What is it with the English and their music?

[YourManInAmsterdam]

I've found that the British, for whatever reason, has a tendency to perfect American inventions as it pertains to popular rock music types.

We invented rock as a whole (Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins) and then the Brits perfected in many ways with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and The Who.

Punk is another example. It was more or less invented, as we know it, in New York with the Ramones, Patti Smith, Iggy and the Stooges, etc. and was then picked up in the U.K. to become the phenomenon it did.

Similar stories will pop up with Hard Rock/Metal, and other subgenres.

I'm not sure I could explain the reasons why, though. Sufficed to say, America and Britain have played off of each other, culturally speaking, quite a lot since the invention of information and entertainment broadcast media such as radio, television, along recordable media such as records, film, and their successors.

One thing of interest, though, given my limited linguistics knowledge, is that the English language is particularly suited towards poetry and music. It has a vast vocabulary with lots of homophones, rhyming words, synonyms, and vowel versatility. There aren't a lot of crazy "hard" consonants. That it is to say that it's easier sing in English than many (if not most) other languages.

As I understand it, this is largely because English as we know it has been so heavily influenced by a myriad of other languages. It is a mutt of sorts, taking the best parts of Latin, Western Germanic Languages (Dutch, German, Old English), French (and proto-French languages), and other influences to make something extremely versatile and suited towards the spoken (or singing) word.

After all, English is the language of Shakespeare.

[YourManInAmsterdam]

Bestest British band evah!!

<sexpistols>...</sexpistols>

Here's something I wrote about the Sex Pistols on a Facebook Note about my Top 15 Albums:

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols – Sex Pistols: This album both defined and, for all intents and purposes, destroyed Punk in the collective brains of people living in the Western Hemisphere. If that doesn’t make it the perfect punk album for a 30-something nihilist, I don’t know what does. Though the Sex Pistols were more or less a manufactured group (not unlike the Backstreet Boys) they managed to take a snapshot of disenfranchised youth with Bollocks that I’m not sure can or will ever be duplicated.

[GritsRgreat]

love the sex pistols, love the clash just a little bit more.

[Carolina Husker]

Squeeze is a very underrated British band.

[Bronn]

Squeeze is a very underrated British band.

...as well as a manual stimulation technique...

[Happy Panther]

I keep trying to find excuses why the Beatles are the best band of all time. I don't want them to be. There is no reason a band should be able to hold that title for 40 years.

Yet I listen to a few of their songs. And given that they were all recorded before I was born, they should sound like old crap. But they just don't.

Granted you may have to do some mental gymnastics but I could turn "Obla Di" into the #1 club song today.

Fo real