manchester ("You Should Hear How She Talks About You')

Disqualified for knowing what they were doing - Frank Zappa, Billy Joel

(Sorry Mark S, the Stranglers don't count, and neither do the 101'ers...)

― dave q, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Bill Nelson's Red Noise (often advertised in error — I have pointed this out before but it is funnier with repetition — as Bill Nelson's Red Nose)

Who Are You? (I have probably never listened to any record quite so often trying to convince myself that the qualities the reviewers have discovered will surely emerge on mature repetition: I was young, and I liked the "idea" of Who; in fact I still do... I assume Face Dances is worse, but other people can find out...)

Jethro Tull: Stormwatch (to be honest, I haven't the slightest idea what this SOUNDS like: the cover was sorta kinda New Wavey, plus I.Anderson was the kind of ploot who would argue that Tull were in fact the first (and yea the only true) punks...

Mike Oldfield's QE2: short songs, short hair, short temper, took a laser to the Blue Peter themetune...

Roxy Music's Manifesto is GRATE. I think as a fan dq will agree that ELP wd have made Love Beach anyway: they were no one's monkey-puppets!!

― mark s, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How about Robert Palmer 'Looking for Clues' - suspended rawk, plugged in synthpop and courted Gary Numan. More interesting than his peers - so not entirely pathetic. More problematic with an interesting sound.

― Jason, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Funny that the Kinks haven't been mentioned yet, esp. since Give the People What They Want and Word of Mouth were essentially punk albums. Not my favorite Kinks albums, but more listenable and generally better than given credit for. Then again, Dave Davies is arguably among the "inventors" of punk.

While Zappa may have been able to pull this off, Terry Bozzio (his one-time drummer and co-founder of Missing Persons) didn't.

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" is a great song, BTW.

Other Zappa sidemen who did well in punk/New Wave -- Adrian Belew (Talking Heads, King Crimson, solo) and Warren Cucurullo (Duran Duran).

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dunno about Jethro Tull but I know Ian Anderson released an album 82/83 which was largely based on aping Gary Numan i.e moody, disconnected, crap.
Although not a bandwagon jumper didn't Cliff's Devil woman tie in nicely with the punk/new wave zeitgeist (or perhaps not).

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How could I have forgotten Neil Young?

Search: Rust Never Sleeps, Hawks and Doves, Trans (yes, you read that correctly)

Destroy: Everybody's Rockin', Landing on Water

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Palmer/Numan: "Johnny & Mary" = best thing RP evah did (inc. "Addicted to Love" AND "Riptide"). No problem w.me!!

Prob.with Kinks is that DD also invented heavy metal, and do they not veer towards HM bombast somewhat yet w/o being premature grunge? I haf not heard any of these records for many a year and was too much the Toal Ideologue back when I did to be a good judge. They were NOT punXoR to teen mark s, but then nor were the Clash pah bah!

Duran Duran are AWESOME GODZ but they are not punk OR New Wave...

― mark s, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Speaking about Zappa sidemen, Steve Vai did play with Johnny Lydon too lest we forget. (Sheesh -- Vai worked for Zappa, Lydon, David Lee Roth, David Coverdale; dude sure was a glutton fer punishment, no?)

Teenage Tadeusz was a serious metalhead, and late seventies/early eighties Kinks weren't metal to his ears (or at least not very good metal). Perhaps some sort of intermediate category betwixt punk and metal should be devised for that period of theirs (sarcastic Tadeusz voice: there is ... it was called arena rock.)

Re whether Duran Duran was New Wave or not -- the famed American/British cultural divide rears its head yet again ;-)

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Other contenders fer yer consideration:

Fleetwood Mac, Tusk. A flawed masterpiece IMHO.

Rush (Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows) -- "Big Money" (which pretty shamelessly rips off "Pretty Vacant") is pretty good, and a not-bad rip on the rich surprisingly written by a bunch of Randroids (which leads one to think that perhaps they never took her that seriously to start with, then again they're Canucks).

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Another great question from Mr. q...

Search: Jefferson Starship-Out of Control "He said 'I am not Jesus, I am not radiation, I am not a commando, this is not Romper Room, I am not responsible, I'm going to Hollywood' 'Shut up!' "

And China wrote it with her mom and dad!

Sparks transformation into a new wave band was a logical move but seemed somewhat dumbed down after the chilly brilliance of #1 in Heaven. They deserved to make some money in their own country, though. Hated "Cool Places" and "I Predict" but "Funny Face" and "Sextown U.S.A." are classic enough.

Grate grate grate: Yoko and John "Kiss Kiss Kiss", Abba "The Visitors"

― Arthur, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Kink-Metal: well yes I hated metal w/o having any great knowledge of it back then. 1979 opinion (since entirely revised): slightest bit of waily guitar anywhere = HM, and punk = nothing whatever to do w/metal. Which band did Penetration's Fred Purser start, in the NWoBHM? To me, then, this was literally incomprehrensible, as if Laxmikant and Pyaralel started making authentic cajun...

