Obscure Sub-genre #4 - Wine Rock

Punk dominated British music between 1978 and 1980, over shadowing all forms of new music in the press at the time and blinding pop-historians looking back.

Wine rock not punk is the real link between Roxy Music, the primitive pre-punk pub-rock movement and the explosion of new romanticism around 1981.

New romanticism is often seen as a direct reaction to punk’s celebration of filth and decay. The make-up and flamboyancy allied with the DIY ideals of punk are taken as gospel. But this wasn’t a sudden reaction; it had been fermenting in London’s Wine Rock scene since 1977.

Bands like The Vintage Boys and The Merlots took there influences, both sound and image from Roxy Music and The New York Dolls. Seeing the sprouts of sophistication emerging in the transformation of traditional pubs to wine bars around London, they realised that the music they played had to become more sophisticated too. They pre-empted the mindset of Thatcherite Britain.

Although visually and ideologically distinctive they couldn’t quite reflect this in the music they made. Seemingly unable to fully unshackle from the lumpen pub rock that existed before this movement and the way punk dominated the limelight, the evolution wine rock tried to instigate did not truly occur.

Without the added technological twist of synthesisers that new romanticism utilised, wine rock is, sonically speaking, easily overlooked yet it should be remembered how in incorporating fashion, consumerism and narcissism they formed the outlook that new romanticism appropriated and ran away with.

For better or for worse, wine rock was instrumental in the form pop music took in the early 80s and that should not be forgotten.