Marquis De Sade – Air Tight Cell // Henry (Terrapin Records) 1978. How about a little French New Wave? Marquis De Sade were a proto-New Romantic band from Rennes, France that went from being a noisy post-punk act to a suavely sophisticated bunch of “underground yuppies” in a five year period. In many ways their evolution mirrored the evolution of English bands like Japan and Ultravox, yet the French contribution to New Wave and the New Romantic movement in particular remains relatively unexplored. Which is weird because the French really pulled this off in an epic manner with bands like Marquis De Sade and Taxi Girl (a definite future post). This single and their second one, a homage to the silent German actor Conrad Veidt, both are on their first album Dantzig Twist (which is available for a steal at Amazon), in their entirety. On Dantzig Twist, Marquis De Sade sound like Tom Verlaine fronting a sleazy Euro-version of The Suburbs. Their second album Rue De Siam is also available for a steal and it is good, albeit much slicker. No matter how slick these guys became however, lead singer Philippe Pascal still retained his bizarre Beej Chaney meets Klaus Nomi like stage persona.
Hardcore Podcasts
September of 2010 I put together eight Hardcore Podcasts. You can check them out here if you are interested. For more insight into how I came up with the years 78-90 for the First Wave you can read about The Hardcore Superiorty Myth.