Continuing with New Wave Week…
One of the common elements in the post-punk scene — one that has remained consistent to this day — is the presence of the quirky band. I’m thinking of acts like King Missile, They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies. The great challenge is that if you’re quirky and humorous, then you’re pegged as a novelty act. And if you’re quirky and weird, then you’re just… weird. It’s hard to move beyond that classification. As Frank Zappa asked, “Does Humor Belong in Music?”
For example, we have Madness, who’ve been and gone and back and are still lingering around. The so-called “Nutty Boys” combined ska revivalism with the English music hall tradition to create a crowd-pleasing sound. Although they clowned around and were très amusant, they also had a number of very good straight pop songs. But they never seemed able to escape the corner they were painted into. And so, after a decade together, the band broke up in ’86. Some of them re-surfaced as The Madness (and failed) and then as the Nutty Boys. In the Nineties, they finally reunited to play some live shows and recorded another studio album. This year, they released The Dangermen Sessions, Vol. 1, which is all cover versions. Here is some of their characteristic silliness from the mid-Eighties, a track called “Inanity Over Christmas.”
A more difficult case is XTC. They were also quirky in their own way. There was the biting sarcasm, the clever lyrics, the interesting song topics. They also combined the post-punk energy with a real commitment to songcraft; that made them weird right there. A lot of their early songs had those characteristic slashing, jagged guitar lines that were typical of the time.
(In fact, thinking about it, and looking back at this week’s attempts to define the post-punk era, that was the common element: The music was typically all sharp edges — no curves. Of course, then the synthesizers came in…)
Today’s offering though is more along the lines of New Wave’s synth-pop genre. (Read the background to the song here. The short version is that it was the B-side to a 1983 Christmas single, and was released under the pseudonym of The Three Wise Men.) What makes it New Wave? What distinguishes it from a Christmas song by Cliff Richard or Slade? It’s very catchy and propulsive. Got those synthesizers. Choppy guitars. Yup. In the end, it’s all just pop music.
Madness – Inanity Over Christmas — BUY
The Three Wise Men – Countdown to Christmas Party Time — BUY