Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This colorful and wildly entertaining look at the New Wave era in pop music (roughly, late 1970s through the end of the 1980s and defined within as a straightforward songwriting approach relying heavily on synthesizers and other electronic equipment ) covers more than 150 artists and bands from a-ha to Ze Popes. Best-selling acts such as Duran Duran, the Police, and the Smiths are included alongside one-hit wonders like the Flying Lizards, Kajagoogoo, and Q-Feel. Influential music-related personalities of the era, including Malcolm McClaren and Brian Eno, are also featured. A foreword by Gerald Casale, of the band Devo, and the introduction by the author serve to define New Wave and explain who was included as well as what was left out. Entries range from one column to three-page spreads. The longer entries are made up of many photographs, with larger, well-known bands getting more coverage. The text is highly subjective and meant to be more for entertainment than research. A snarky but amusing tone is found throughout (e.g., Despite writing songs for uniformly despicable films, Go West has managed to keep a career going ; In 1989, Cutting Crew released the appropriately named The Scattering, which sent record buyers running in all directions looking for somewhere anywhere to go in order to not buy it ). The eye-popping graphics featuring a massive amount of photographs will delight any fan of the music and the time period. Interesting sidebars are peppered throughout the text, such as Gender-Bending, NY Clubs, Heartthrobs, Men's Fashion, The Many Sounds of New Wave, Music Videos, Female Sex Symbols, and Movies. Appendixes include several Best of New Wave lists, including Fifty Most Essential New Wave Singles, Top Ten New Wave Bands with the Most Ridiculous Hair, New Wave Timeline, Ten Weirdest New Wave Singles, and Top Twenty Essential New Wave Albums. A bibliography and an index of artists and song titles round out the book. Cheeky yet incredibly informative, this is an inexpensive must-have for any music collection and will do especially well in circulation.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
The ripple effects of new wave music have recurred for long enough in popular culture that it is perhaps easy to forget what an initial impact it made after emerging from punk rock in the late 1970s. Bukszpan (The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal) mostly succeeds in his attempt to create a fan's reference guide to the movement and its musical breadth. It is fitting that visual presentation is this book's clear strength, given the centrality of dynamic fashion styles to new wave; neon colors frame a well-chosen host of artist photographs and album covers. Bukszpan provides a comprehensive A-to-Z list of artist entries while also including small bits about new wave videos, fashions, and sexuality, among other topics. He is occasionally repetitive and could have penned a lengthier introduction to describe how new wave actually came about, a subject he only indirectly addresses near the book's end. VERDICT Not many books focus solely on new wave, so fans of the movement should enjoy Bukszpan's work, particularly as a coffee-table conversation starter.-Christopher Martin, Univ. of Dayton Zimmerman Law Lib., OH (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