Re ocean-wide cultural divides: there is of course one of these between Any Two Adjacent Actual Class of 78-er PunXoR, Tadeusz, which is why defns get so ridiculous. To gather us together is to start a fight. Dr C will surely concur — or rather he will DISAGREE!! Which proves my POINT!!

Trans is a fine record. I cannot tell if dq is saying that Zappa knew what he was doing ie making deliberately rubbish New Wave, or knew what he was doing ie was such a genius that HIS New Wave is genius too. I knew what I am inclined to opine heh.

― mark s, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Would the Zappa Police grant me qualified immunity from prosecution if I were to speak my piece re Zappa and punk/new wave?

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Personally I feel yr Steve Vai joke earnt you a Free Pro-Zappa Post, but it is important to note that this is not an official ruling. I cannot speak for Omar.

― mark s, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ah...JS's "Out of Control" (I like to be outside, everything happens outside...), I had forgotten about that one. Was that from Nuclear Furniture or Winds of Change?

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" doesn't sound very punk at all to me. As close as Yes got to punk would be "Release - Release" (Tormato, 1978) or "Tempus Fugit" (Drama, 1980). I think they're both great, myself...

― Joe, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Disqualified for being fantastic = Rush - "Vital Signs" reggae-lite, Police rip-off of some sort but SO much better. Geddy's futuro-patois stroll down electric avenue is so awesome: "Tired mind become a / Shape-shifter / Everybody need a / Mood lifter / Everybody got reverse polarity / Everybody got / Mixed feelings / About the function and the form / Everybody got to deviate from the norm". Asks (and answers) the question: What if Gordon Sumner's tantric prick just up and SHORT CIRCUITED (a "ghost in the machine", perhaps?)...would the black man's riddims or the brown man's chakras be able to help him THEN? This and "Natural Science" (whose middle part is very Black Flag) are probably my two favorite Rush songs. Pathetic examples: all the Rush albums after Signals are pretty pathetic, mostly due to digi-wave overload. Until they just got too old to do anything properly, "grunge" particularly.

― Kris, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Does anyone in the rest of the world know of the compellingly flakey NZ band MiSex? (*great* name, no?) A near-definitive band of this type. Got real big in Orstralia where Black Sleeveless T-Shirt Fake New Wave Pub Rock was/has been/still is a real viable genre (fuckin INXS etc) - yr classic Old Timers Cashing In (ex members of dodgy ass pub rock & hippy prog bands & the singer was a former MOR balladeer who now sang in the annoying hiccupping yelp of early XTC). Their songs were about symptoms of modern alienation like - have a bleedin guess - TV! clones! Computer games! Man I hated them. Of course now they seem kinda neat.

― duane, Sunday, 26 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Re Mi-Sex - weren't Flash and the Pan, like, 1,000 years old, and ex- AC/DC producers as well?

― dave q, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think the Jethro Dull album everybdy's thinking of is 'Under Wraps' - get a load of these titles, "Heat", "Tundra", "Nobody's Car", "Saboteur", "Automotive Engineering"(!)

― dave q, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

dave q: wow, can't believe you mentioned the Coop's "Flush the Fashion", long a fave of mine, and one that almost nobody's heard. It's his best post-Alice Cooper Band LP, IMHO.

― Sean, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Mark S - I think Fred Purser was in Tygers of Pan Tang after Penetration!

― Dr. C, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hurrah!! (Hurrah also cuz this is what Tim Hopkins sed, thus outing self as secret keen follower of NWoBHM)

― mark s, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The more I consider Fake NewWave the more I think the answer to the 'Which writer is most responsible for the most crap' thread is 'J.G. Ballard'.

― dave q, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tygers of Pan Tang were a great band proto Bon Jovi but with added Geordie grit and a punk/techno edge, cyrtainly much bettyr than Penetration. Damn will now have to seek out a copy of their 82' album The Cage.

― Billy Dods, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Love Beach' = 'Metal Machine Music'

― dave q, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

OK, what is up with this Love Beach shit? I've heard earlier ELP, and found it not to my taste at all (to say the least), but at least you knew where they were coming from, with their "we are serious artists" image... but then comes Love Beach (seen in cutout bins everywhere) with the guys in silk shirts and blow-dried hair... not to mention the title!?! Was this an in-joke for ELP fans or something?

― Sean, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Re Flash and the Pan:

Yes, they were billions of years old and AC/DC producers: they were Harry Vanda and George Young. They were also in the Easybeats ('Friday On My Mind', etc) and responsible for producing many of the Australian pop hits of the 70s. Enormously important to the history of Australian popular music. They're both still alive - they produced the last AC/DC record.

― Ben Butler, Monday, 27 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think Love Beach was simply the name of a beach in the Bahamas were they recorded the album. The only ELP album without a producer credit, because they were so embarrassed no one wanted to take responsi...er, credit, for it. :) In its favor, however, Love Beach does have the greatest popular music song of all time: "Taste of My Love".

― Joe, Wednesday, 29 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hawkwind turning into the Hawk Lords for a brief moment in the 70's/// nasty

― jk, Wednesday, 29 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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