The British Invasion

Back when I used to do a radio show in college, one of my time slots was dedicated to British Imports. If you went to any record store back then all albums were incased in shrink wrap, but when you got to the import section the shrink wrapped albums were also placed into an open on one end plastic sleeve. I guess it was a value added thing. I collected all sorts of imports and nearly half of my collection of 1,500 albums were imports. Most were British, but there were a few from Germany and Italy.

A few years ago a collector came down from Seattle and bought half of my collection. He filled box after box of my imports. It dawned on me that there was a lot of musical talent that hailed from United Kingdom. I can’t think of any state in the USA that could boast of as much creative talent. Sure a lot of really good music people come from California, New York and Texas, but those three states together couldn’t match what was coming out of the UK. The only thing that comes close is Nashville to the Country Music creative essence.

In one generation there was the Beatles, Stones, Who, Led Zep, Cream and hundreds of others. How was it possible for one region of the world, or better yet, one rather small country to produce all this talent?

I wonder if the kids in the UK have more exposure to music at an early age. The term, “British Invasion” was used back in the 60s to describe the musical movement, but I think that was an understatement. It seems that most American music other than the Beach Boys was directly influenced by the Brits. Oddly a lot of their music was influenced by American Blues.

I wish a new musical invasion would happen. There just doesn’t seem to be anything that sounds new or even clever these days.