by newyawkdoll » Sun Oct 09, 2011 1:35 pm
I have no problem with R.E.M being a topic of a New Wave discussion, and for the record I do enjoy some of their 80s stuff. Plus, for whatever it's worth, it seems R.E.M. had plenty of musical influences that overlap with New Wave ones. They were inspired by Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Television, Lou Reed, Talking Heads, and I know Michael Stipe expressed his love of Blondie.
REM was among the first of the bands to mark the transition from Wave to Alt-Rock, but it was still so early on that I'll bet they were labeled Wave quite a bit (at least in the US where the term was used for such a long time).