Every band has its own distinctive story replete with drugs, alcohol, conflicts, line up changes, dead ends, regrettable gigs, setbacks, struggles, battles with record companies, managers, accountants, and bar owners. Every band pays its dues. There is no such fantasy as an overnight success.
A decade ago they were simply Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney from Akron, Ohio; seven albums later they are the critically acclaimed, Grammy award winning darlings of the Rock world. But their beginnings, like so many rock and roll bands, are humble, unassuming, somewhat innocent.
Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney grew up in the same town. They both attended Firestone High School; Auerbach was captain of the soccer team, whereas Carney was a social pariah.
In 1996, Auerbach was learning guitar, while Carney owned a drum set and four-track recorder. They started jamming and laying tracks down on Carney's four-track, but nothing ever really transpired. And like so many of us at seventeen or eighteen who don't really know what we want to do with our lives, they enrolled in the University of Akron but dropped out shortly after.
Auerbach started playing local bars but needed a demo in order to get to the next level. That's when Patrick Carney entered the picture once again. Carney provided the recording equipment and his basement, while Auerbach provided the rest of the backing band. The only problem was that Auerbach's musician buddies failed to show up. Apparently "they preferred to get stoned and play video games," so Carney and Auerbach jammed that afternoon and haven't stopped jamming.
In the end, they formed The Black Keys as a duo, taking the band's name from a schizophrenic artist, Alfred McMoore, who left unintelligible phone messages, referring to "their fathers as 'black keys' such as 'D flat' when he was upset with them."
In 2001, they recorded a six song demo (again in Carney's basement) and were eventually signed by the indie label Alive. For their debut album, The Big Come Up, they returned to Carney's basement to record eight lo-fi bluesy rock tunes, a mixture of originals and covers (Muddy Waters, Junior Kimbrough and The Beatles) that was released in 2002.
When it was time to go on tour in support of the album, Auerbach and Carney mowed lawns in order to help fund it. Their first gig at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom and Tavern was poorly attended, but that didn't slow The Black Keys down.
The Big Come Up didn't sell particularly well, but that didn't slow The Black Keys down either. In due time, the album captured a cult following, garnered favorable reviews from the critics, and secured the group a deal with Fat Possum Records.
For every UK band that has found success in America - The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Who, Oasis - there are thousands of bands like Snow Patrol, Slade, Manic Street Preacher, and Stereophonics. Conquering America is no easy feat. Even classic English bands like The Kinks, who eventually found an audience, struggled for many years in the U.S.
Here are the top 5 UK bands that have failed to find superstardom across The Pond (for one reason or another). The following bands might have been admired in America, but their popularity in no way compared to the popularity they had back in the motherland.
Buzzcocks
In the summer of 1977, the British punk scene exploded. Record companies were scrambling to discover the next Sex Pistols.
The Buzzcocks signed a record deal with United Artists on August 16, 1977, the day that Elvis Presley died. Perhaps The King's death was a foreshadow of things to come for Pete Shelley, Steve Diggle and company.
The Buzzcocks didn't reach The States until the fall of 1979. They were promoting their American release, a collection of singles along with B-sides, Singles Going Steady, which was the first official Buzzcocks' album to be released in America, though they had already released two studio albums in the UK.
By the time they released their third studio album A Different Kind of Tension, also in the fall of ’79, the band was ready to implode. Pete Shelley said: "By the time we came over to America, I was already dead, emotionally scarred by the way the band had been eaten up and absorbed by drugs."
The Americans embraced the Buzzcocks. Shelley remembered the band's U.S. tour: "We had a great reception in America. We hit the East and the West Coast and a few cities across the top. I’m sure there were great places in the middle, but we didn’t get to go there." The band broke up just two years later in 1981.
The Buzzcocks' legacy is unquestionable. They were a vital influence on the Manchester scene, indie rock, power pop, pop punk and punk rock scene.
