Well, only about 4 years after muso journos over in the UK suddenly decided that Britpop wasn't all that up to much, a similar attitude seems to have been imported to tha US along with the latest UK Garage compil!!!!!!!! And like Wycliff Jean's rather clunky recent attempt at UK Garage, it's got a rather US-ian spin on it- to wit:
"UK invasion" style-hype stories are complete crap!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially with the current acts being hyped as "Britpop", like Coldplay,
Travis, David Gray (?!?!?), and erm, The Corrs (!??!?!? I'm surprised they didn't stick Boyzone and Westlife in for a laugh as well!!!!!!!!!!!)
Well, so bloody wot, you might say!!!!! Over here in the UK, we're well aware that the aforementioned bands are a bit tepid to say the least!!!!! And most of these "British Invasion" type stories are complete crap anyway, usually written by bored writers on either side of "The Pond" (A funny name for an ocean sized gap, given that it's generally bigger than your average horticultural water puddle!!!!) who wish they could have seen The Beatles at Shea Stadium!!!!!!
Apparently tho, this is really important, because hip 'n' trendy US maggy
Spin says it's important, and we all know how important it is if Spin says it's important!!!!!!! The other important thing is that is by
Keith Harris, who seems to be a rather narky man these days!!!!!! Also, he rather amusingly notes that the UK's
"chief cultural exports over the past decade include the Spice Girls and the Teletubbies", forgetting to mention his
artistic contribution to the previous decade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Also, a bit much, considering the amount of hyping The Strokes and
Michael Jackson are getting over here!!!!!!) Actually, some of his critisms of the acts concerned are pretty fair- it's when he starts applying his slagoffs of the UK Indie scene to the entirety of UK culture that it really starts becoming amusing!!!!!!!!!!! (Mind you, if he tried to aim at just
UK pop, he might have a point!!!!)
As per flipping usual, it dengerates into blinkered US/UK musinewsy hack in-fighting, as though the entire world seems to revolve around the usual tepid guitar band bollox!!! Don't expect anything about the increasing links between US and UK r'n'b/garage styles!!!!!!!! Nearly every big US rap/r'n'b act seems to be sticking some uptempo d'n'b/garage flavoured tune on their albums these days, and many of the newer producers are starting to put sounds reminiscent of the 90s Euro techno-hardcore stuffs used on early jungle tracks. Timbaland seems to be putting bleep 'n' bass elements on nearly all his tracks these days, not to mention a rather blatant "Dominator" style Beltram Hoover blast on Aaliyah's last single!!!!! And even Wyclef Jean has done a UK Garage powered single, for flips sake!!!!!!!!! OK, it's a bit clunky, (in the sense that the surface of the sun is a little warmish!!!) but at least he's made the effort!!!!!! And that's even before we get to UK acts like Craig David and So Solid Crew, who are actively pursuing the US market....
In the other direction, nearly every US rap/r'n'b single hitting the UK gets a UK Garage remix- in case of some rap tracks, the remix is actually an improvement over the original!!!!!!!! In fact, the idea of rap + UK Garage is already becoming popular in the underground, and is coinciding with a perceived "coming of age" of UK based rap, so there might be an "invasion" yet- just don't expect Spin to cover until they play guitars, paint their faces white and sound like the feckin Bootleg Beatles!!!!!!
If you ask me, those US folks should be grateful that we even gave them
skiffle!!!!!!!!!!
