In The Mix: New Wave Friday Pt 3

Fifty years ago this week, a small London label that had been going for barely two months released a two-and-a-half-minute single by a band called the Damned. "New Rose" came out on 22 October 1976. It's generally counted as the first record by a British punk band, it didn't chart, and it was on Stiff Records. Stiff had started that summer with £400 borrowed from the singer in Dr. Feelgood. Its first release, Nick Lowe's "So It Goes," cost £45 to make. Over the next decade the label gave us Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, Madness, Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues, and it lost a fair few of them along the way. This week's New Wave Friday is Stiff's hour. We start in 1976 with the Damned and with the Saints, whose "(I'm) Stranded" came out in Brisbane a month earlier and on their own label, so they beat the British to it. We also pay a visit to Propeller in Auckland, another label that started on $400 and a hunch.

There's a running story in the middle of the hour. Kirsty MacColl's first single went to number two on the radio airplay chart in 1979, but nobody could buy it because the distributors were on strike. Four years later Tracey Ullman took the same song to number two, and the high note everyone remembers on that record is Kirsty's. We also stop for two singers who died on the same day last month: Pete Byrne of Naked Eyes, whose Bacharach cover went to number two in New Zealand while it stalled at 59 in Britain, and Catherine Ringer of Les Rita Mitsouko, the voice of French new wave. The hour finishes with a Damned record from this year, Nick Lowe still going strong at 77, and a Stiff number one that spent two weeks stuck behind the Village People.

Broadcast 23 October 2026

Songs in this episode:

0:01 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
1:05 The Damned – New Rose
2:09 The Saints – (I'm) Stranded
3:13 Nick Lowe – So It Goes
4:34 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
5:30 Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives
6:34 Rachel Sweet – B-A-B-Y
7:38 Jona Lewie – You'll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties
9:00 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
9:49 Kirsty MacColl – They Don’t Know
10:53 Blam Blam Blam – There Is No Depression in New Zealand
11:57 Department S – Is Vic There?
13:17 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
14:21 Naked Eyes – Always Something There to Remind Me
15:25 Les Rita Mitsouko – Marcia Baïla
16:45 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
17:30 Madness – Our House (Single Version)
18:34 Tracey Ullman – They Don't Know
19:54 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday
20:42 The Damned – See Emily Play
21:46 Nick Lowe, Los Straitjackets – Went to a Party
22:50 Ian Dury – Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick
24:10 NZ Net Radio – In The Mix New Wave Friday