Lost Hits of the New Wave #42

"2000 Miles" by The Pretenders

Back in the day, before A Very Special Christmas came out, followed by several sequel albums, there were virtually no holiday songs in the New Wave, maybe only a handful, including "Christmas Wrapping," "Do They Know It's Christmas," and this one.

Originally released for Christmas 1983 around the release of the Pretenders third album, the first with their new line-up after the deaths of band members Pete Farndon and James Honeyman-Scott. As the years have gone by, it has become a new wave classic of the season.

Here's the music video that was made a few years after the song first came out.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #41

"Blue Highway" by Billy Idol

There was a time in the mid-1980s when Billy Idol, despite his look and punk origins with Generation X (yeah, remember when it was a band and not a demographic?), was considered pop music and played to death on the radio and MTV.

Yeah, I loved "Rebel Yell" the first ten times I heard it, but man, the next thousand were downright painful. This song, "Blue Highway," got some minor play on radio and in the clubs, and was a nice change of pace. It still had the strong vocals of Billy and the screeching cool guitar of Steve Stevens, the vibe of "Rebel Yell," all without the overplay souring. It's almost like a new song.



"Blue Highway" has since become, and deservedly so, a staple on 1st Wave Classic Alternative Satellite Radio. And for the record, the above is not the real video, as the song had no video. The clips are from Billy's later album, Cyberpunk, also highly recommended.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #40

"Pleasure and Pain" by the Divinyls

When most folks think of the Divinyls, they think of two things - the late lead singer Crissy Amphlett and their criminally overplayed 'one-hit wonder,' "I Touch Myself." Well, it's still a shame about Chrissy, however those of us in the know know that the Divinyls were far from one-hit wonders.

This 1985 single was written by pop mainstays of the era Holly Knight and Mike Chapman, and remains my favorite Divinyls tune.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #39

Substance by New Order

Of the New Wave era, greatest hits collections tended to be rare. Oh sure, afterward, they were plentiful, but very few stand out during the day. Among them were Standing on the Beach by The Cure, Eponymous by REM, and this one - Substance by New Order.

Similar to The Cure's greatest hits package, Substance, or Substance 1987 as it's known in some circles, not only contains the 'greatest hits,' but also their B-sides, and just as with Standing on the Beach, the B-sides are also just as cool. And after all, some of these A-sides and B-sides match up wonderfully, so this is a terrific collection. This is one of those CDs/cassettes (I've worn out both) that I used to listen to over and over again.



The only thing missing is my favorite Joy Division song, "Love Will Tear Me Apart," so I would invariably tape the album and add that one. I love all these songs, but I have to single out favorites "The Perfect Kiss," "Confusion," "Shellshock," "Ceremony," even the overplayed but still much-loved "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "Blue Monday," and the new song, "True Faith."



And if you'd like to hear about how this album changed the life of my friend and fellow Biff Bam Pop! writer JP Fallavollita, check out this excellent article here.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #38

"Everywhere That I'm Not" by Translator

I came very late to this one. I know I had heard it on the radio and on the dance floor, but really I paid it no mind until hearing it multiple times on First Wave satellite radio. I even remember seeing the 45 RPM single at my old college radio station, but never put it on a turntable. My loss.

Active since 1979, this San Francisco synth band has made a career of sounding British, or at least mining the British sound of not just the new wave, but also punk, psychedelia, and even classic rock vibes. Still active today their influence can be heard in many of the acts of the 1980s, and this was their biggest hit.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #37

"Stand or Fall" by The Fixx

One of my first memories of MTV was this video. I never saw the music video channel until about a year or so after it had first hit the air, and was in college at a friend's house, who not only had a Nintendo Entertainment System with the amazing for the time Donkey Kong home video game, but also cable with a projection TV in the basement.

"Stand or Fall" by The Fixx was the video that was on when I first came down into that basement, and as I recall, I saw it again later that afternoon as well. It wasn't a matter of it being popular at the moment, it was that the channel didn't have all that many videos yet. This was also around the time that Michael Jackson was making a stink about no videos by black artists on the channel, and something called "Billie Jean" was also starting to get airplay. I saw that one that afternoon as well.



