Are Yanks and Brits quite far apart in general music tastes?

[chris_b]

My musical tastes, playing style, instruments and records put me squarely on the other side of the Atlantic.

[dclaassen]

As an American who has lived here in the UK for 20+ years, I find that the two cultures are very different. I come from the rural Midwest (Nebraska) so have a view that is skewed by limited exposure to more urban forms of music. The bands I played in while in the States did classic country, guitar rock, and very little else. I don't know if that's macho or not....maybe utilitarian and/or accessible might be better words. I had never heard of Status Quo until I came here. for example, and anything Southern Rock, except maybe very popular Skynard and ZZ Top, and pretty much unknown to the guys I played with. This is not said from a judgmental view...I'm retiring here because I love it, but simple observations. 

[Barking Spiders]

5 hours ago, SumOne said:

US mainstream market seems to me generally more macho/conformist. 

 

Not so much US popularity for bands along the lines of Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Pulp, Suede, The Cure. They'd be considered too sissy and odd for a lot of the US market that go for more conformist stuff like Country music that doesn't do so well in the UK. 

 It'd be very odd/hypocritical if they rejected the likes of Suede and PSB for being sissy when they made platinum sellers out of 80s homegrown bands that wore spandex, had big hair and plastered themselves in lippy, eyeshadow etc!

[Russ]

4 hours ago, tegs07 said:

Take a trip to places like Seattle, Nashville, Portland or Brooklyn. You might revise your opinion.

One of the most popular stations on SiriusXM (American digital satellite radio service) is called 1st Wave, and it's back-to-back synthpop/new wave/new romantic stuff. It's not classed as such though, it's all "80s alternative".  

 

They did mostly ignore the Britpop stuff, with the exception of Oasis, Blur and maybe a couple of tunes from Pulp. You hear them back-to-back with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc on the 90s stations (SiriusXM has a station for that too, called Lithium).

 

And yep, The Cure are huge in the States. I saw them about 12 years ago in Philadelphia during my first stint over here, massive arena venue, and was completely sold out. They played a nearly 3-hour set. 😮 Bob from Crawley did good. 

Edited February 23 by Russ

[Barking Spiders]

The Cure have a big cult following over there when Kiss Me... came out and they got three platinum albums on the spin but after Wish it seems to've gone downhill for them

Edited February 23 by Barking Spiders

[Cliff Edge]

Country music is still popular in the UK with certain demographics, as it’s mostly harmless. I paid off a mortgage in the 70’s playing country music in London and the suburbs. There are still pockets of enthusiasm around the UK. 

[Barking Spiders]

15 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Comedy just doesn't translate. Every time I try watching a septic comedian, the audience are in hysterics and I just don't get it. There are a few exceptions but they are few and far between. I don't think our colonial friends get British comedy either.

I've watched many of their most popular stand-ups on YT and I agree with you. I'm referring to the likes of Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Burr, Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, John Mulaney and all that SNL stuff.  Too manic and shouty for me. That said, the popularity of Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay, John Bishop, Jack Whitehall, Sarah Millican, Sarah Pascoe, the two Russells and James Acaster also goes over my head.

[sammybee]

Having lived over the pond for awhile. I can safely report, it's not only music. It's just about everything. There is some shared language, but that is about it

[SteveXFR]

9 minutes ago, Barking Spiders said:

I've watched many of their most popular stand-ups on YT and I agree with you. I'm referring to the likes of Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Burr, Sarah Silverman, Amy Schumer, John Mulaney and all that SNL stuff.  Too manic and shouty for me. That said, the popularity of Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay, John Bishop, Jack Whitehall, Sarah Millican, Sarah Pascoe, the two Russells and James Acaster also goes over my head.

 

Yeah, I see why they would like those particular comedians and with the exception of Sarah Pascoe I don't find any of them more than mildly amusing and can't stand Michael McIntyre.

My favourite American comedian at the moment is Reggie Watts, he's just confusing but brilliant. 

[BigRedX]

The thing with the US is that the overall audience size is so massive that there are serious opportunities for all sorts of bands whose hight of fame here was a couple of plays on John Peel and Rough Trade taking a 100 or so copies of their self-released single. My first band who were strictly DIY cassette scene noise makers here in the early 80s, have a retrospective CD released on a US label based in Chicago as a result of a rave review by US music critic Johan Kugelberg. We get regular airplay on WFMU and other weird US based radio stations. Here in the UK I doubt if anyone has bothered with us since our John Peel plays and fanzine reviews in 1980/81.

[chris_b]

The US and UK are poles apart when it comes to enthusiastic audiences,. The US has them and we don't.

[BigRedX]

7 minutes ago, chris_b said:

The US and UK are poles apart when it comes to enthusiastic audiences,. The US has them and we don't.

 

IME it very much depends on what you are playing and that you have properly targeted your audience.

 

In the last 20+ years I've plenty of enthusiastic audiences, but that because I've picked my musical genres and gigs appropriately. If you simply turn up with a random band at a random venue playing to a random audience then be prepared for you and your audience to be disappointed. 

[badger]

3 hours ago, Russ said:

Bob from Crawley did good. 

he was clearly keen to leave!

 

I live just up the road & I don't  blame him.

[Russ]

2 hours ago, badger said:

he was clearly keen to leave!

 

I live just up the road & I don't  blame him.

Lived there for a little while about 15 years ago - Micheldever, right next to Three Bridges station. Depressing AF, as the kids say.  But, at the time the alternative was Croydon, so, in retrospect, it doesn't seem so bad! 

