I Have Excellent News For The World

New Wave is the product of lame cunts’ imaginations.

New Wave is where American punk went to die. The whole thing reeks of record company scheming. It’s revolting. The nostalgia machine has an interest in keeping it afloat. The copyrights are well documented and defended and they continue to produce for leeches in Los Angeles when they want to sell your childhood back to you.

Maybe I reach too far back? I remember roughly the second half of the eighties, but I seem to forget that this year there will be people who will be able to purchase alcohol that were not alive during the eighties.

I’m going to be up front. I have an issue of naming convention. I see a BIG difference between Post-Punk and New Wave. Post-Punk is where things started getting more experimental, heavier on the electronics, or non-standard instrumentation, and frequently more ambient. Bauhaus is Post-Punk. New Wave in my definition is the cash-in swill that a young MTV and its record company backers foisted on unsuspecting mall spawn throughout the 80s. Technically that would <I>almost</I> make Motley Crüe New Wave, but that’s another article for the future.

I hate Depeche Mode. The Human League are awful. The Boomtown Rats have always been a joke. I can’t stand the Cars. I hate what Blondie turned into. New Order should’ve never happened.

Adam Ant and Billy Idol always skirted dangerously close, but what’s such handsome lads to do but try and take over the airwaves? Siouxie also skirted it, but gets a pass for being so fucking stylish and writing genuinely weird lyrics.

It’s all pop garbage, and I thought we were supposed to be very fucking suspicious of what business men tell us to like. Especially suspicion is warranted when they try to sell us our own music. In the end this is what damns most contemporary “influence” acts. Interpol or My Chemical Romance or whatever lift bits and pieces to cash-in now that the public is desensitized enough to take it.

You remember wrong. I remembered wrong too for a long time; don’t feel too bad. The thing is not to repeat our mistakes. Burn your fuzzy memories to keep warm. Don’t buy in on influences. Influences that amount to heavy handed rip-off are just selling you the warmed-over corpses of Sid, Joey, and especially Ian Curtis.