Around this time however, The Fixx was very hot, follow up singles "Red Skies" from Shuttered Room, and from the next album Reach the Beach, there was "Saved by Zero" and "One Thing Leads to Another." Their videos were played on MTV in heavy rotation and for the non-cable users, "Video Rock," ad nauseum.



Led by Cy Curnin, lead singer and primary songwriter who has a solo career as well as participation in other musical projects, The Fixx continues to perform and record today.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #36

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid

The original "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was written by Bob Geldolf of the Boomtown Rats and the criminally underacknowledged Midge Ure of Ultravox in 1984 to bring awareness to the famine in Ethiopia. Later overshadowed by that summer's American "We Are the World," I still think the original is the better song, and with the better stars.

Geldolf brought together a supergroup he called Band Aid to sing the song, which included Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, The Boomtown Rats, Sting, U2, Bananarama, Kool and the Gang (a seeming oddity, there only because they shared a record label with the Rats), Ultravox, Status

Quo, Marilyn, Heaven 17, Paul Young, George Michael, Paul Weller, Jody Watley, and Phil Collins. Artists who could not be a part of the recording like Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson, Big Country, and David Bowie were included giving holiday messages on the B-side of the single, called "Feed the World," a cool groove all by itself.

I worked in a record store at the time of the release, and its re-release in 1985 and remember the flurry to get a copy. This was huge. I also remember the crowds at the mall's Heroes World that Christmas, because they had a poster of Band Aid out front with a number chart to show who was who - and everyone wanted to know who was who.



The song was re-recorded in 1989, 2004, and this year as well. Here's the new version for 2014 by Band Aid 30:

Lost Hits of the New Wave #35

"Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring

One of the reasons I started this Lost Hits of the New Wave series on my blog was to rail against the concept of the one-hit wonder, because they rarely are. For instance, neither "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats nor "Take on Me" by a-ha are one-hit wonders, much to the horror of many a VH-1 special. But Golden Earring is that rare but elusive true two-hit wonder.

Golden Earring's first hit, an FM radio staple in the 1970s, "Radar Love," in the days before the internet, was also the subject of many misheard lyrics discussions. How can it be 'radar love'? What the hell does that mean? Surely they must mean 'red hot love,' at least that makes sense. The haunting song, as much about driving as about telepathy, with the mysterious lyrics was released in 1973.

The Dutch band had been around since 1961, first known as the Golden Earrings, and are still active today, having scored dozens of hits in their homeland of The Netherlands in their long and distinguished career. They had to wait more than a decade for their second international hit however after "Radar Love."



From the 1982 album Cut featuring the iconic image of a playing card being shredded by a bullet, Golden Earring released the single "Twilight Zone." Fledgling music video network MTV picked it up almost immediately, although showing an edited version of the video, sans nudity.



While the obvious assumption is that the song is about the Rod Serling 1960s TV series of the same name, it's not. Sure, the pop culture reference is there, but listen to the lyrics, it's about something else. The song is about Robert Ludlum's novel "The Bourne Identity" that decades later became a successful movie franchise.


Rated R version

In their day Golden Earring toured the States often, notorious for their sometimes half-hour jam cover of "Eight Miles High" and the drummer catapulting into the audience at the climax of solos. Notably they were so big at one time that both KISS and Aerosmith opened for them during tours. After a Great Adventure concert ended in a fire tragedy in 1984 however, the band tended to stay away from the States and stick to smaller venues.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #34

"Lullaby" by The Cure

I was a latecomer to The Cure, but once I discovered them proper, I loved them. I was aware of "Let's Go to Bed" when it came out, but The Cure really passed under my radar until their greatest hits album, Standing on the Beach. Then I was a hardcore fan, I wasn't a goth, I didn't wear any make-up, but I loved me some Cure, and even saw them in concert a few times.

"Lullaby" is one of their creepier tunes, with an even creepier music video directed by Tim Pope. The song was apparently the first single from 1989's Disintegration, even though most folks remember "Fascination Street" being first in the States, but "Lullaby" actually did quite well in the UK.