 

[Dan Dare]

 

On 23/02/2024 at 19:32, Russ said:

Micheldever, right next to Three Bridges station.

 

Puzzling. The only Micheldever I know is in Hants, not far from me.

[Count Bassy]

On 22/02/2024 at 19:12, Dan Dare said:

 

R&B originally stood for Rhythm and Blues. Very different animal from soul and a world apart from what R&B currently stands for.

Ah, but it was "R & B" (Good), whereas the new stuff is "R n B" (Bad).

[BlackCrow]

Strangely, i think a bit of the differences can be assigned to the marketing depts. of record labels, F.M. radio marketing, etc...thinking that "this" is the market where they need to push that bands single or record or tour. In the old days all you had was what was on the radio or in the local record shop. Thank goodness for modern streaming platforms where you can sample music from all over for pennies on the dollar. pence on the pound?

[Russ]

8 hours ago, Dan Dare said:

 

 

Puzzling. The only Micheldever I know is in Hants, not far from me.

My bad. Maidenbower. I lived in Winchester when I was a kid, so I guess that town name stuck around in my head.  Plus I guess it shows how memorable my time in Crawley was... 

Edited February 26 by Russ

[prowla]

These "top 10" studies are great as talking points, but are very subjective.

I think it's impossible to generalise; I like rock/metal/prog/jazz-rock and have a number of US and UK bands in my preferred listening.

Synth-pop was OK, new wave had some decent acts, grunge had some standouts, but whether "the UK" liked them or not wasn't me - I was going to Rainbow, Rush, Yes, Judas Priest, UFO, Scorpions, Schenker, etc. gigs at the time.

I couldn't tell you what is in the charts at the moment, but I can't be doing with autotune as an effect and the awful oversinging, regardless which country it's from. (And as for country, my achy-breaky dawg divorced me is meaningless to me.)

I'm in my lane and I like what I like.

I'm sure there are lots of Yanks and Brits who like similar music, and a heck of a lot more who don't!

[lowdown]

On 22/02/2024 at 21:55, BassTractor said:

In my limited experience, and coarsely speaking, Brits value quirkiness a little more, and Yanks value nice flow a little more.

  

"The English do not really care for music, but they absolutely love the noise that it makes".

[dclaassen]

12 minutes ago, lowdown said:

  

"The English do not really care for music, but they absolutely love the noise that it makes".

Maybe the best quote ever!!!!!

[Leonard Smalls]

10 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

Ah, but it was "R & B" (Good), whereas the new stuff is "R n B" (Bad).

That's a bit catch-all!

Rhythm and Blues was coined in 1949 as a phrase by a journo from Billboard magazine to describe, basically, black music. This included blues, jazz, swing etc, and had artists as varied as Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner, Nat King Cole, The Fabulous Platters. As black music moved away from the basic 12 bar structure a new term was coined -"soul".

Meanwhile, a bunch of Brits had got into the blues and started their own combos based on their interpretation of this sound - It got rockier, and many British folks feel that this pub-rock sound is what Rhythm and Blues is/should be.

Meanwhile, in the US the term "Black Music" was coined, which covered everything from Miles Davis to Parliament and everything inbetween. However, in the 80s more white artists were using African-American influences so by 1990 Billboard re-purposed the term R&B to mean almost any music of black origin, which is a very wide church even discounting jazz (though this has just as many haters within the BC community as modern R&B!).

Me? I like bits of all of 'em

[lowdown]

1 hour ago, dclaassen said:

Maybe the best quote ever!!!!!

 

 Isn't it just...

[peteb]

On 21/02/2024 at 17:09, Barking Spiders said:

In the late 70s-mid 80s, Hair Metal (in which I include Van Halen) and the AOR stuff from Boston, Journey etc were both a big deal in the US but meant practically nowt in Blighty, which was more into New Wave, New Romantics, synth pop, dance and the like.

 

Not so much in the north. Hair metal and AOR were massive around here, and you can still get a decent audience in pubs today playing covers from those genres. It may have been a niche, but it was a pretty big one! 

 

On 22/02/2024 at 12:51, Mykesbass said:

Something that survey shows is that US likes music overall more than UK.

 

My observation on this, having been in record company telesales for 4 years in the early 80s, is that the UK's music tastes were highly polarised back then. Dance music was king all across the home counties, and across the south in general. From Luton upwards we couldn't sell dance music for love nor money except in a few larger cities. Even then there was a split in BPM, with northern cities preferring up tempo tracks, and south going for slower stuff. Midlands and North East was great for selling all types of rock.

 

I would say that agrees with my experiences, having gigged around the country in the 80s (and again more recently) and having lived in both the north and the south. 

 

[Barking Spiders]

16 hours ago, peteb said:

 

Not so much in the north. Hair metal and AOR were massive around here, and you can still get a decent audience in pubs today playing covers from those genres. It may have been a niche, but it was a pretty big one! 

 

 

I would say that agrees with my experiences, having gigged around the country in the 80s (and again more recently) and having lived in both the north and the south. 

 

I was raised in Liverpool in the 70s-90s and wasn't aware of any metal scene or any of that American AOR stuff being popular. The only metal band of any note from the area is Carcass.  Used to go and see bands in Manchester a lot too. Not aware there was much of a metal scene there either. Certainly Manchester hasn't produced any metal bands of note. Maybe hair metal and US AOR were more popular the other side of the Pennines.