What is in the water in the UK?

toms wait

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I forgot Black Sabbath and Deep Purple on my original list.
Also for balance, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman, and Nitin Sawnhey.
But most of these are not massive big £££££££ players in my original thoughts on this topic.
 

StingRay

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I forgot Black Sabbath and Deep Purple on my original list.
Also for balance, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman, and Nitin Sawnhey.
But most of these are not massive big £££££££ players in my original thoughts on this topic.
Tracy Chapman is american.
 
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culturecrammer

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Pick a decade and notice how many of the biggest/popular bands or artists in the world are from these small islands.
Bowie, Floyd, Zeppelin, Queen, Beatles, The Who, Japan, Eno, Roxy Music, Elton, Radiohead, Stones, The Police, Fleetwood Mac (the majority, ahem!), Dire Straits, Genesis, Sex Pistols, Clash, Yes, Duran Duran, New Order, Joy Division, The Smiths, and loads of others.

Historically is this due to the extent of the English language spoken? Any ideas? The BBC? Empire?
Or raw talent from social adversity, I have no idea. I just find it interesting.

Or perhaps my own experience and music collection is just a little biased by growing up here in the UK.

I recently had a count up of how many artists bands I had, about 330, this must be the tip of the band/artist iceberg! I do have quite broad tastes, but suspect over 60% of it is UK.
It's the 'special relationship'. The richness of British pop music - as opposed to say, that of the rest of Europe - is due to our deep cultural ties with the US. Modern popular music all fundamentally stems from black American music, i.e. jazz and rythmn & blues, and the history of British music is the story of our absorption of and reaction to that music (Beatles, Stones and all that followed). Of course along the way you get all sorts of strange English bits thrown in - folk music, European art music, etc.
 
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toms wait

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It's the 'special relationship'. The richness of British pop music - as opposed to say, that of the rest of Europe - is due to our deep cultural ties with the US. Modern popular music all fundamentally stems from black American music, i.e. jazz and rythmn & blues, and the history of British music is the story of our absorption of and reaction to that music (Beatles, Stones and all that followed). Of course along the way you get all sorts of strange English bits thrown in - folk music, European art music, etc.
I think you could well be correct there, a lot of bands/artists quote many American black musicians as influences. Some are even more obvious in the use of black american music, Mr Plant for instance. and as you say stones and beatles.

Some links are less obvious as with a lot of Floyd and others. Although I have heard Mr Gilmour describe WYWH title track as a nice little country music song.

I guess the common language helps, and I imagine the UK proliferation around the globe for good or ill. Must have had some impact on people returning to the UK from all over.

Some appear to have little in common with what has become world music, like Yes or Sex Pistols to look at extremes. Mind you having watched the sex pistols and other punk bands on youtube recently it struck me how close to distorted R&B riffs a lot of it sounded. That's the old R&B, not black R&B.
 
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StingRay

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I think you could well be correct there, a lot of bands/artists quote many American black musicians as influences. Some are even more obvious in the use of black american music, Mr Plant for instance. and as you say stones and beatles.

Some links are less obvious as with a lot of Floyd and others. Although I have heard Mr Gilmour describe WYWH title track as a nice little country music song.

I guess the common language helps, and I imagine the UK proliferation around the globe for good or ill. Must have had some impact on people returning to the UK from all over.

Some appear to have little in common with what has become world music, like Yes or Sex Pistols to look at extremes. Mind you having watched the sex pistols and other punk bands on youtube recently it struck me how close to distorted R&B riffs a lot of it sounded. That's the old R&B, not black R&B.
King Crimson were even more extreme.
 

Strider

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Interesting that the OP has no black artists in his roster. If we add Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Al Green, Michael Jackson, NWA, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, who are all amazing, American (in a broadly geographical sense), and also black, and don't get me started on the wonderful world of African artists, then maybe the picture would look a little different?
For those with a classical predilection I do hope we don't forget our Germanic cousins: Beethoven, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Mahler, Wagner and a host more.
I think the water is influencing your taste, not vice versa Mr Tom's Wait 😁
He's covering UK artists...
 