I first heard the song when WXPN debuted the album for the first time on a particular night. I was out with friends that night, and I made them stop what they were doing and get me to a radio so I could hear the premiere. Yeah, I did mention I was hardcore, didn't I? The song is one of quiet menace, not about Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man by the way, but more about Robert Smith's past with drugs.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #33

The "Quincy" Punk Rock Episode

Back in the day you knew when a trend hit prime time drama, it was over, so over. You knew Satanism was over when "Starsky and Hutch" had to deal with it, and when they did their disco episode... it was clear disco was dead. And then there's the infamous "Quincy" punk rock episode.

"Next Stop Nowhere" first aired on Sunday night, December 1, 1982, in the eighth and final season of "Quincy M.E." I never really watched the show but caught the faux punk band Mayhem as I was popping through channels (there were only a few if them in those pre-cable days). The point of the show was star Jack Klugman fighting against this music that not only promoted violence, but also killed!

Now the silliness of this episode has been skewered and beaten to death by many better than me, like Opie and Anthony (when they were still called Opie and Anthony, that is), so I won't go into that, but there is one more memory of the episode.

The same night it aired, the deejay on WXPN's Yesterday's Now Music Today had taped the two Mayhem songs from the TV, and played them on the show that night. I think that left more of a memory than the episode itself.

Tommy Ramone 1949-2014

Lost Hits of the New Wave #32

"Rock Me Tonite" by Billy Squier

Here we have another example of a rocker trying to climb on board the New Wave sound and ride it to a top charting hit. Billy Squier was always a hard rocker, probably best known for his hit "The Stroke" with its unique use of certain synth drumbeats. In his day, he was a rock god, notably opening for both Queen and Pat Benatar for two of the greatest concerts of my high school days.

I first got into him with his early AOR hit "The Big Beat" (you might not know it, but trust me, if you're a hip hop fan, you've heard it sampled hundreds of times), and rode along happily when "The Stroke" carried through to two hit albums with a string of hits from each. He was even one of those artists savvy enough to record a holiday song so he'd get played at least once a year. Then came "Rock Me Tonite," and it was all over.

Previously Billy had done only performance videos, him and the band on stage rocking out, now he decided to make a more traditional -or as luck would have it- a more bizarre video, to go along with his more pop new wave sound. The video featured Billy dancing and prancing in a pink Flashdance shirt and sliding through silk sheets. His dance, his affectations, and his gestures could at best be described as 'flamboyant.'

Here, take a peek…

Yeah. You get the idea. And that was the end of Billy Squier's rock career. Surprisingly, the song was his biggest charting hit, but the video, directed by Kenny Ortega, the mastermind behind Disney's High School Musical, succeeded in crashing Squier's career and causing many to question his sexuality.

Billy Squier continues to record and to perform today, including a stint with Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band. He does a lot of blues, jazz, and charity work, and on occasion, he does still rock. Just don't rock him tonite…

Lost Hits of the New Wave #31

Remember Karin Begin? I do. I was unaware of her local, and then much later real, demise however. This blog entry started off as one about Beat Planet, a local WXPN radio show that was influential to me back in the day. I may get to it at some point in the future, but in researching it, I came upon the sordid tale of Karin Begin.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I loved WXPN, the radio station of the University of Pennsylvania. They were the successful adult version of what passes for most college radio. They were not just different and sophisticated, but they were cool too. Hell, they were the coolest. They had wonderful specialized music programs like Amazon Country, Joe Frank, Gay Dreams, Star's End, Sleepy Hollow, Yesterday's Now Music Today, and the aforementioned Beat Planet. And they also had regular deejays as well.

Afternoon drive was where I discovered Karin Begin on XPN. She was quirky, edgy, fun, and played great music. And she was a redhead, and I've always had a thing for redheads. I always enjoyed listening to her. But music was changing, and around then new wave was becoming alternative, and alternative was becoming mainstream. A shiny new station called WDRE caught my attention for a couple years, and I missed what happened to poor Karin Begin.

