British Band vs. American Band

Britpop has been DEAD for about five years. And yes, American bands are boring because they are not very noisy.

Julio what is your opinion of STYX?

mark- never heard them but I hope they have as good a riffs as JOURNEY.

i hate britpop...but i think i hate britpop fans alot more. "Only good music comes from the Uk", they say. Well, ok, you had the beatles and super furry animals (which i don't consider brit pop), but we (as in americans, even though i'm not)had sonic youth, pixies, modest mouse, etc. yeah we (again i'm not american) have our shitty britney spears or m&m, but you (as in brits) have your take thats and other spicy shite.

And the US also had the Beach Boys.

modest mouse

How not to help your case. The American Gene. ;-)

I mainly prefer American bands.

Let's make some massive generalizations that will quickly break down with the provision of contrary examples, but may still have some general applicability in a larger cultural sense.

British bands are, in general, more uptight, less noisy, more predictable, and more "polished". By contrast, American bands have a better grasp of noise, experimentation, deconstruction, "lo-fi", etc.

To wit: England rarely produces anything as aggressively left-field as Sonic Youth in their heyday, but the Beatles were all actual, better musicians than the Beach Boys. UK brings the Stone Roses, the US brings Pavement (which is then ripped off and polished up by Blur).

Actually, this leads me to another question.

Can anyone name a single genre of popular music that originated in England? And don't say skiffle. Or has the UK just been getting by on its endless cycle of cultural imperialism for the last five decades? (A little pilfering of the blues, a little bit of reggae from Jamaica, a little hip-hop from here, a little house from Detroit, etc., etc.)

Heavy metal.

Hey Kris. Blue Cheer was from San Francisco. 1967!

USAvsBrit -- tis a bogus binary. The exchange between both goes both aways, the two feeding off each other. As for experimental/noisy improv/rockwise, I'd say it's just even more underground in Britania these days than it is in the US (Phil Todd vs. Thurston Moore).

I thought of that - but would you really have heavy metal without Hendrix? Plus, all the first heavy metal bands (Zep, Sabbath) started out as, uh, BLUES bands....

heavy metal: though antecedents may have existed in pieces (blue cheer, for example), Black Sabbath brought it all together to breech birth heavy metal as it came to be today. Hip hip hooray for Geezer Butler.

I guess you're right, Cole. "Paranoid" may have also created the blueprint for speedy punk rock, too.

Hey Mister Cole - if the binary is so bogus, please explain to me the British precedents for Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. I don't see any connection. Sure, the adversarial nature of the question is sorta misleading (everyone's always "ripping off" someone else anyway), but whereas there's no answer to the "chicken vs. egg" debate, I think it's pretty clear that the US is the chicken AND the egg, e.g., they were there first.

What rhymes with "masses"?

baker: THAT LOAF OF BREAD IS MINE!!
customer (puzzled): b-but i just bought it from you!!
baker: IT WAS IN MY SHOP BEFORE IT WAS IN YOUR HAND!!
customer: geez whatever (*hands loaf back and goes to shop in less mentalist store*)

Well, rock, in it's beginning, was a combination between blues and country (English ballads and folk, etc). Both country and the blues are influenced by each other, recombining some of the same elements and feeding off each other (Charley Patton -- Hank Williams). Rock And Roll, is, then, the child of country and the blues, both of which are the children of African and English music.

My point is this, it doesn't really matter what the origins are beyond a historical musicologist sense (and I'll fully admit I play that game sometimes. It doesn't matter if the chicken came before the egg or vice versa -- it's all about what you do with the chicken and the egg that counts.

What rhymes with "masses"?

masses!

oh. ha ha that was rhetorical wasn't it

Well, ok, you had the beatles and super furry animals (which i don't consider brit pop), but we (as in americans, even though i'm not)had sonic youth, pixies, modest mouse, etc. yeah we (again i'm not american) have our shitty britney spears or m&m, but you (as in brits) have your take thats and other spicy shite.

I had to reread this several times. I like 'Back For Good' by Take That better than any Beatles or SFA records; and anything by Eminem better than any Sonic Youth etc.

It's tough enough to generalise about British and American rock bands, let alone more widely. Sticking with rock, much as I love Creedence and Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr, for instance, I'll take the Stones and the Clash (not the ILX orthodoxy, I realise) and Pulp and the Kinks and Sex Pistols. Counter-arguments like Radiohead and Oasis carry little weight against Limp Bizkit and their ilk. Then again, the Stereophonics are British. Ooh, hang on, I can call them Welsh...

You can also call N Young Canadian. Except the lousy records, which are indeed American.

Blue Cheer is probably some kind of metal but only in retrospect; Black Sabbath is metal. What was the first American progressive rock band?

"British bands are, in general, more uptight, less noisy, more predictable, and more 'polished'...."

Wha? British bands Less noisy? Have ye not layed ears on, say, Killing Joke? Cardiacs? the Exploited? Bolt Thrower? Venom? GBH? Crass? Discharge? Fudge Tunnel? Godflesh? Napalm Death?