Strider

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Through the late 70's up to the late 90's pretty much all pop/A&R/indy went though Chipping Norton studio, unbelivable talent was squandered by record labels, some utter dross made top 5 chart entries but many were spectacular artists that today's guff couldn't put a candle to. 90% of the bands were UK and from all creeds, colours and culture.
Apart from Grime, because that ear$h1t didn't exist then thank goodness.

Feast your mincers on this:
https://www.discogs.com/label/264729-Chipping-Norton-Recording-Studios
 

culturecrammer

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HiFi Trade?
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I think you could well be correct there, a lot of bands/artists quote many American black musicians as influences. Some are even more obvious in the use of black american music, Mr Plant for instance. and as you say stones and beatles.

Some links are less obvious as with a lot of Floyd and others. Although I have heard Mr Gilmour describe WYWH title track as a nice little country music song.

I guess the common language helps, and I imagine the UK proliferation around the globe for good or ill. Must have had some impact on people returning to the UK from all over.

Some appear to have little in common with what has become world music, like Yes or Sex Pistols to look at extremes. Mind you having watched the sex pistols and other punk bands on youtube recently it struck me how close to distorted R&B riffs a lot of it sounded. That's the old R&B, not black R&B.
There is also tons of Blues in Floyd. And yes, both UK and US punk comes from 60s US garage bands, Stooges, MC5, etc - who in turn were drawing on earlier R&B such as Bo Diddley. A nice example of all this would be the song 'Louie Louie' - originally an RnB song written in 1955 by black doo wop artist Richard Berry, this became a hit for the Kingsmen in 1963, then was picked up by Iggy & The Stooges and later became a punk anthem, which in turn influenced Joy Division and became a live favourite of theirs.
 
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uzzy

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It is the way of these islands to adopt the best from the rest of the world. In the late 50s and 60s the Beatles and others were listening to blues artists from the USA that probably only mostly the ethnic population of the USA had heard or followed.
We have absorbed musical cultures and progressed.
Any lack of progression or reduced progression is down to the music scene as a whole now. Record companies are not out looking for the next new thing (they wait for it to be planted in their laps) .. On top of that the number of music venues has reduced and prices are massive.
In the 70s our local Art and Technical college put on concerts where you got to see big named bands of the time for not a lot of money. I saw Thin Lizzy as a support band as they did the treadmill of venues to gain popularity.
I got to see King Crimson, Caravan, Head Hands and feet, Manfed Manns Earth Band, BJH, Lindisfarne, Status Quo, Focus, Atomic Rooster, Formerly Fat Harry, Thin Lizzy and many more in a space of a couple of years .. I guess we were just very lucky to grow up in those times.
 

toms wait

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There is also tons of Blues in Floyd. And yes, both UK and US punk comes from 60s US garage bands, Stooges, MC5, etc - who in turn were drawing on earlier R&B such as Bo Diddley. A nice example of all this would be the song 'Louie Louie' - originally an RnB song written in 1955 by black doo wop artist Richard Berry, this became a hit for the Kingsmen in 1963, then was picked up by Iggy & The Stooges and later became a punk anthem, which in turn influenced Joy Division and became a live favourite of theirs.
I'd forgotten that about Floyd, on a lot of bootlegs there is a blues jam at the end of the concert.
Usually referred to as "slow blues jam" or "baby blue shuffle in D minor"

Revisiting a lot of punk on youtube the R&B influence is very clear, and the garage bands you mention.
 
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toms wait

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May 20, 2015
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HiFi Trade?
  1. No
Through the late 70's up to the late 90's pretty much all pop/A&R/indy went though Chipping Norton studio, unbelivable talent was squandered by record labels, some utter dross made top 5 chart entries but many were spectacular artists that today's guff couldn't put a candle to. 90% of the bands were UK and from all creeds, colours and culture.
Apart from Grime, because that ear$h1t didn't exist then thank goodness.

Feast your mincers on this:
https://www.discogs.com/label/264729-Chipping-Norton-Recording-Studios
I had a look and that is an impressive roster, I also found Kitchens of Distinction, I had forgotten about them, I had their albums.
 
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