Karin Begin became so hot, a Philadelphia magazine did a story on her, one that went from feature to expose when her background turned out to be falsified. When it further came out her entire resume was made up, XPN fired her. Upon reading about it, I did remember some of the details. She intimated she and Kiefer Sutherland had been an item, and was in his movie The Bay Boy. I remember renting it to see her, but couldn't find her.

While I cheated on XPN with DRE, Karin moved to one of my favorite radio stations, Z Rock in Baltimore, as Shannon Rock. There she was interviewed for "48 Hours" for an episode about lying, which resulted in her dismissal there. Does anyone check resumes any more?



Karin next resurfaced in San Francisco as Darian O'Toole doing mornings and competing with the syndicated Howard Stern with her own brand of talk, rock, and raunch. She did well for a while with her 'ovaries with attitude' identity there, and her propensity for untruth continued to be part of her repertoire as well. Eventually she list that job too.

In 2008, at the age of 40, Karen Begin died of respiratory failure, complications from, believe it or not, a broken leg. A real shame. She might have been a compulsive liar, but from what I remember, and what I read, a very cool and resourceful lady. Perhaps, in her own way, she was another lost hit of the new wave.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #30

Donnie Iris may be a name solidly from the past, but it's one that is back in the news recently.

Dominic Ierace, better known by his stage name of Donnie Iris climbed to fame as a member of The Jaggerz and the writer of "The Rapper." That was in 1970.

Later he floated into Wild Cherry, that 1970s band known for playing that funky music, white boy.

After that he became a solo act, sometimes backed up by The Cruisers and produced vintage FM classics in the early 1980s like "Ah! Leah!" and "Love Is Like a Rock."





As the decade continued, Iris continued to try to compete with low charting singles like "Tough World," "The High and the Mighty," and "Do You Compute?" He even released a pseudo-rock Christmas album called Ah! Leluiah! but he would never again see the success he had with the rock new wave crossover hit "Love Is Like a Rock." Now, he is suing Sony for royalties owed when "The Rapper" was sampled by The Game for their 2008 song, "Letter to the King." Iris still tours the Pittsburgh and Ohio region with The Cruisers.

RIP Lou Reed

Lost Hits of the New Wave #29

"Bop 'Til You Drop" by Rick Springfield



There was a time when Rick Springfield was cool, we may all want desperately to want to forget it, but it's true. Memory is a tricky thing. We may want to remember Rick Springfield as bubble gum pop, but there was a time he was considered not only rock, but even a little tiny bit new wave. I heard "Jessie's Girl" for the first time on WMMR, and follow-ups "Affair of the Heart," and the two videos featured here, all on WYSP during their new music hour.

Rick Springfield was impossibly huge in the early 1980s, between his music career, appearances on "General Hospital," and even a feature film Hard to Hold, before vanishing into semi-obscurity.

The truth is that he had been around a long time before his 'overnight success,' was a minor pop idol and even had his own Saturday morning cartoon in the 1970s. And after, he was the original "Forever Knight," the original "Human Target," and released what I think his best album, Tao.

I fully agree with my online friend DJ Marilyn Thomas, "Bop 'Til You Drop" is a New Wave song, no matter what you say, you selective memory music heathens.

And then there's this one...

"Human Touch" by Rick Springfield



Rocker trying desperately to be new wave in a music video, trying to capitalize on the odd music video fashions of the time, pretending it's the future, and looking uncomfortable the whole time - check. For a long time, this was what music videos looked like. At least it's not...

"You Got Lucky" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers



Wow, the future looked kinda bleak in the early 1980s...

Lost Hits of the New Wave #28

"Wot" by Captain Sensible



Honestly I had never really thought of this one as lost, but as more of a classic, but it's been pointed out to me recently by someone who really knows his music - this was something new to him. New, but properly loved, as it should be.

"Wot" is one of my favorites of the new wave era, and could be listened to on a loop for maybe hours, grooving every moment. I love it. And the fact he namedrops and disses Adam Ant in the song just makes all that much cooler.

