How the Brits rocked America: Go West; contrived?
Just finished watching the third and final part of this series and as usual when the BBC put together documentaries about pop and rock music from the last half century, it is informative and interesting, if a little misguided and biased.
I obviously understand the need to appeal to British audiences when making these shows; it is made by possibly the biggest cultural export we have to offer in the Beeb, and is primarily watched by British people, that is fine.
However what bothers me is this obsession with constantly over-emphasising the importance of British bands in what is actually an entire story (not the last ten minutes of a 3-hour-total series) of us handing over the reigns of cultural relevance to America. These documentaries have an annoying habit of this; it sort of came across in the “Seven Ages of rock” series from a few years ago but it started to get ridiculous in this. Here are some general thoughts:
Like the “Seven Ages of Rock” the first episode was the best, partly because, being set in the 60’s it was Britain’s most genuinely flourishing time, but also because there is basically no way around denying the fact that 60’s British bands were listening to, and essentially stealing from, American, Black, Blues music. However, even that episode did this strange thing that the previous series would do where they would begin to acknowledge American artists like Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys were far more important in America that anyone below the likes of The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. Bands like The Animals and The Hollies and The Yardbirds (and where the HELL were The Kinks?!) were great to a point and had some excellent songs but there is a reason they never really made the sort of lasting cultural impact that this documentary is suggesting.
Why were Jimi Hendrix and The Who only really confined to a mention to the Monterry Pop Festival?
The other two episodes pretty much make the same mistakes in starting with some obviously great stuff (70’s Led Zep & Pink Floyd, later Elvis Costello & David Bowie; 80’s The Cure) and fill the rest with fucking horrible land-fill bands who were only there because big record companies let them. Worse still, this ignored the amazing music that was happening in America and even the UK such as The Stooges, MC5, Bruce Springsteen, The Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Talking Heads (one of our greatest exports, no less), Blondie, The Smiths etc.
in the second episode focusing on the 70’s, you honestly could have spliced in footage of the film Spinal Tap and no-one would have noticed.
Why on earth did the second episode think that it was a fucking good think that Wings happened? Jesus Christ, what a horrible place to end your “epiphany moment” about how shite stadium/prog rock is by habitually sucking Paul McCartney’s already well worn cock by saying “ooh, see them Wings, they like, saved Rock music and our documentary when we started to run out of relevant things to say/realised that prog-rock for the most part was really embarassing.” Meanwhile, Bruce Springsteen who largely gave rock music back to America when drugged-up/over-zealous British guys were trying, and failing, to sell things like ‘Rik Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Universe’. Get tae fuck man.
Why does the BBC still think we invented punk? You gave a ten second mention to Iggy Pop in the second episode, never to return and instead say “The British sound of punk” missing out the words (lovingly ripped off from American bands like The Stooges, MC5, The Ramones, The Misfits, The New York Dolls- who you interviewed for this series ffs!) and then largely go on to say how The Sex Pistols were a failure and neglect to mention those other bands i.e The Clash and The Dammed who actually were quite good/successful.
As usual with these things, Robert Smith is the only person in this entire sharade who actually knows what he’s talking about and remains to not have a ridiculously inflated ego (when by rights, he easily could be) - honourable mention to Elvis Costello for this too. Fuck Duran Duran and The Police.
How insulting for Bruce Springsteen to suggest that the only reason Born in the U.S.A is popular was because of the “Second British Invasion”.
Similarly, its quite rich to NOT suggest that U2 wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular as they would be if it weren’t for Springsteen before them rather than being those loveable Irish lads. (Though they did make a good point about U2 in that they were like the only band who didn’t treat America with a degree of disdain)
Trying to suggest that Gary Numan and New Order had as big of a part to play in the development in Hip-Hop as this documentary suggested is hilarious trolling/clutching at straws on the BBC’s part.
When it finally accepted that British music - quite rightly - may not have been very relevant any more in the late 80’s and early 90’s due to Hip-Hop and “Grunge” (though I would quibble with this term in favour of Alt. Rock or just “punk” there’s a novel idea) they then completely missed a trick be neglecting to mention how fucking MASSIVE Radiohead are (and even to an extent, that Blur were actually quite popular across the pond too) pretty much because “Creep” became such a post-Nirvana hit.
The documentary ended on the sentence “Coldplay and Adele are our current ambassadors” at which point I emigrated.
Probably some other stuff too, I probably should stop watching these documentaries.
-
heff88 posted this
