Catching the New Wave

It's amazing how much of a difference a single compilation album can make to your life. Sometime in the Spring of 1997, I saw an advert on TV for Once In A Lifetime, subtitled "40 classic New Wave hits" and not too long after I happened to be in the Workington branch of Tescos where it was for sale. After scrounging a couple of quid from my mother, I took it home.

As important purchases go, this was one of my most important. Despite the fact that it doesn't actually feature the Talking Heads song from which it takes the name, it was the first time I ever heard the Teardrop Explodes, the Bunnymen, Buzzcocks, XTC, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Psychedelic Furs, Orange Juice, the Pretenders, the Specials, Elvis Costello, the Icicle Works and Joy Division. All of these bands I've subsequently bought and loved albums by, my eyes opened by some cheapo cash-in album knocked together by Telstar.

A pretty seminal moment in my life, then. The Joy Division part being top of them all, as hearing Love Will Tear Us Apart got me on the path that led to me visiting a friend of my dad a few months later to pick up vinyl copies of Closer and Still, subsequently leading to me going out to buy my first bass guitar.

As a kind of summary of whatever "New Wave" was, it's fine, though you have to question what the Smiths are doing here. You've got the pioneers (Iggy Pop), the trendsetters (see above), the bandwagon jumpers (Boomtown Rats) and the slightly odd (Flying Lizards). I would imagine licensing issues prevent certain key bands of the era, like Talking Heads, from appearing, though barring a few exceptions, just about everything here is either British or Irish.

The album also compiles some great one-off hits like Pigbag's Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag, Back of My Hand by the Jags and Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins. Not quite sure what Young at Heart by the Bluebells is doing here, though, and it's a shame they used the re-recording of Pretty In Pink instead of the far better version the Furs recorded in 1981. But still, anything that ends it's first CD with The Story of the Blues by the Mighty Wah! is always going to be brilliant for me.