New Waver

New Waver was an Australian satirical musical project developed by Greg Wadley in 1990.<ref name="Ankeny"/><ref name="Defeated"/> It grew out of Wadley's prior projects, a zine Loser, a mock political action group, Campaign Against Uninteresting Shops in Brunswick Street and a fictitious tribute band, Christmas Party.<ref name="Ankeny"/>

History

New Waver was founded by Greg Wadley in 1990 in Melbourne.<ref name="Ankeny"/><ref name="Wadley">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Wadley, on bass guitar, was a founding member of Tex Perkins' Brisbane-formed cowpunk band, Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, in 1982.<ref name="McFarlane TP">Template:Cite book Note: McFarlane has Peter Jetnikov.</ref> Fellow member Peter Jetnikoff provided guitar.<ref name="McFarlane TP"/><ref name="Dum Dums">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They relocated to Sydney but disbanded in the following year.<ref name="McFarlane TP"/> Wadley established the Losercorp project in the 1980s, which published a zine Loser (1987–1992) under the pseudonyms A Loser and Arthur Protestant,<ref name="Sticky Loser">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> formed a mock political action group, Campaign Against Uninteresting Shops in Brunswick Street and a fictitious tribute band, Christmas Party.<ref name="NW About">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

New Waver, was the music project of Wadley, which has a similar pessimistic outlook to Losercorp's earlier efforts, underwritten with Darwinism. Its music consists of electronic elements (from synthesisers, samplers and drum machines), along with samples from TV nature programmes, advertisements and audio books by Richard Dawkins, selectively chosen to reinforce the bleak, fatalistic message, coupled with dark humour. The New Waver world view extends the survival of the fittest hypothesis to the social ladder present in modern urban and suburban culture. The songs feature both cover versions and parodies of well-known songs with lyrics altered to reflect their world view, as well as instrumentals populated with samples and loops. The term "New Waver" is 1980s-vintage pejorative Queensland slang for a male who is interested in music, rather than football, and thus deserving of harassment or violence. "New Waver" also became a term for those who were fans of new wave music throughout the 1980s.

New Waver issued their first music cassette, Middle Class Man, in 1990. According to a reviewer for Radiation from Space Magazine, it is "esoteric, weird and wild keyboard and samples, blended with drums, bass and odd guitar they created a hypnotic groove."<ref name="Spring Valley 1">Template:Cite journal</ref> The title track is a parody of "Working Class Man" (1985) by Jimmy Barnes, while "Teabreak" relates to AC/DC's "Jailbreak" (1976).<ref name="Spring Valley 1"/>

In 1998, the band was one of many in the music video "Thunderbirds Are Coming Out" by fellow Australian band TISM. For New Waver's album, The Defeated (1999), Zyklatt provided drum loops.<ref name="Defeated"/> Most of its original tracks were written by Wadley however, former bandmate, Jetnikoff wrote the track, "Struggle for Hogwash", for the album.<ref name="APRA Strubble">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2006 a compilation album, Neuters, was issued, its "music consisted of dinky covers of Top 40 hits with the lyrics changed to address the life of the office loser."<ref name="Blackman">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Guy Blackman of The Age described the band's members, "two unassuming public-servant types lurking behind cheesy synthesisers, with a singer who began most gigs naked, putting on an item of clothing after each song in a deadpan inversion of rock'n'roll behaviour."<ref name="Blackman"/> There is an interview with Wadley in Iain McIntyre and Mike Munro's book, How to Make Trouble and Influence People (2009).<ref name="McIntyre">Template:Citation</ref>

Discography

• Middle Class Man (cassette, 1990)<ref name="Ankeny">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Hard Drivin' Beat (cassette, 1991)
• Perverted by Wheat (cassette, 1991)<ref name="Ankeny"/>
• Low Self Opinion (cassette, 1992)
• Live 'n' Lossy (cassette, 1993)
• "What a Man" (cassette single, 1994)
• Aspects of Loserdom (cassette, 1994)<ref name="Ankeny"/>
• Mr Loser-Boozer Goes to Town (cassette, 1996)<ref name="Berry">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Darwin Junior High (vinyl EP, 1997)
• Bohemian Suburb Rhapsody (album, 1998)<ref name="Ankeny"/>
• The Defeated (CD, 1999) – Endearing Records<ref name="Ankeny"/><ref name="Defeated">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

• Computer World (mp3 album, 2001)
• Neuters (CD compilation album, 2006) – Dual Plover/Spill Records<ref name="Blackman"/><ref name="Dual Power">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

References

• Kouvaras, L. (2009) "Hissing at the margins: Postmodern mainstream positioning in Australian sound art", in Strong, C. and Phillipov, M. (Eds.) "Stuck in the Middle: the Mainstream and its Discontents. Selected proceedings of the 2008 IASPM-ANZ conference".
• Priest (ed., 2009) Experimental Music: Audio Explorations in Australia

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