Griel Marcus writes that the Sex Pistol’s album, Never Mind the Bollocks (released in 1977 by Virgin Records) was a record that did nothing short of changing the world (Marcus: 1989, p. The roots of this nihilistic musical mission can be traced back to the career of the Sex Pistols, one of the most influential punk/new wave bands of all time. While punk continued to enact this negation from the fringes, new wave enacted its negation from within the very core of the mainstream. The song “New Wave Sucks” by the Canadian hardcore punk band DOA (released in 1980) illustrates the point:Īnd yet, despite stylistic differences, the common ideological core of punk and new wave, in fact, remained essentially intact, each offering, in their own ways, the expression of an underlying nihilism which mocked and negated the values of mainstream culture. This stylistic turn eventually resulted in varying degrees of hostility between punks and new wavers, with many critics rejecting new wave as a “mollified, less dangerous version of punk’s supposedly ‘authentic’ anger” (Cateforis: 2014, p. New wavers such as Elvis Costello, The Police and the Cars tried to keep the catchy choruses and twitchy rhythms” (Himes: 2014). Writing in The Smithsonian, Geoffrey Hines sums up the difference this way: “Punks liked to pretend that they had scorched the earth so they could build rock ‘n’ roll from scratch. It’s sound was “more accessible” than punk, with a more “danceable energy” (Cateforis: 2014, p. In contrast to the abrasive sound of punk, the sound of the new new wave tended to cater to mainstream aesthetic sensibilities, incorporating “pop hooks, modernist, synthesized production, and a fascination for being slightly left of center” (All Music: New Wave). It was this “new” new wave that ultimately came to define new wave music as a genre separate and distinct from punk. DEVO, Blondie, The Talking Heads, and other acts that started out playing in the same clubs as more obscure punk bands (such as Black Flag, The Angry Samoans, The Avengers, and The Dead Kennedys), signed and recorded with major labels, landing songs on the top 40 charts, and appearing on MTV. Similarly, the index entry for “new wave” in Dick Hebdige’s groundbreaking 1979 sociological study Subculture simply refers the reader to the entries for “punk.” Theo Cateforis writes that throughout 19 “punk and new wave were essentially synonymous” (Cateforis: 2009), but notes that in 1978 there started to emerge “a new new wave” consisting of artists who distinguished themselves from other punk bands by seeking, and achieving, mainstream popularity and success. Caroline Coon’s classic 1978 book, 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion, in fact, makes no distinction between them. New wave and punk were labels that, at least initially, were used interchangeably. The destructive tsunami of new wave and punk music unmoored rock-and-roll from this comforting conviction. “Sex and drugs and rock-and-roll” became an acceptable aspect of life in the conventional world a way to blow off steam while things went on as normal. Finding safe harbor within the mainstream, the old wave of rock had become moored to a belief that musical rebellion could serve a healthy, collective catharsis. It did so by enacting a negation: the negation of a tradition in which rock was treated as a compatible appendage to mainstream culture. While rock-and-roll had always been rebellious, this new wave of music rebelled against rock culture itself. This presentation was delivered on Friday, June 17th at the 2022 meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association as part of the seminar “The New Waves.”ĭuring the 1970s and 1980s a new wave of musical rebellion washed over the world. Tags 1980's punk rock Albert Camus american philosophical association anarchism anarchist bookfair Antichrist APA conference Arthur Schopenhauer books Buddha Buddhism Cinematic Nihilism Cloud Atlas College of Marin death DOA Edinburgh University Press existentialism Fascism Fight Club Film film and philosophy Glasgow Horror horror films Humor Immanuel Kant International Association for the Philosophy of Humor Jean-Paul Sartre John Marmysz Lars Von Trier Laughing at Nothing literature Marin County Punk Rock marin punk rock Martin Heidegger meaning of life music NEDs Nietzsche nihilism No Frills Buffalo pandemic philosophical novels philosophy Philosophy of Humor political philosophy punk punk rock religion Robert Burns Runaway Horses sacrapolitical sacrifice sacripolitical San Francisco Punk Rock scotland Sea of Fertility Tetralogy Spring Snow teaching Teaching philosophy The Angelic Upstarts The Eternal Return The Nihilist: A Philosophical Novel The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook The Pukes The Wicker Man travel Under the Skin UXB world cinema World War Z Yukio Mishima zero ZerOrigIndia
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