Illustration credit: Sherise Seven
Last year, veteran Milwaukee musician Mark G.E. could only hope for the best when he announced New Wave Fest. Pulling together a bill featuring his own band, Xposed 4Heads, alongside Radio Radio, The Quilz and The Fantastic Plastics, he banked on augmenting a turnout of old friends with a new audience of younger people just discovering the synth-powered music of their older siblings’ (parents’?) era.
“A couple hundred people showed up,” G.E. says. This year, he thinks the crowd will be larger still. “There’s been a resurgence of interest in new wave—a lot of folks are excited by the sound. The ’80s are in vogue now,” he continues, citing growing interest in dream pop, synthwave and a previously unknown genre called outrun, derived from the electronic soundtrack to the ’80s video game Out Run. “My 15-year old son loves the background music for ‘The Real Ghostbusters’ cartoon,” G.E. says, citing another example of ’80s pop electronica. “It’s phony sounding, like the rock music on ’60s TV sitcoms, but it’s kitschy and has a period vibe.”
The satirical, Devo-inspired Xposed 4Heads was dormant for decades until the 2012 “Lest We Forget” concert at Turner Hall Ballroom, a sort of college reunion for the city’s cutting edge bands from the early ‘80s. In the interim, G.E. busied himself with film production through his Joy Farm collaborative and music with Cyberchunk, a recording project that learned toward Krautrock influences. Xposed 4Heads is the only “Lest We Forget” band that continues to be active.
G.E.’s group is also the only New Wave Fest performer dating from the new wave era. The other acts—the same lineup as last year—are younger bands influenced by the music of that time. The only non-Milwaukeean on the bill, The Fantastic Plastics, is a “future wave” duo that gained national notice on the 2017 Vans Warped Tour. The Quilz perform quietly affecting originals and creative renditions of ’80s songs. G.E. describes Radio Radio as “the city’s cool new wave cover band, playing the songs all of us actually listened to—not the Top 40 hits.”
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The “all of us” circa 1983 might have numbered 400 people in Milwaukee, drawn to the era’s alternatives to mainstream album rock but splintered into divisive factions. The most obvious fissure separated punk from G.E.’s beloved new wave. Do those distinctions still matter?
“Our younger fans think of our harder rocking songs as punk,” G.E. says. “The more I listen now, the more I realize that those differences are not as important as they once seemed. I recently reveled in hearing The Bee Gees’ ‘Nights on Broadway’ and—although back then we gave it no credibility—I can hear that the beat is similar to what The Human League were doing.”
As for New Wave Fest, “We encourage people to wear their skinny ties and dress ’80s,” G.E. concludes. “The more the merrier. It’s a party!”
New Wave Fest is Saturday, April 13, at 8 p.m. at Shank Hall.
