new wave Archive
23 Jan 2023
Devo’s Gerald Casale is Still Not Through Being Cool
Gerald V. Casale is a founding member of conceptual rock band Devo. In addition to writing and/or co-writing a great deal of that band’s music with fellow founding member Mark […]
02 Sep 2022
Album Review: The Mutants – Curse of the Easily Amused
The Mutants were exemplars of what can accurately be characterized as San Francisco’s “art punk” aesthetic. Formed in 1977, the band of musical misfits and art students combined the DIY […]
26 May 2022
Album Review: SVT — Always Comes Back
As I’ve mentioned before, SVT is the band most often named among those interviewed for my latest book as the Bay Area band most deserving of greater success than they […]
20 May 2022
Album Review: Times Beach — Step in Time
The creatively fertile arts community in the Bay Area – centered for a time around the San Francisco Arts Institute – informed the music scene. As I wrote about in […]
13 May 2022
DVD Review: SVT – The Price of Sex
SVT is one of the coolest bands you’ve likely never heard of. Led by singer, songwriter and guitarist Brian Marnell, this San Francisco-based band had talent to burn, combining musical […]
12 May 2022
Nina Hagen: Ten Albums that Changed My Life
Nina Hagen has always cut an unusual figure in pop music. From Berlin in what was then East Germany, she escaped to the West and launched a career as a […]
13 Apr 2022
Album Review: The Jars — Make Love Not War
My new book, Disturbing the Peace: 415 Records and the Rise of New Wave explores the story of the Bay Area independent record label and the nearly 30 artists – […]
08 Apr 2022
Album Review: The Sound of Glassboro, 1980s
The reductive nature of popular culture dictates that when we recall the 1980s, we’re supposed to think of shoulder pads, big hair and vacuous MTV-era acts like Thompson Twins. But […]
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 […]