Pop History Play

Let’s start with a hypothetical. Suppose you’re 21 years old, you’re a raging Anglophile obsessed with British music, culture, and history, and you’re in London for the first time ever, with a flat to yourself for 1 week. For that week only, you have no responsibilities and are free to do whatsoever you fancy, in this city which Samuel Johnson once remarked that to be tired of is to be tired of life. How do you choose to spend your time? Go to the opera perhaps? Visit all the museums you can locate on a map? Or, if you’re prone to loneliness and a real ennui of the soul (let us suppose that you are), maybe you’ll try out the pubs and clubs, to see if there’s more to life than what you’ve thus far known.

All fine choices, and there are a million more – for, to quote Johnson yet again, there is in London all that life can afford. But let us suppose you make a different choice – you decide to stay in the flat, barely going out at all, except for those necessaries we all require (food, drink, the lot). It all seems to culminate one particular evening, when you realize you’ve been on the computer all day, your stomach is as empty as the pantry is, and it’s 10:00 at night. You must, therefore, sally out of the flat, in search of some vittles – but what’s still open? Well, there’s KFC, and the pubs are probably still serving; maybe fried chicken and a gin and tonic is just what you need to get out of this funk. So, with CD player, headphones, and a Beautiful South jewel case in hand, you set out. It all goes basically according to plan; you devour the chicken on the way to the pub, and contentedly sip your gin and tonic before closing time. Then, running off that curious manic energy which seems only to come with inebriation, you wander the streets aimlessly, crafting a top piece of music journalism in your head on why Choke is such a brilliant satire of turn of the 1990s corporate workplace inanity. Of course, when you get back to the flat you’re now quite tired, and like all the other ideas in your head, you never actually get around to turning thought into action. After all, there is school to worry about, real-life relationships to contemplate, and of course more music to listen to, so you just don’t have time! You never do: if time is money, you’d surely be the poorest man on earth.

Now, the obvious part: this isn’t a hypothetical at all, it’s a brief look at what I got up to during the Week 6 break. And those were the more interesting bits. If you really want to be bored by association, just keep reading. For what could I have possibly been doing, all that time indoors, sitting in front of the computer screen? Before you jump to any conclusions, let me assure you, it was far less pleasurable, and less normal, than that which you’re now thinking. For I had been engaged in a particularly masochistic form of self-abuse: that of the compulsive Wikipedia editor, determined to triumph over their adversaries with  wit and wisdom. The struggle was over that amorphous, slippery thing we like to call “New Wave”. At least some of us do. Others of us would dispute its application to the very letter, convinced of the righteousness of our cause. I’m not talking about New Wave cinema, by the way – I’m not that cultured. What I’m referring to is that music genre, or movement, or term, or whatever it is, popularized at the end of the 1970s by the likes of Elvis Costello, The Jam, and Ian Dury and the Blockheads. New Wave might be difficult to pin down precisely, but, as the saying goes, I know it when I see it. If you wore a skinny tie and played in a band around 1980, you’re probably in.

But what if I told you of a heresy, most commonly reported in the United States of America, that has perverted the New Wave beyond all recognition? These heathens, many of whom call themselves “New Wave fans”, are reputed to hold the most damnable falsities to be truths, and have spread their false gospel far and wide. In their pea-sized brains, Paul Weller might as well never have existed; for, so they preach, the leading New Wave bands were Duran Duran, Culture Club, and Kajagoogoo. Kajagoogoo! New Wave! Think of it. According to these blasphemers, New Wave is an “umbrella term” encompassing virtually all British pop music made during the 1980s, from Level 42 to Wham! Overwhelmed by superstition, the bigots refuse to recant their absurd dogmas, even when presented with the most incontrovertible proof of their errors. Worst of all, since the creed became established in the United States, the world’s sole superpower, the fanatics have succeeded in commandeering institutes of knowledge (Wikipedia), rewriting history to accommodate their lies. There is evidence now that even young Britons, whose parents could well distinguish XTC from Wang Chung, have lapsed into error, adopting the Americanist heresy through no fault of their own.

So, with the zeal of a converso, I set about to guide my wayward countrymen toward true religion, plainly demonstrating to them the errors of their ways. I rewrote much of Wikipedia’s page on “New Wave music”, citing the opinions of such learned Americans as Messrs. Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs, and Chuck Eddy. I delved into the archives of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and other such publications, to prove to my countrymen that, distant as that age now seems, their heresy was once not always so powerful. I cited also the work of British authors, who have always placed the New Wave era in the late 1970s, ending with the rise of electropop in the 80s. To really rattle my opponents, I quoted one British author who identified the “death” of New Wave with the formation of Duran Duran. Now, surely, my American friends would realize that the New Romantics, far from epitomizing the New Wave, were its downfall. Right? Of course not. Heresy is not easily extirpated, and many of these “80s New Wave fans”, as they call themselves, cling as strongly to their heresy as I do to true religion. Like the warring princes of Germany, I think we must at some point reach a Peace of Westphalia, attendant with the principle of cuius regio, eius religio. But until then, we will continue to pointlessly massacre one another in the name of Jesus Christ and his Disciples, or Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. So now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.

Works Cited

Christgau, Robert. “Glossary.” Christgau’s Record Guide: The ’80s, 1990,
https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/bk-cg80/glossary.php

Collins, Andrew. “And then came the wave…” The Guardian, 19 Mar. 2005,https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/mar/19/popandrock

De Rogatis, Jim. “A Final Chat With Lester Bangs (Part 2 of 4).” Perfect Sound Forever, Nov. 1999, https://www.furious.com/perfect/lesterbangs2.html

Matos, Michaelangelo. “The Writer’s Jukebox: An Interview with Chuck Eddy. Los Angeles Review of Books, 29 Sept. 2011, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-writers-jukeboxan-interview-with-chuck-eddy/

Nickson, Chris. “New Wave Music in the 70s.” Ministry of Rock, 25 Sept. 2012, https://www.ministryofrock.co.uk/NewWave.html

Nickson, Chris. “New Romantics.” Ministry of Rock, 25 Sept. 2012,
https://www.ministryofrock.co.uk/newromantics.html

Nickson, Chris. “The Rise and Fall of Electro Music.” Ministry of Rock, 2 Oct. 2010, https://www.ministryofrock.co.uk/the-rise-fall-electro-music.html

Sweeting, Adam. “That was the modern world.” The Guardian, 26 Apr. 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/apr/26/shopping.artsfeature