Pulp
Throughout the 1980s, Pulp struggled to find success in Great Britain. It wasn't until the mid-1990s with the release of His 'n' Hers (1994) and Different Class (1995), which reached #1 on the UK Albums Charts, that the band established a following. Different Class generated four top ten singles, including "Common People," but be honest now...how many of you know the song? I thought so...
The Libertines
When a band has been given the label "has potential," that usually means they're underachievers, perhaps insufferable addicts prone to chaos, who will eventually fail to reach such projected heights. The Libertines are that band.
Formed in 1997 and led by dual frontmen Pete Doherty (guitar/vocals) and Carl Barat (guitar/vocals), The Libertines' style is a mix between indie rock, garage rock and the first wave of British punk circa 1977.
Inspired by such stalwart UK bands as The Jam, Sex Pistols, The Smiths, The Kinks and The Clash, The Libertines fully embraced their English heritage. Like David Bowie and Ray Davies before them, as the band's primary songwriters, Doherty and Barat incorporated English/cockney slang and often sang in a distinctly British accent, which occasionally sounds like a drunken slur.
They released two studio albums, both produced by Mick Jones of The Clash, but in 2003 Pete Doherty's heroin and crack cocaine addictions and tension between Doherty and Barat were too much for the band to overcome. Disappearing from a European tour, breaking into Barat's house and stealing valuable items does not a good band member make. Doherty was simply out of control.
The Libertines split up in 2004, and while they've reunited several times for festivals, there isn't any news regarding an album of new material.
Blur
When Blur emerged in the late 80s, they were a psychedelic group in the vein of the Stone Roses. The group had moderate success, so in the mid-90s, they reinvented themselves, and along with their rivals Oasis had become the most popular band in the U.K.
With Blur's fifth album, Blur(1997), singer Damon Albarn publicly rejected British music and embraced American indie rock. The UK audience wasn't too keen on the band's new sound, but the Americans dug it. Blur received good reviews and had a reasonable hit with the single "Song 2."
Blur's legacy will remain in Great Britain, however, where they helped revitalize guitar pop by mastering the British pop tradition, and along with Oasis had become the leading exporters or Brit Pop.
The Jam
The first wave of British punk in 1977 included The Sex Pistols, The Clash, the Buzzcocks andThe Jam; The Jam (Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler) had the most significant impact on British popular music. While they were superstars in their homeland, they were virtually unknown in America.
From 1977 to 1982, The Jam had eighteen consecutive Top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, including four #1 hits. Not one of their songs entered the top 40 in the United States.
There is a recurring theme that appears to run throughout all five bands. Perhaps the reason they didn't find comparable success in the United States is because they were all "too British." Do you agree with that particular assessment?
Leave a comment below, telling us what other UK bands couldn't match the same success in America.
In our Writers and Music series, authors discuss the music that has either been included in their most recent novel/play or the influence music has had on their work overall. We've talked to dozens of novelists, playwrights, and poets and discovered amazing stories of the unhinged live performances or forgotten B-sides that have inspired their work and kept them writing.
Jason Grote is the author of the plays 1001, Civilization (all you can eat), and Maria/Stuart, among others. He has written for film and TV, including season one of "Smash," and co-hosted The Acousmatic Theater Hour on WFMU in 2008-09. Visit him at jasongrote.com.
Has a specific song ever influenced one of your scripts?
Much of the time, yes. The most obvious example would be my play 1001, which actually calls for music in the script; when I started writing the play, I was listening to Push The Button, a Chemical Brothers' album, especially the song "Galvanize," which featured rapping by Q-Tip. I think the play was influenced by that song, which featured Muslim chanting, Middle Eastern violins, and a powerful, vaguely revolutionary message.
I also listened to a lot of electronic and hip-hop music coming out of the Middle East in the 90s and 00s, and raï music, which was a kind of Algerian rock-pop (mostly Rachid Taha). Right now I'm writing a play about Shostakovich, so obviously I'm using a lot of that music.