Captain Sensible goes way back in the punk and new wave movements. He founded The Damned, was in the supergroup Dead Men Walking, and was the first of many to record "Jet Boy, Jet Girl," which I am sure we'll cover here at some point. Last I heard, the Captain had formed his own anarchist political party over in the UK. Still punking after all these years.

Lost Hits of the New Wave #27

This has happened before. Even though I lived through the New Wave era, the 1980s give or take, there are still songs that eluded me. This is another.

I knew the name Robyn Hitchcock, and I had seen it dozens upon dozens of times flipping through albums while shopping or browsing (or filing albums when I worked in a record store). But oddly enough, I don't actually recall ever hearing any of his music. At least not when it was current.

"Balloon Man" by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians



Now I hear the tune quite often on the First Wave channel on SiriusXM. Robyn Hitchcock continues to make music today. Check out his website here.

The Robin Renee Blog Tour, Odds and Ends

Hi folks, it's been a long journey the past week and a half on the Robin Renee Blog Tour. Tonight, I wanted to share a few odds and ends that had to be edited for space in yesterday's interview with Robin at Biff Bam Pop!. Here you go, enjoy!

Robin on Covers

We both have a deep love of covers, and I wanted to say that your quiet subtle version of Nick Lowe's "Cruel to be Kind" is beautiful. What made you decide to do this song?

Robin Renee: Well, there’s a funny story. When I was in junior high school, I had a Ouija board. When my parents found out, they got all mad and took it away, thinking something evil would come through it or something. After that, I was pissed off and determined to have a Ouija board. I decided to make one by writing out all the letters on a chalkboard I had (in heavy pencil or some kind of ink). Next, I needed an indicator. I had the 45 record of “Cruel to be Kind.” I loved that song, but wasn’t crazy about whatever song was on the B-side, so I wound up using the record as the Ouija indicator with the B-side scratching against the board.

Devo Dan

Wacky story, right? But unforgettable. So first, “Cruel to be Kind” is just a quintessentially great pop song. I was also a rather precocious person and was a bit interested in BDSM, so I liked the song title for that possible construed meaning. And finally, the song will forever be linked to that funny Ouija board memory for me. I guess when I made the All Six Senses album, it was just time to record a new take on this classic tune.

Robin on Devo Dan

Now you have done other covers of another type. Do you want to talk about Devo Dan?

Robin Renee: Devo Dan… Strange you should ask me about Devo Dan. From time to time, some people have told me I kind of look like him and some think I sound like him. I don’t really get it. But I finally looked him up and I like it a lot! It’s kind of synth pop meets the smooth sounds of the 70’s, or something like that. I found his story here and my favorite Devo Dan song is here.

Robin on the Mutant Mountain Boys

How about the Mutant Mountain Boys?

Robin Renee: I absolutely love being part of the Mutant Mountain Boys! We come from all over the country, so we get together when we can. The band is the brainchild of Samantha, whose musical favorites are Devo and Charlie Poole. She put the two together, added some Church of the Subgenius, and Presto! You’ve got a Devo-gone-bluegrass, SubG gospel band! We have so much fun, and I really hope we can figure out a way to get together and play more often. We need some nerds and geeks to invite us to play their favorite venues and conventions (hint, hint).

Check out "Look Away from the Pinks" and a few other Mutant Mountain Boys tunes.





Robin on the Holidays

You have also released a couple terrific and unique holiday songs over the years, "(Almost Had A) Holiday," "The Yule Song," and "Hare Krishna Christmas." What can you tell us about these great tunes, and especially the video for that last one?

Robin Renee: I know, I didn’t set out to have a tradition of releasing holiday songs, but it seems a trend has started! Who knows – maybe there’ll be a holiday album one of these days that includes the tunes already recorded plus some more from various traditions. “The Yule Song” is to the tune of Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” and it kind of serves the same humorous and serious function for those of us who celebrate Yule, or Winter Solstice in the Pagan traditions. “(Almost Had A) Holiday” is actually an original song I first recorded with a band I used to be in called The Loved Ones. It is upbeat, but about planning a perfect holiday with a partner only to have a breakup and wind up somewhere far away. It’s a fairly true-to-life song, and the cool thing about it is it’s come full circle – After many years apart, I have started spending Christmas Eves with that ex and his family. It’s a nice shift.

