European bands

Being a Brit of German-Italian parents I'm pretty interested in what's going on on the European music scene but get a bit frustrated with many people here who think Europe's contribution to pop and rock are dodgy imitations of US and UK rock bands with bad mullets and fluffy pop plus ABBA. Shame is that US and UK get most of the credit for being the main movers. What's the view of the European scene in US and Canada?

Things is you can pretty much credit German bands with inventing the whole electronic music genre with acts like Kraftwerk, Neu, Tangerine Dream, Can, Faust. 2 of the most interesting outfits ive ever come across are Swiss, Young Gods and Yello. the french scene is really vibrant right now esp. with the electronic jazz vibe with acts like St Germain

I dont know alot of european bands, but i like Placebo, I guess you would call it a pop band,most american music sucks right now in my opinion, latley ive been into alot of japaniese music. Malice Mizer, Gackt, moi dix mois, Good stuff.

[Edited by Cody_King on 06-24-2003 at 11:32 AM]

When I think of European music, I think of Techno. Then I get annoyed.

But that's me. I'm weird.

odd, when i think of european music, i think of metal, then i feel good



but that's me i'm weird :)

Originally posted by Raskolnikov
When I think of European music, I think of Techno. Then I get annoyed.

But that's me. I'm weird.

i guess techno/trance has been the biggest thing to happen in Europe since around 1997 but in the UK that scene's no longer mainstream and has sunk back underground. this is no bad thing as far as im concerned. some of the underground stuff was pretty good and experimental but a lot of the real crap Euro/pop trance in the charts came out of Germany, Holland and Belgium.

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As far as most Americans are concerned, foreign music isn't that much of a thing at all unless there's some pop band like 5ive or TATU pushing their crap on TRL. Rammstein was the last really mainland European offering out there. UK bands like Coldplay and Radiohead have huge followings and are generally considered to be more intelligent fare than most of the rest of the music on the airwaves. Compared with all the nu-crap that clogs up the toilet that is the airwaves here, I can't argue.

Bands like Blur, Oasis, Portishead, PJ Harvey, and a host of others have all had their 15 minutes here and occasionally still get some airplay. You tend to hear them more in trendy art supply, record and clothing stores than you do on the radio or TV though. [/B]

About a year ago there's was all this big fuss in the UK 'cos for the first time ever there wasnt a single UK act in the Billboard 100. that prat Blair even tried to launch some initiative to get UK acts back on track in the US. frankly I think this showed good taste on the part of the US music buying public as the UK mainstream pop,rock and dance scenes have sucked for a few years now.