You were a writer for the first season of Smash. What was the biggest challenge writing for a musical series?
TV writing is a whole different animal, but one of the biggest challenges with the show was the contemporary numbers, because you would write something into the script - this wasn't a pitch but an actual finished draft - and then the music people would come back with a different number, based on their expertise, or what they could obtain the rights to, or maybe what they thought they could sell as iTunes downloads.
In and of itself this wasn't such a bad thing, because I have a really spotty knowledge of current Top 40 music and it wouldn't have been so great to have me dropping in, say, Guided by Voices or Clash songs, but it would have been better to have integrated the songs more organically into the scripts. I'm not on Season Two; maybe they'll have changed this by then.
You’ve done a lot of work and fundraising for WFMU. What drew you to that station?
I briefly worked at the Montclair Book Center in 1990, where they played the station all the time. It was a great job, except I was paid less than minimum wage, and I usually took that in used books instead of money so I couldn't pay my rent. For years after that, I would strain to get a signal and listened to it here and there whenever I could, usually in a car, but at some point in the late 1990s I started listening online. It's the best radio station in the world and everyone should listen to it at WFMU.org.
You wrote and produced WFMU’s Acousmatic Theatre Hour.
I loved going down to the station once a week to be on the radio, but honestly I just remembered it being a lot of work. It was hard coming up with something interesting to play on the radio every week (it was a radio play show, and contemporary, interesting radio plays are next to impossible to come by and extremely time-consuming to make), so we'd often play archival material from UbuWeb, PennSound, or the WFMU record library.
It was an important life lesson: I could love WFMU as a listener and volunteer, but I didn't necessarily have to go on the air. But I'm glad I got it out of my system.
What was your best and worst live music experiences?
Hmmmm...best would be tough - I saw Fishbone at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ, in 1987 in a small crowd, and it was pretty incredible, just fantastic, fun energy. My other favorites are all fairly recent: Patti Smith at the Bowery Ballroom on New Years' Eve 2006, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists at McCarren Park Pool in 2007, The Dirtbombs at Southpaw in 2008.
My least favorite included a truly frightening Cro-Mags/Mentors show at City Gardens, also in 1987 (though it was also really memorable), and Porno for Pyros at Roseland Ballroom in 1993. That last one ruined Perry Farrell for me - the crowd was full of moshing jocks (one of the worst things about the 1990s). The band played for 35 minutes, and Farrell ended the show by asking the audience, "How does it feel to be a bunch of cunts?"
In fact, the 1990s was kind of a lost decade for me, musically - I just saw tons of big festival shows like Lollapalooza, and then the Grateful Dead and jam bands. Though I still like The Dead and make no apologies for it.
Your play 1001, a modern retelling of Arabian Nights, has been receiving a steady stream of praise and productions since its 2007 premiere. Why do you think this play has resonated with audiences?
Who knows? I think theaters like that it's epic and ambitious, but maybe it's had a life because it's hopeful in the face of tragedies like 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilization has been well-received by theaters because it's my most similarly epic play in years, but it's much more bleak, and it's an explicit criticism of capitalism, which seems to touch a nerve - in DC in particular. The Washington Post loved it, but all these 24-year-old bloggers hated it, like viciously hated it with an unusual level of vitriol. I can only imagine it was because it makes desperate, ambitious people look like assholes. And who's more desperate and ambitious than a 24-year-old blogger in DC?
1001 also went after a much easier target, the neocons who were waging war against the Arab world, even though it felt much riskier at the time. When a liberal Democrat is in power, theater audiences don't want to hear criticisms of power quite so much. It's actually more of a taboo. Though I hear they loved Civilization in Germany!
Is there a musical act you think is criminally underrated?
Love, definitely - Arthur Lee was insane, but they were way better than The Doors, CSN, or any number of other L.A. acts at the time.
