“First, I didn’t know what New Wave was until, like, a couple weeks ago,” said host Grace Phipps as they welcomed a crowd of students gathered in the Deanne Carriage Barn on the evening of April 20 to New Wave Night.
The event, put together by Lomie Blum and Luce Magsamen-Hillerbrand, consisted of four bands performing covers of inclusively-defined New Wave music—“songs that everyone knows,” as Phipps promised in their welcome. The walls were covered with printouts of old band posters, and behind the drums two pride flags flanked a giant photo of Kate Bush—whose song “Babooshka” the band S&M opened the evening with. “You’ll know this song,” singer Surabhee Arjunwadkar told the crowd. The band wore matching headscarves.
Next up was Marina Fleming, who performed songs including Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” The Smiths’s “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out,” and—after soliciting a capo from the audience—Galaxie 500’s “Tugboat.”
The night also saw the return of The Yeehaw Family Band, who performed last term at Honky-Tonk Night—a similar event with a country music theme, also organized by Blum. Band member Lily Gibson explained the name in an interview after the show: “It was just a joke for Honky-Tonk. And it’s the name we’ve had for these cover band nights. It’s like a little joke that’s stuck.” The Family Band opened their set with A-ha’s “Take On Me”, which was met with cheers from the audience and passionate singing along. “You guys have lovely voices. You guys sound really good,” one band member told the crowd after the song ended.
Last was Girlee Girl, performing, for the night, under the name The Cure. For Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America”, they called up a chorus of people from the audience—performers, friends— to huddle around a music stand and sing.
The band ended the night with New Order’s “Age of Consent.” Dancers crowded around the band, spinning, waving their arms, singing along.
Blum said in an interview afterwards that the process of organizing the show was “very, very chaotic.” Only eight days before the event, the venue had to be changed from DownCaf to the Deanne Carriage Barn due to “sound reasons” and the influence of the Program & Activity Council. “It was mainly because the person who normally does sound at DownCaf was not available. And then I got someone else to do it, and they ended up not being qualified enough in the eyes of PAC. Which I think is not true, but.”
The lead-up to the show was also chaotic for the individual bands. “Last minute absences made two bands have completely no members. It was a lot of last minute scrambling,” said Milo Lis of S&M. “I was in three of the four bands. I had one rehearsal with Girlie Girl and one with Marina. But I think we were all super professional, super committed and passionate about it, and what turned out was a really awesome show. ”
The event was the second of the kind that Blum has organized, after the November 2023 Honky-Tonk Night. “That was a major success. I love bringing people together through music, and raising money for charity,” Blum said. “Beyond country music, my other favorite genre is New Wave and 80s Alternative. Bands like New Order, The Cure, and The Smiths have really impacted my life in a positive way. I started reaching out to people to see if they were interested, and there was an overwhelming excitement for it.”
All proceeds from the event were donated to The Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to suicide prevention for queer youth. “This genre of music is so special because it’s all these alternative people—former punks, queer people—coming together to make music and making such a strange form of art that made its way to the mainstream. It’s really beautiful,” Blum said. “I thought that this would be a really great night to demonstrate that variety, not just in music, but in people.”
Lis also mentioned New Wave’s social significance. “I love how silly and weird it is. It feels very free and vulnerable and political and honest. And that’s my favorite kind of music.”
Next term—her last—Blum is hoping to organize one more of these sorts of events. “I was thinking about doing either a 90s night, or Honky-Tonk Night part 2—I was even thinking about doing a punk rock night. I definitely want to do this my last term. It brings me a lot of joy. This was all really chaotic, and it was really rough to get here, but when it happens, it’s just the most fulfilling thing to me.”
Blum looked over to her co-organizer, Luce Magsamen-Hillerbrand. “And Luce was there every second of the way. We’ve both bonded together over New Wave music. Stuff like Adam Ant, Devo—”
“B-52s,” Magsamen-Hillerbrand added. “It’s always really fun having a space to let people perform and do weird shit.”
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