Mike76

I remember these were not bad, devastating on the dancefloor and good for simple listening as well.

"The Beauty and the Beast" singing together? No, that's not for me.

Great singer Vega, I don't know him yet in the role of composer. I could start from here.

@Blackdog: It seems unbelievable to me, but this time we are on the same side of the barricade :-) ! I'll be back in a couple of weeks, in the meantime feel free to go ahead without me!

The theatrical Bauhaus? Maybe, so what? Bowie was one too, but that doesn't mean he produced fluff. Moreover, it doesn't seem to me that they've become particularly stereotyped; they've transitioned from a sort of dark glam rock to reggae-dub experiments, from medieval ballads to covers of Eno and Bowie. A very varied repertoire instead.
And finally, an Easycure question: are your judgments changing or are they definitive? I ask such a stupid question because I remember that in a review of the Talking Heads you commented something like "In New York the worst: bourgeois and intellectuals. Rating: 3." Have you changed your opinion so quickly?

I'm sorry for not intervening in this interesting discussion, which, by the way, concerns me directly; I'm currently on vacation and I rarely turn on my PC. Anyway, I'll try to briefly respond to the three points that Easycure commented on.
1) Thank you for your reasoning, but the birth of MTV has nothing to do with it, and besides, it arrived in Europe later than the early '80s.
2) Precisely because (I'll quote you) "there's been little or nothing in the UK that has continued in such experimentation," it means that the UK put in a lot (or all) of their own effort. If we reduce ourselves to the war of dates (about who came first), then I could mention Ultravox!, a band that doesn’t excite me, but debuted in March '77, likely before Television and Talking Heads.
3) If you can find me an American who played like the guys I've listed, let me know right away and I'll rush out to buy the CD :-)
So, for you, Wire, Gang of Four, and Bauhaus would be the incapable clones of Pere Ubu, Talking Heads, and Television? Far from me to downplay American New Wave, but I want to emphasize at least the equally original qualities of the one from across the sea. Let's take Siouxsie, certainly initially influenced vocally by Patti Smith, and also a fan of Television, covering "Little Johnny Jewel": so yes, you're right in that she was influenced by the American wave, but her records, as a whole, have their own personality; you can't find a single American band that sounded like "Join Hands" or "The Scream." Siouxsie is far from being a cover band of any American group, as are all the other bands I've mentioned. In the same way, English new wave is clearly different from kraut-rock, yet many took something from Neu!, Faust, and Kraftwerk.

I ordered it, but unfortunately, it never arrived. Instead, I found a "twin" compilation called "Nao Wave," released almost simultaneously with this one, from a German label called Man. There are also some tracks you mentioned, like the seductive and romantic "Samba Do Morro" by Chance, or "Sobre As Pernas" by Akira S, perfectly in the style of Associates, as I see it. There are also Fellini with two tracks, but not the one you mention, and Mercenarias with the wildly energetic "Policia," which is really very No Wave. It's a great operation of musical archaeology, with good artistic quality, definitely worth having.

Letta, verbose but beautiful, and then "the immersion of punk in industrial experimentation" is a phrase that fits perfectly.
Anyway, for the various detractors of the English new wave, I remind you of two or three things: 1) the new wave represented the overcoming of the sex-drugs-rock 'n' roll stereotype and of the "rebellion" (the superficial kind) that had become a cliché in rock; 2) it purged rock of African American influences (blues, soul) and white American influences (country) that had standardized rock up to that point, and even when there were some borrowed elements from black music, they were placed in a completely new context (see the Afro rhythms of P.i.l.); 3) it reinvented the use of rock instruments (who played bass like Hook or Karn before them? Who played guitar like Levene or McGeogh before them?), before, rock was practically guitar and voice, and then all the other instruments were merely accompaniment, with the new wave all instruments became protagonists alongside the guitar and voice.
Someone will tell me that progressive had almost achieved all these results too, and maybe that's true, but what a bore progressive was! :-)

Philosopho, in my opinion, Vortex means that the Bauhaus didn't wake up one morning and say "let's make a dark record" because the dark genre didn't exist. They made the music they wanted to make without following any trends. It was the critics who put them in a box. However, contrary to Vortex, I believe that calling this record "dark" is not wrong considering the darkness of the lyrics and music. You're both right, I guess :-)

No, no, on the contrary, you did well to remind them Blackdog, it was just forgetfulness. Maybe we should also add the Wire to the list, "very little truly creative and very, very superficial."