I also think there's a huge garage/psych/punk scene that's been going on since the 1980s and is still going strong today, and which deserves attention above and beyond Jack White (though I like Jack White): Dan Melchior, Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, The Dirtbombs, New Bomb Turks, Redd Kross, The Black Hollies, The Ettes, Jay Reatard, Gentleman Jesse, King Khan & The Shrines, Davila 666, The Cynics, Black Lips, Thee Oh Sees...I could keep this up forever. There were some great Boston bands from the 1980s waiting to be rediscovered, like Big Dipper and Volcano Suns.
There's some really fantastic electro/pop/punk coming from Brazil right now, and the internet has allowed for there to be literally thousands of compilations of great forgotten music from every contentent except Antarctica, though there's probably a Love Peace & Poetry: Antarctica compilation in the works that I don't know about.
Do you have any new work coming up?
I'll be reading my short story from the Significant Objects anthology, from Fantagraphics Books, at The Strand on July 10. That's going to be a pretty cool event, not because of me, but the other authors: Luc Sante, Ben Greenman, Shelley Jackson, Annie Nocenti, who wrote the best run on Daredevil in that comic's history (and yes, I'm including Frank Miller).
I just finished the program note for The Wooster Group/Royal Shakespeare Company production of Troilus & Cressida at The Globe in Stratford-upon-Avon and London, and I'm very proud of that, even though it's just a program note. Civilization should be coming to Chicago in 2013. I'm developing some original ideas for TV and film that I can't talk about just yet.
(Elford Alley has had plays produced and read across the United States and his sketch comedy featured in several shows in Chicago. His articles have appeared in cracked.com. He currently resides in Dallas with his wife and daughter.)
The Sonics are the Thomas Edisons of the music world. They invented garage rock. They invented punk too. They even invented grunge.
Well, saying they "invented" three genres might be a bit of hyperbole, but The Sonics certainly paved the way for all three movements. Their influence can be detected in such bands as: The Dead Boys, The Cramps, Japandroids, Mudhoney, The Fall, The Hives, L7, The White Stripes, The Flaming Lips, The Fleshtones, The Fuzztones and LCD Soundsystem.
The unconventional five-piece garage band from Tacoma, Washington had a brash, gritty style and their original material had somber themes. While some of The Sonics' material dealt with typical early 60s subjects like cars, surfing and girls, their most successful numbers revealed a darker side: witches, psychopaths, Satan and drinking strychnine just for the heck of it.
For those of you who don't know - I had to look it up myself - strychnine is a pesticide that is used to kill small birds and rodents. It causes muscular convulsions and eventually leads to death through asphyxia. One pint of poison coming up!
The Sonics' contemporaries - The Kingsmen, The Wailers, The Dynamics, and Paul Revere & The Raiders - weren't tackling such gloomy subjects as drinking strychnine for kicks.
"Some folks like water / Some folks like wine / But I like the taste / Of straight strychnine"
By the time The Sonics were set to record "Strychnine" for their 1965 debut album Here Are The Sonics, the classic line-up was in place: Larry Parypa (lead guitar, vocals), Andy Parypa (bass guitar), Bob Bennett (drums), Rob Lind (saxophone, vocals, harmonica) and Gerry Roslie (organ, piano & lead vocals). With Roslie as lead singer and primary songwriter (penning all four originals on Here Are The Sonics) the band was poised to record their debut album that established them as a cult favorite.
"Strychnine" is a bizarre, aggressive tune that combines Gerry Roslie's rowdy, Little Richard-like vocals with boisterous, loud frat rock. Although it was only a modest hit on a modest-selling record, "Strychnine" has contributed to The Sonics enduring cult status.
Here Are The Sonics pioneered their primitive yet effective recording techniques. The album was recorded on a two-track tape recorder, with only one microphone to pick up the entire drum kit.
From a musical and production standpoint, The Sonics did everything wrong. However, with the exception of The Ramones, never has a band that has been so wrong been so right.
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