new wave Archive
13 Jan 2022
Boxed Set Review: Fuzztones Salute the Greats
For decades now, The Fuzztones have been doing the important work of keeping the garage punk flame burning. Originally a New York City aggregation, the band led by Rudi Protrudi […]
26 Sep 2021
Album Review: Jim Basnight and The Moberlys – Seattle – New York – Los Angeles
Describing something as underrated is sometimes little more than a lazy way of approaching an artist’s work. But it can have useful meaning. In the case of The Moberlys, the […]
06 May 2021
Book Review: Shut Up You Animals!!! A Remembrance of Dirk Dirksen
Dirk Dirksen wasn’t known as musician, but his importance to the music history of San Francisco is substantial. Imagine a sort of Bill Graham writ small, with a perhaps unexpected […]
03 May 2021
Book Review: Paul Collins — I Don’t Fit In
One of the finest among the so-called new wave bands of the late-late-late ‘70s and very early 80s (the subgenre’s peak period) was The Beat. Renamed Paul Collins Beat to […]
12 Mar 2021
Album Review: Pylon — Pylon Box
With great and due respect to R.E.M. – and, to a lesser extent, the B-52’s – there was a lot more significant musical activity going on in and around Athens, […]
22 Feb 2021
The 411 on 415
Last November I wrote a cover story for SF Weekly; it focused on a series of reissue/compilation CDs on the Liberation Hall label. Those releases contained music originally released on […]
18 Feb 2021
Hundred-word Reviews: February 2021, Part 3
These five are all archival, reissue and/or compilation releases. There’s even a vinyl release here. Wolfgang Lackerschmid & Chet Baker – Quintet Sessions 1979 I was only recently introduced to […]
11 Jan 2021
The Discs: Old New Wave is New Again
When punk and new wave were exploding in New York City in the late ’70s and early 1980s, Allan Day wasn’t old enough to drive a car, much less play […]
30 Dec 2020
Always Comes Back: 415 Records and the SF New Wave Scene (Part 3 of 3)
Continued from Part Two… The Uptones Ska was relatively unknown in the United States when The Uptones got their start. Eric Din – who still leads a version of The […]
29 Dec 2020
Always Comes Back: 415 Records and the SF New Wave Scene (Part 2 of 3)
Continued from Part One… The Mutants In late 1978, Sally Webster had a giant loft on First and Mission where she often held salon-type events. “A lot of bands played […]