I agree that music hall is a surprisingly pervasive influence on British rock of the 60s and later. Until maybe Fairport Convention, having a British element in your sound simply meant having a music hall element. I'd say even Ian Dury and Sham 69 have music hall elements. Early English rockers used to do pantomine at Christmas and that was part of what it was to be an entertainer. Although music hall existed in Australia, it was long gone by the 60s and no rock bands incorporated elements of it into their act or their songwriting.The Weekenders wrote:
The Beatles combined a British music hall tradition and other current styles in Europe at the time, with rock, whereas groups like the Animals and Stones stuck with just mostly and blues for the early part, anyway. I think you could argue that the Beatles led those other groups to be more experimental as time went on. I didn't know much about the music hall thing until I heard and learned about Leo Sayer, and got other accidental glimpses via television mostly into earlier 20th century Brit entertainment. I guess it was similar to American vaudeville. I think the Beatles parodied yet acknowledged it with the whole Sgt. Pepper thing.
I don't think the Beatles really milked this idea until Sgt. Peppers and that's an album I don't regard as rock music, by and large. That's the album I regard as overrated; I much prefer their earlier records.
But Beatles' melodies were often too sweet and infectiously innocent to be considered pure rock plus they used non-traditional harmonic schemes. I guess that I AM willing to keep a tighter definition of rock than you, Wombly. But I have always felt that the Beatles were "something else" besides rock-n-roll.
If Buddy Holly counts as rock and doo wop counts, then so do the Beatles. The same innocence is evident here. I think any tighter definition would characterise rockabilly or something that narrow. In America, often doo wop is what first comes to mind when you mention vintage R&B, at least that's how collectors think.
I profoundly disagree that Bossa Nova does not approach the British Invasion music in importance.
Are you really saying it's influenced pop music outside Brasil to the same extent? Watered down bossa is certainly to be found in the repertoire of every MOR lounge act but I'm sure you can't mean this. Lots of jazz artists have recorded Beatles songs but this sort of thing is pretty superficial I think. The bossa influence on jazz goes deeper but so does the Afro-Cuban influence; the latter goes back at least to Juan Tizol in the Ellington orchestra of the late 30s and includes the music of Machito and Chano Pozo, some in collaboration with Gillespie and Parker.
BTW, Americana seems to me to be proving an increasingly fertile influence on jazz. Probably all jazz musicians were influenced by some styles—blues and show music are obviously right at the heart of mainstream jazz. But recently a couple of stunning albums have come out honouring music that was rather less often allowed to be influential. I especially have in mind Bill Frissell's albums and in particular Have a Little Faith in which Stephen Foster songs rub shoulders with Madonna and Muddy Waters.
I don't read too much into what you personally mean by it (I hope) and I suppose I know who you mean. I really don't know in great detail which British bands did and which didn't have American hits and tours; that meant nothing to Australians who tended to be incredulous (and a bit smug) about the fact that Americans in the 60s often seemed the last people to find out about the latest trends worldwide. When you realise just how successfully American music had imperialised the world in the 20th Century you'll probably see that this is a bit like an American dream team losing in Olympic basketball. While the music was loved, the arrogance that accompanied it was resented. (I bet this theme is beginning to sound familiar.) Of course, 'swinging London' was probably two parts advertising hyperbole to one part reality as well.And, no, maybe SERIOUS rock critics (I love Frank Zappa's quote about 'em) don't use that term British Invasion, but you knew who I meant when I used it, that's all.
The reasons I hate the phrase 'British invasion' in the mouths of American rock critics is first that it is an attempt to steal what needs to be earned—the idea that their taste (and level of awareness) defines what matters in 60s music. To read critics like Dave Marsh, you'd think that their first experience of hearing the Beatles in college dorms in the 60s is of something more than autobiographical interest. What matters much more is how the music was experienced where it was made and the global patterns of diffusion into broader markets.
The second reason, and again Dave Marsh is an example of the worst tendencies, is the fantasy that garage rock is principally an American phenomenon in part contemporaneous with British beat and in part reactive to it. In fact it crops up at about the same time, and independently, right through the English speaking world and beyond. A good corrective here is the two box sets that go by the title Nuggets. The original is wholly American and goes back in concept to an early double album compiled by Lenny Kaye in the early 70s. The follow-up box set features music from elsewhere and is every bit as interesting as the original. But even this just scratches the surface. For example, the Australian hit of Louie Louie by a band called the Pink Finks blows the socks off the better-known version by the Kingsmen. This stuff is well-known by collectors worldwide but the most prominent critics wouldn't have a clue. It wouldn't take much effort to find out; I put down their failure to two parts laziness to one part xenophobia.
