Could you be more specific as to which couple or three songs each from these supposedly great unknowns we unwashed American heathens should hunt down to find what we've been missing?

Every time I check the British singles chart, it seems to be populated almost entirely by dance tracks. The album chart looks like a lot of bands available and popular here stateside.

There are plenty of great British bands, but the good ones seem to end up over here more often than not.

oops, sorry, guess i should've been more specific. these are just tracks i like, but definitely try to explore more. supergrass has been around for a while so of course their sound has changed.

supergrass:
never done nothing
pumping on your stereo
run

the libertines:
vertigo
up the bracket
death on the stairs

enjoy!

Exactly. What has happened to america's taste? How the feck do acts like Good Charlotte or Nickelback get any recognition whatsoever? How many times can kids swallow the same black dude in the same situation (party/club, girls, shiny cars, drinking). And is it just me or does every new rock band sound and look just like each other.

I still don't agree with Grandaddy being so good. Frankly some of their stuff just plain blows. I mean the Sophtware Slump? Snot on a cracker. Give me the Strokes or Interpol. Give me some Broadcast. Give me some Solex. Primus still rocks. White Stripes not to shabby. Elliot Smith is so good. Modest Mouse yes. Cat Power yes. Metallica blows. Aesop Rock rocks. Creed--what the fuck? MTV can blow me. And can somebody tell me how those NOW (that's what i call music) cd's sell so well. America, what the hell is wrong with you?

Albatross, though your taste is pretty narrow, what you like rocks.

narrow indeed. also, 99% of british bands want to make it in the US (ie. Robbie williams has in his new contract a stipulation that he 'make it' on us radio and charts).

Hey at least we can thank you for Prodigy, Saviour Machine, (old) Blindside, Comity, etc.

However I think that just the mention of Oasis negates almost all positive contributions of the modern age.

Damn Mike, i agree, I just have neve gotten Oasis no matter how hard I've tried, and I have tried.

"Every new rock band" has always looked and sounded like all the others. What stood out were the few that did NOT sound and look like all the others. That's why we still remember Hendrix, the Beatles, Cream (I'll stop here, you fill in the other 5 million.) These were the unique bands. It's easy to look back and think that only a few things today are really unique, special, and new, but it's always that way and it has to be that way. When one band gets big, A&R reps head out to the clubs to find another band that sounds just like them. We wind up with countless numbers of sound-alikes, and they'll fade back into obscurity with time. The quality stuff will stick around. Darwin's theories apply to music just like they did with living creatures. The strong survive, the strong adapt. What doesn't goes extinct. In 1967 there was a million guys who decided they could do what Hendrix was doing, got contracts, put out music that sounded just like Hendrix, and promptly faded into oblivion after selling a few singles. Where are they today? Nowhere. No one cared because they didn't do anything different. It's so easy to say that everything sounds alike today, and so wrong. We just get more exposure to it because this stuff is everywhere - TV commercials, movie theaters, the mall sound system, telephone ring tones. We're in the same dismal musical state we've always been in, at least since the mid-60s when rock really took off.

In other words, quit yer bitchin'. Keep coming back to Blogcritics - we know the good stuff.

The deal is that America has been down breeding for a few years and the vast majority of the population for one reason or another has become half retarded. Half retarded people buy half retarded music. Seriously there is something terribly wrong with this country , I am not sure if the rest of the world has figured it out yet but the U.S. is about to flush itself down the toilet for good. Can you really expect any place that has wiping instructions on their toilet paper and where people are dumbfounded that cheeseburgers are high in fat to have good taste in art or music?
Take those facts and combine it with the fact that the music industry doesnt know how to change with the times and roll with the punches. Any example of a late eighties band is an example of how stale the American music scene has to get before it realizes it and stops spoon feeding us the same old awful crap. Take those two facts and combine it with the fact that the single largest purchaser of records in this country is radio stations and that like 48% of the radio stations which play new music in this country are owned and run by two or three companies. So if some thing terrible wants to get on the billboard charts they dont actually have to sell that many albums to consumers right away. they just have to convince the radio stations that there is a huge buzz about their artist. zang! the radio stations buy up them albums and jam it down our throats till they convince the half retarded listeners that this is the best song/album and everyone is buying it. and pow a childmolesting alien can have a #1 hit.

Agree completely with SOL74D. Phillip makes a good point. I analysed the UK album chart that Phillip referred to above and, of the top albums, 16 were American and Canadian! Shocked!