Shirley Doomed playing the M&J Tavern in Bend in June. Bend new wave fan Chris Stringer is behind the kit.

My name is David, and I’m a fan of new wave music.

Maybe I don’t need to say it like I’m confessing a problem, but I spend a lot of time around older skateboarders, whose collective tastes, judging from the playlists I hear when we are skating, run from classic to hardcore punk with allowances for certain species of metal. The closest I come to my skate friends’ tastes is my ardor for the Ramones, The Clash and Devo. (By the way, Devo, the last survivor among the great bands, announced a farewell tour stop in Portland in November)!

New wave may have no natural enemies, but I think of new wave as the missing link between disco and early punk, and those two sure had their haters. I remember the “Death before disco” shirts from junior high. Those were years of conformity or banishment, so I said nothing, even though I thought people who struck such a public posture were trying too hard to mask the fact they were closeted Bee Gees fans.

I came of age around the time new wave was seeping into the radio. It was my two older sisters who introduced me to the bubblegum-bliss of latter ’70s pop radio, which definitely meant we heard disco and new wave. Pop radio will absorb whatever is, yes, popular, and spit it back out to impressionable young ears. It’s beautiful, or was. Now, I suppose TikTok does that.

My first album purchase was Blondie’s “Parallel Lines.” With bona fide bangers like “One Way or Another” and “Sunday Girl” and “Heart of Glass,” it was a perfect album bridging all those forms.

We got cable TV within days, or maybe weeks, of the debut of MTV. I was 13 then, and given the frequency with which MTV aired new wave videos then, my fate was sealed. On my 14th birthday, I received Adam and the Ants “Prince Charming.” ”Stand and Deliver” was anthemic.

Ever since my youth, I need some kind of hook, preferably of the pop variety, if I’m going to stick around a music form. I have no complaints about synthesizers. “I Melt with You,” for example, is the bright sort of up-tempo number that struck me like a lightning bolt when I saw the video for the first time.

I recently learned that a fellow local Bend skateboarder Chris Stringer, 46, is also ardent about new wave. Granted, his tastes are wide ranging and include Toto, Van Halen and Hall & Oates. But well-represented, too, are new wave bands like The Police, Go-Gos, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, Talking Heads, XTC and Duran Duran.

Stringer grew up in upstate New York, where “There was no real way to hear alternative ’80s stuff on the radio at that point, so it was mostly pop stuff that I heard daily,” he said. “I didn’t get into the new wave and alternative stuff until much later in life, over the past 20 years or so I’d say, I gained an appreciation for the lesser-known stuff that came out of the ’80s.”

Stringer drums in a local band named Shirley Doomed, which plays a mix of classic rock, originals and covers, including “So Lonely” by The Police. Shirley Doomed played a fun show at the M&J in downtown Bend last month and hopes to make the roster at this year’s Bend Roots Revival.

“Our ’80s covers at the moment are Men at Work’s ‘Down Under,’ ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over,’ from Crowded House, and ‘Twilight Zone,’ by Golden Earring. I guess we must have a thing for songs by foreign bands who had hits in the ’80s,” he said. “I’d love to work in a cover of The Smiths’ ‘How Soon is Now’ someday.”

I asked Stringer what it is about the music — the hooks, the synths, the emotional honesty — that he likes. As it so happened, Stringer, a former skateshop owner who works as a computer programmer, recently asked ChatGPT the same question about the appeal of new wave, because, he said, “I wanted to understand why I was so drawn to this stuff even today.”

“The AI told me it was due to my growing up and that style of music really imprinting on my brain at such a young age. No shocker I guess,” he said. But Stringer is a musician, as well, and didn’t need stupid AI to tell him that he finds major chords and poppy, catchy hooks and lyrics very appealing.

“Bands like The Police and Level 42 have really sophisticated jazz and reggae influenced arrangements that stand out even today. There was also no shame in being super cheesy back then and it’s fun to hear these bands that don’t hold back on pop ballads, for example Spandau Ballet,” he said.

Stringer said he doesn’t encounter a lot of haters of new wave — good news for those wondering “Is it safe to do the Safety Dance?” But does the genre get the respect it deserves?

“Yes, I think (so), in the circles I run in at least,” he said. “People appreciate a great, catchy ’80s song.”