Zachary Perrier | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Zachary Perrier
Title: “And You May Ask Yourself, ‘Well, How Did I Get Here?’”: The Tension Between Authenticity and Commercial Value in Early American Punk and New Wave Music
Major: History
Minor: Music
Advisor: Greg Shaya

New wave music in the United States originated from underground and punk subcultures in cities such as New York City during the late 1970s, where bands in intimate venues produced a wide range of sounds from abrasive to avant-garde. The conflation of punk and new wave is well documented in music history and scholarship, but these sources only touch on the role the recording industry played in shaping the genre through advertising. This I.S. casts light on the tension between art and commerce that shaped the emergence of “new wave” as a term that came to denote both authorship and marketability. I use archival documents from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Library and Archives to illustrate the mutual or destructive relationships created between record executives and punk/new wave artists like Talking Heads and Patti Smith Group. I also use trade papers, magazines, and oral histories to set context for the milieu that artists and club owners created in New York City to promote the fledging punk/new wave movement. A digital website companion based on exhibits found at the Rock Hall – available at https://howdidigethere.collegeofwooster.net – is also a part of this project. The project shows complexity in the relationship between these artists that got their start in the dingy clubs of New York City and the record companies that marketed them to a mass audience. This study reflects on the changes of alternative popular music in the recording industry.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.