Top Ten British Bands Who Never Cracked America

[westen44]

In some cases, I had heard of the bands, but just hadn't heard any of their music.  In other cases, I had heard their music.

In reading through the comments, it seems to me quite a few people missed the point.  This is a list of bands that might have been popular in the UK, but not the U.S.  Some people commenting seemed offended some of their favorite bands weren't on the list.  This is not a popularity list.  It's a list of bands from the UK relatively unknown in America.  Also, it doesn't mean all Americans haven't heard of these bands.  In my case, for example, I had heard a lot of music by Stereophonics, but just thought it was way too pop and not rock enough at all.  Some of those other bands might be more to my liking if I listen enough to some of their music.  Kasabian would be prime example.  I've heard a lot about them, but wouldn't be able to name even one song by them.  In general, I'm not too familiar with this time period in music, whether American, British or something else.  But I'm always interested in something new if I can just find it.  Just because a band wasn't popular in America isn't a determining factor to me.  I'm interested in what I think myself. 

[uwe]

Yawn, an indie-rock-journo's wet dream, sigh, all these Brit niche bands ...

The worldwide most successful, but shunned in the US of A Brit band with 60 UK chart hits in six consecutive decades and worldwide sales in excess of 100 million (that is more than all the other bands in that poll lumped together) are still these guys here, period (prove me wrong!). But to a Mojo rock journo they carry no weight of course ...

*******

I love the Manics - but they were way too political for US radio, forget it. Unless you are the Rolling Stones, you can't play in Cuba, get your photo shots with Fidel and expect to make it in the neighbor state.



Or put out singles about Black American socialists mostly forgotten today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson

[westen44]

Status Quo was the band mentioned the most in the comments at the bottom. 

I've posted it before.  But out of the videos I've seen by them, this is still my favorite.  It may have been posted above, but not all those videos can be seen in the U.S. 

[uwe]

It's a Dutch song - the guys who also did Rock Me Amadeus for Falco wrote it:



Inevitably, there is a Purple connection ...

[westen44]

I've never heard of Boland and Boland, but those songs were good, too.

Now that Cuba and Castro have been brought up, I can't help but tell the story about my dentist.  He was once with a tourist group in Cuba.  Fidel Castro was giving a speech.  He had got my dentist mixed up with another American he knew.  Castro asked him to come up on stage with him.  The dentist stood there, most likely not knowing much of anything being said in Spanish.  Or maybe he did know a little.  He almost always had Spanish-speaking patients in his office. 

[uwe]

Was he allowed back into the USA? 

I was once queuing up with Annie Leibovitz at immigration in Cuba, she had flown in via Mexico, we came from Europe. I had Dutch clients with me - we were renegotiating debt from pharmaceuticals with the Cuban central bank - and it was the 90ies, the first cell phones with camera functions were already available. So my two Dutchies absolutely wanted to ask Annie to take a picture of us as a souvenir and I said: "You can't do that, she probably gets that asked ten times a day. And then with one of those crappy phone cameras, this woman is used to Hasselblads!" So I talked them out of it. Later on, in the hotel, they admonished me for being "so utterly German and an absolute killjoy". I felt guilty.

[westen44]

Was he allowed back into the USA? 

I was once queuing up with Annie Leibovitz at immigration in Cuba, she had flown in via Mexico, we came from Europe. I had Dutch clients with me - we were renegotiating debt from pharmaceuticals with the Cuban central bank - and it was the 90ies, the first cell phones with camera functions were already available. So my two Dutchies absolutely wanted to ask Annie to take a picture of us as a souvenir and I said: "You can't do that, she probably gets that asked ten times a day. And then with one of those crappy phone cameras, this woman is used to Hasselblads!" So I talked them out of it. Later on, in the hotel, they admonished me for being "so utterly German and an absolute killjoy". I felt guilty.

I don't have any stories of myself to tell.  But I did have some Chilean friends who told me about seeing Castro when he visited Chile.  They didn't talk to him.  Some of their friends went missing after the September 11, 1973 coup when Pinochet took over.  The strange thing is I never talked to them about politics at all.  I have no idea what their political views were.  Possibly Christian Democrats which stood between the right and left in Chile.