What do Americans have against knowing what Britpop actually is? I mean, it doesn't mean anything shat out of these hallowed isles. I get the horrid feeling as soon as So Solid Crew break over there, some munchkin college radio DJ is gonna say "Hey, here's the hot new Britpop band The Sosolids, with "21 Seconds", and I haven't been as excited by a Britpop song since "Song 2" guys".

oasis, blur, suede...name me three bands that insult your own country?

Ballboy had a song called "I Hate Scotland", you've got The Smiths with "The Queen Is Dead", and then you've got the Primal Scream/Asian Dub Foundation style of complaining.

> British-invented genres

Trip-hop.

Seem to recall this same sorta thread from a while back.

In America bands are expected to be MTV grovelling, radio friendly 'safe' shite (i.e. Foo Fighters, Weezer, Wheatus, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam etc) or vaguely rebellious (but not really) tis n ass toss (Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Guns N Roses, Kiss etc). Sadly, I doubt any of the aforementioned bands had a tune between them.

America has had its merits in the past decade (IMO - Nirvana and Mercury Rev and Tori Amos especially, also Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, some White Stripes tunes are quite 'nice'). Compared to the UK however I just don't think they've had the best bands (or albums).

Pulp (His N'Hers onwards), Suede (Butler era), The Holy Bible by the Manics, Definately Maybe, Vauxhall and I, Pills N Thrills and Bellyaches, Parklife, Elastica, Screamadelica, The Bends, Tellin' Stories and even the much maligned Second Coming all say far more to me about my life than some Eddie Vedder penned shit.

Of course, I'm from the UK so I'm biased - these are tunes that relate to me.

But American music in general just seem so un-rebellious with nothing to say about anything. I guess that's a complaint about most music right now, but then last year spat out 'We Love Life' by Pulp and I kinda remembered why they're such a national treasure and why few American bands can ever be so, damnit, 'cool'.

Calum that's only an argument that the UK has slightly better rock on the charts. As it's not on the charts in the US, this is a mostly meaningless distinction.

Can you say that again? I've read your comment a few times and it still doesn't make any sense.

aren't you people tired of arguing this?

You slate a list of American bands as follows: "Foo Fighters, Weezer, Wheatus, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Guns N Roses, Kiss etc." These are all chart acts, except for Wheatus, who are for all intents and purposes a British band as no one has ever heard of them over here. One of these chart acts is an example drawn from over two decades ago.

You praise a list of UK bands as follows: "Pulp, Suede, the Manics, Oasis, Morrissey, Happy Mondays, Blur, Elastica, Primal Scream, Radiohead..." I.e., these are all chartish acts but even in the UK not nearly as chart as the American bands described above. Accepting that the UK bands are better, all you're really saying is that the UK charts accommodate certain types of rock bands better than the US charts, which due to a whole lot of geographical and journalistic factors isn't that big of a revelation.

In the US those UK bands typically can't compete with the massive sea- to-shining-sea charting power of those American bands you've named, so in many cases they wind up in an underground pool that's their own side -- i.e., right up next to American indie. Thus a lot of Americans making the comparison are going to be tempted to look at it not in chart terms but as Brit "indie" (which often charts or verges on charting) versus American indie (which never does) -- in which case the straw-man construction of your list falls apart a bit.

All of which is to say: bands compete with their peers.

If you really think that The Foo Fighters have had the impact of The Happy Mondays or The Stone Roses over here then I presume you've never set foot in the UK.

If you think that more than 0.1% of the UK population can even whistle a Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Kiss or Kid Rock tune then I'd say that you've never set foot in the UK.

Sorry but these bands are irrelevant.

Calum please actually read what I wrote. Both versions.

What was the first American progressive rock band?

There's no such animal. Journey, Styx, Kansas . . . this is the shit that passed for prog in the U.S. All of the major progsters were European, and mainly U.K. residents. I don't think that the U.S. produced even one decent "rock opera" -- that is, assuming that a "rock opera" can be decent. And no, "Kilroy Was Here" doesn't count.

- J

reading what you wrote is only relevant to ppl over 45 nabisco

45 = 12?

yes it does, but that's not what i meant (i was teasing calum not you: he used the phrase "only of relevance to ppl over 45" to mean he didn't get it)

Don't tease him: he partly agrees with me, he just didn't read my post well enough to realize it. See, he supports my contention: "Sorry but these bands are irrelevant."

Update: by month's end, Calum had found time to develop an illustrious and surely time-consuming career in Julio-shouting, monkey-fancying accusations, defenses of Sleeper as the pinnacle of the musical arts, and pointed non-acknowledgment of any musical realm beyond middling circa-97 Britpop -- but he had still not managed to parse or respond to the argument above. Am I so terrible of a writer?

aaaaahh jeeeesus...i've had a religious conversion! all yank music is great. yank music is so great that i must yank my crank and make a mess on the counterpane. ooops. i made a mess all over my copy of 'born to run'; oh piddle!

british and american music vs rest of world. brazil is surely the equal of either? i would be interested in deraymis views here as well (with his interest in arabic music - which countries in particular produce the music he likes?)