I wrote “Hare Krishna Christmas” (“Holly Jolly Christmas” parody) around the time I was first getting deeply into kirtan and bhakti. It was Christmastime and I was just in this really intense place of diving into something new while trying to uphold all the traditional stuff and holiday obligations. So, I was kind of laughing at myself and that song just came out while I was doing my holiday decorating. For the video, I asked friends to send me all kinds of holiday pictures, I had a few, and we used some royalty-free images, too, to come up with something kind of funny and also clearly embracing all winter holiday traditions.





Robin on Her Background

If I'm not intruding, could you tell us about your upbringing?

Robin Renee: I was born a poor, black child (Somehow that line was funnier when Steve Martin said it.)

But seriously, folks… you aren’t intruding at all. It is a ginormous question, though. I grew up in Southern New Jersey and I was lucky in that my interest in music showed up pretty early and my parents were very supportive of that. They also encouraged my interest in science and I got to travel since I was fairly young, which I really appreciate. My parents are (were, actually – they are both deceased) my maternal grandmother and her second husband, who raised me from the beginning and adopted me when I was about five. She was black and he was white, so I had a completely biracial upbringing, though it took me a long time to recognize that as a big part of my identity. I’m really happy I understand that now. They had an interracial marriage several years before Loving v. Virginia, and while it was not illegal in New Jersey, I think it was courageous of them and probably wasn’t always easy early on.

There was always a lot of music in the house, and my parents were pretty metaphysical in their outlook. They were Christian, and also into Edgar Cayce, so I learned about meditation and other broad and alternative spiritual perspectives early on. My brother was there, then off at college & other travels, but we grew to have certain things in common like some musical tastes and love of cartoons. My grandmother (i.e. biological great-grandmother) lived with us, too, and she really was the overriding mother figure. I have often reflected that I think my relationship to Grandmom has been the purest of my life – there was just so much love without complication. My mom was pretty political, so I probably inherited the activist gene from her. Of course there is so much more, but I’m not sure what else I could say without writing a book here.

Robin on Wigheads

Tell us about Wigheads.

Robin Renee: I kinda have no idea. I love them. I find mannequins in general to be strangely compelling and beautiful – maybe that’s the New Wave/Gary Wilson aesthetic. Somewhere along the line, something moved me and I discovered that wig display heads are my canvas for now. I love making 3-D collages with them, and as I work it’s as if they start to tell me their story. Songs and other writings do that, too – they change and grow in the process. I’d like to make more wigheads, and to make photographs from them. I have a lot of other practical and artistic projects that seem to be ahead in line, but I haven’t forgotten them. One day, I’d love to do commissioned wighead works, like create them for clubs and other interesting spaces.

More to come!

Lost Hits of the New Wave #26

"Jocko Homo" by DEVO



Over on The GAR! Podcast, as part of the Robin Renee Blog Tour, Ray and I interviewed Robin for about a half-hour or so. One of the things that came up in conversation was transformative moments in music on "Saturday Night Live."

In those early seasons of the program I was exposed to many new musical experiences that shaped and influenced how I perceived music, and in the growing punk and new wave atmosphere of the late 1970s, "SNL" was full of new musical experiences. Both Robin and I were affected by an appearance by David Bowie. Ray talked about seeing Fishbone, although much later. I remember being amazed by Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, The Specials, The Clash, the B-52s, Gary Numan, and yes, DEVO.

I wouldn't be as hardcore into the band as I was later in the Freedom of Choice and New Traditionalists years, but the visuals and sounds stayed with me. I was especially drawn to their cover of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," and that it did what all covers should seek to do, overtake the original. I still to this day feel the DEVO version is superior to the Stones'.



Don't forget to get over to garpodcast.com, and listen to the Robin Renee interview, and go to Biff Bam Pop! tomorrow for the next stop in the Blog Tour.