New wave music wasn’t easily defined, but most fans knew it when they heard it. We chose 10 songs that, to us, were the best of the genre.
Author: Jim Sullivan
Jim Sullivan
As a high school baseball player growing up in Maine, I used to pump myself up for games by playing Raw Power by Iggy & the Stooges –the ultimate adrenaline rush. My friends and team mates didn't quite get it. They liked Chicago (the band). But that was OK: the punk rock revolution was around the corner, and that's where my musical taste locked in with many others, bored with corporate rock. Yes, I had Slade, Mott, Bowie and Roxy to get me there, too. That punk (and post) period was a time of extreme excitement (friction, joy, conflict) that inspired me to write about what I loved. And it opened the doors to even more worlds. I wrote about pop music and other arts for the Boston Globe for 25-plus years, with more than 10,000 stories to my credit before leaving in 2005. Since then I’ve freelanced for the Boston Phoenix, Boston Herald, Where magazine, Boston Common, Yankee magazine online, Time Out Boston, US News & World Report, the Cape Cod Times. I host the XFINITY on Demand music/interview show “Boston Rock/Talk,” and write and edit www.jimsullivanink.com, which serves as a critical guide to arts and events around metro Boston.
Says the folk legend: “I’m comfortable and happy. I’m not trying to reach notes that I can’t reach anymore. I’m working on what I have, which I like a lot.”
After producing classic albums by Aerosmith, Jack Douglas helped a band from Illinois gets its start. Then came December 1980
Any list of top songs of any genre are going to be subjective. But, says its author, here are ones by Blondie, Devo and more for punk rock
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We take a close look at the formative years of one of rock’s greatest bands, and their ‘madcap’ leader who was a shining star of the psychedelic era