I re-baited this thread to make a suggestion to you, Calum, an honest good-faith not-mean suggestion. The suggestion is this: if you honestly can't understand a lot of the things people are talking about in here -- and it's my suspicion that a lot of it really does go over your head -- all of our lives would be a lot easier if you just accepted that and tried to be vaguely nice or polite and not scatter stupid goat-wank insults at anyone who disagrees with you about. You've come into a discussion forum, and yet you display an appalling inability to actually discuss anything -- you simply leap to bizarre conclusions and misinterpretations of what people are saying as soon as they say something you're ill-equipped to understand. You insult people because you can't argue with people because you rarely understand what they're even saying. Why do you always feel compelled to argue with statements you don't necessarily comprehend?

Also it's okay if you don't know a whole lot about certain types of music, but possibly you should avoid making huge sweeping derogatory statements about types of music and ways of looking at music that you obviously have zero experience of: you always assume that anyone who disagrees with you fits into some little straw-man position your created using one of the few bands you actually know anything about (e.g. your contention that someone doesn't like Sleeper because it's not cool enough for his "esoteric" tastes like Mogwai and the Beta Band).

Just try and be nice. It's okay to admit it when you don't know about something. It's okay to just have an opinion and not wrestle with anyone who happens to disagree.

nabisco%%, i already asked why. i was told i was boring, and to lighten up. i think its probably only worth engaging with someone who wants to engage, otherwise we end up with these kinds of conversation all the time.

perhaps another interesting thought is brazil vs rest of s.america. how do the other countries feel about being overshadowed by brazil so much? then again, are they overshadowed? in the west yes, but a skewed perspective?

From my experience, it seems like Brazil doesn't overshadow much in the Western Hemisphere -- definitely a popular "catergory" of world music (and I'll restrain myself from ranting about what a disservice the catergory of "world music or beat or whatever" does to the musical product of other nations). If I was to hazard a guess, and I'm admittedly talking out of my ass, I would guess that Brazil's shadow looms heaviest over South American countries. I would also hazard to guess that what makes Brazil's music strong is the same thing that makes both the US and UK's music strong -- the willingness to suck in other influences and make them their own (though in Brazil's case I don't think this really became acceptable until the Tropicalists pushed it though against the previous conservativenss of MPB).

yea jack, thats what i mean. other south american countries feeling overshadowed. i put it a bit clumsily i think!

sorry about slightly misunderstanding your question, gareth. thinking about it further, I think Brazil's affect outside of itself is perhaps subtler (outside of South America -- I have to admit I don't feel comfortable talking about other countries in the continent due to my own lack of knowledge and sparse sampling)and perhaps more through it's touted forms like the samba, bossa nova, etc. As for post Tropicalia Brazil, I'm not sure what effect Brazil has had because sometimes it seems to me that Outsiders are more interested in traditional forms as opposed to "popular" forms.

yea, this, in a way, is brasils problem (well, not problem, but perception in the west). americans/europeans seem mainly interested in brazil up to about 76? and theres maybe a desire that *that* (whatever *that* is?) is how brasilian music should be. unchanging, comforming to a particular inherited stereotype. the dangers of heritagism once again (only masquerading as exoticism this time out). much new brasilian music ignored in west for not being the brasil *we* want?

perhaps we should start a Brazil thread -- the UK and the USA seem to have been left behind (at least in my feeble mind). From what I understand, Brazil went through its own struggle with heritagism in the 60's, certain groups in the Left touting "traditional folk forms" over any outside influence (one of the many struggles that shook MPB through the Jovan Guard and the Tropicalists), the cultural imperialism of the US and UK, etc (similar in some respects to the American Folk Movement, Veloso I guess being the Bob Dylan to shatter the inherent conservatism artistically at the center of Folk movements). Certainly the Tropicalists were right in that no nation can escape the influence of the outside world -- you can't really tell the people what to like. The exchange will happen no matter what. The key for an artist is to shape the exchange to express his or her needs, be it individual, political, etc to make it your own instead of merely copying it -- and Brazil has certainly done well at adapting genres and transforming them, adding them to their own national mix (and even those "national" musical forms are really cultural crashes themselves, Africa colliding into Portugual, etc). To tie it back in to this Question, equivalencies such as the American Smiths or whatever or bogus. It's not about being like someone else, but adapting something and making it yourself, be it what the Rolling Stones did with the blues and country or trip-hop, etc. It's all about the exchange between cultures -- the feedback between. And certainly, if I can say one good thing about Pop, it shows no discretion over what it consumes and makes part of itself -- and that, I think, is a good thing.

and, certainly, I would like to be guided through what the good stuff going on Brazil right now is -- a guide unblinded by "authenticity."

merseybeat

scott joplin stole all his ideas from john lennon.

This thread's premise is really very silly POO.

Don't be silly Tad, show a bit of patriotism. GO IRELAND! CRANBERRIES ROCK!U2 FOREVER!

Yes....YESSSSS!! After a long running start, Shane McGowan kicks a random Gallagher Brothers in his goolies so hard the monobrowed troglodyte ends up with two testicle shaped exit wounds at the top of his pointy skull!
Aye! Aye! Aye! Oirlaaaand Furevur!