New Wave for the New Week #41 BONUS ENTRY! BY REQUEST!

[All throughout the month of November, all NW4NW entries are based on requests made by you, dear readers. Because of the amount of requests received, there will often be more than one entry per week during this month - I recommend signing up for email alerts on the left-hand side of the screen so that you don't miss any of the fun!]

NW4NW All Request Month continues with our first "repeat performance." When Tom Quinn submitted his request for The Plastics, I replied that it was a fantastic choice! So good of a choice, in fact, that I had already done an entry on them - in fact, they were the very first entry in the series! So, I gave Tom the choice - either he could pick another band, or we'd make them not only the first band covered in the series, but also the first band repeated in the series.

"Go ahead and replay the Plastics." Tom wrote. "They are worthy."

Indeed they are, Tom. Indeed they are! No need to rewrite background info - you can read the original post here, or check out their MySpace page . Instead, here's a variety of Plastics clips to enjoy, including "Copy," "Good," and "Peace":

The Plastics - Copy
Uploaded by guadaloupe. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Now then, didn't they make you smile? Thanks, Tom, for a great request!

(By the way, Tom makes some music himself, as one half of The Mud Pie Sun. Check out their site and their music, especially their cover of X-Ray Spex's classic "Germ Free Adolescents" - great stuff!)

New Wave for the New Week

Plastics (via last.fm)

Happy Monday, everyone. Sorry to go through another posting dryspell - nothing is catching my eye or ear to rant about lately. But, I don't want to leave you unentertained, so I have come up with a few regular features to begin debuting on the blog. This is the first of them: New Wave for the New Week will be a regular Monday feature, where I will dig up some long-forgotten new wave video clip to help get your week started out on a good note. Suggestions/requests are welcomed - leave them in the comments, and I'll see what I can do.

The clip I've chosen for the first post of this series is a bit of a rarity. The only place I have ever seen the Plastics' video clip for Top Secret Man was on the old and fondly remembered SCTV; indeed, the clip you see here is cut from that show (hence the very un-PC opening bit). The video and song are from 1979, the very height of the New-Wave era.

The Plastics' two Japanese albums, 1979's Welcome Plastics and 1980's Origato Plastico are leaps and bounds better than the watered down American release Plastics (also known as Welcome Back), where the key songs from the original LPs were actually rerecorded to better suit "American musical palettes." While this may have resulted in slicker production, the quirkiness and angular DIY feel of the original recordings was lost, along with much of their personality. All three are worth picking up if you can find them, though. They have all been issued on CD, but have gone out of print and now fetch a pretty penny on Amazon.com.

The clip used the original Japanese version of the song. It is obviously dated, using early video techniques, but that is a large part of its charm. You'll hear echoes of The B-52s, Devo and Suburban Lawns here, so if you like that sound, this will be right up your alley. The darn thing just makes me smile, which is why I picked it.

So, without further delay, here is your New Wave for the New Week: Top Secret Man by The Plastics:

Top Secret Man - The Plastics