CBEB’s

Yesterday over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars Ed Brayton had a huge post of videos from the US Festival. There was a pretty healthy selection, but Ed noted that the US Festival was where Motley Crüe frontman Vince Neil proclaimed the death of New Wave. Maybe Vince was right, but in my opinion, New Wave left a mighty fine looking corpse. Let’s commemorate the death of New Wave with a massive post of clips from Urgh! A Music War. This was a great movie - it sounds like they caught every single band on their best night. It’s a shame that this will probably never get an official DVD release, because according to Wikipedia, the filmmakers filmed three songs by each band, but it looks like we’ll never get to see the other songs.

Kicking things off is Skafish with a great song for church burnin’ and ebola spreadin’, “Sign of the Cross”.
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There’s 9 more videos below the fold.

Here’s a great performance by the Dead Kennedys doing “Bleed For Me”, one of the better songs from the Plastic Surgery Disasters album.
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So you don’t get the impression I’m being Amerocentric, here’s XTC doing “Respectable Street”.
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It’s a shame that Wall of Voodoo is only remembered for “Mexican Radio”. Dark Continent and Call of the West are both great albums. Here’s “Back in Flesh” from the Dark Continent album.
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The Alleycats are - or were, should I say - a fairly obscure Los Angeles band. Here they are with “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore”.
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Klaus Nomi’s “Total Eclipse” is a guilty pleasure of mine. If you ask me, there just aren’t enough disco songs about nuclear holocaust.
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I’m not a huge Joan Jett fan- I like a few of her songs, especially her cover of Gary U.S. Bonds’ “New Orleans”, but I also like “Bad Reputation”, if only because it was the theme song for Freaks and Geeks. Here’s Joan doing a great version of “Bad Reputation”.
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I have the Cramps’ legendary Napa State Mental Hospital show, but the video quality is such shit that I’m glad to have this excellent clip of Lux Interior & Co. doing “Tear It Up”.
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X also did “Beyond and Back” in The Decline of Western Civilization, but I like this version better. This is X when Billy Zoom was still in the band, so you won’t be disappointed.
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Finally, here’s The Police doing a 6½ minute version of “Roxanne”.
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There’s also two more clips from Urgh! in the Video archive; 999 doing “Homicide” and Devo performing “Uncontrollable Urge”.