1, 2, Fuck You Punk Revue: What the Brits do best part 1

Thursday, July 5, 2012

What the Brits do best part 1 - Not really Punk, but good anyway

OK you geezers, the inhabitants on the British Islands didn´t invent punk, but they perfected the American invention. As the did with Rock N Roll etc. Since the days of the Beatles and The Stones they been the force majeure in popular music, especially the harder one. NWOBHM is the most notable. but softer genres the Brits can do as well as the harder. This series of blog is a bit about it.

One genre (If its a genre) they invented and master still today. A pop/rock genre influenced by punk that added elements of disco, hip hop, blues, soul, Elvis and whatever was the flavor of the month.

When punk lost its grip on the record companies and the force in European punk ebbed out for a bit. When MTV, Music Box, and Sky Channel changed the rules for what music should sound and look like, there was of a whole bunch of Brits to be ahead of it.

It´s a new wave kind of style but with the heavier drums that was the sign of the times.

Some brilliant Pop-Rock came out of it that still being played at discos. Most of it came from former punk musicians and those who thought punk was cool but to young to been there.

Billy Idol started it and it got followers. Fellow Generation X member Tony James Sigue Sigue Sputnic took it to its height. First labelled as Cyberpunk. Transvision Vamp and Westworld Followed, and still today there are brilliant poprock in the genre with Thing tings that are grovy ity to the max.

It is something about it that only can be done in Britain. Something about the singing and how to fit it into the instruments that both Swedes and Americans can´t do.

Note that the Clash manager tried to make the Clash sound like it on Cut The Crap, when Joe strummer fired the members of the Clash and hired some young pretty faces and failed. According to Joe Strummer the manager Berny Rhodes remixed the Clash "Cut The Crap" masters in the final mix and added drum machines etc, to make it sound like the style at the moment which make the record sound like it did.