LAUGHTER FOR AFTERS
Dateline: Vacationsville. Just touched down on that International Runway with this month’s dispatch for you under my arm — and what should greet me but seemingly endless “analyses” of the culture behind what American journals apparently insist on terming the Second British Invasion.
LAUGHTER FOR AFTERS
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
by
Cynthia Rose
Dateline: Vacationsville. Just touched down on that International Runway with this month’s dispatch for you under my arm — and what should greet me but seemingly endless “analyses” of the culture behind what American journals apparently insist on terming the Second British Invasion.
The results of their “comprehensive surveys” seem to have ended up halfsincere, half half-baked and loaded with de facto howlers. (U.K. to Time, Inc: no one has greeted anyone with the term “coolbaby-o!” outside Roger Corman’s backlot meisterwerks of the ’50s.) But the major missing link is the essential incestuousness of U.K. rock culture. Britain is a small spot; we are an island. And, in these days of depression, rock culture does yield our most potent dreams—ideas of Somewhere to head, Someone to be, some Sound to match those neglected and down-trodden emotions which are readily, steadily pilfered by many vested interests: from advertising concerns to and through fashion retailers, film-makers and the likes of Smash Hits.