During my older brother's teenage years, I could hear music blasting out of his locked room (couldn't turn it down, even if he wasn't home). It took me ten-odd years to appreciate his love of record stores and open my ears to more than the gangsta rap that was so popular in MY teenage years. When I did, I remembered the sounds I had heard when I could barely recognize them: Siouxsee Sioux and her crew, Robert Smith with his new band, Ians both McCullough and Curtis and their respective groups, Jesus and Mary Chain, while Costello also and the wave he'd made. All these seem to center around English Radio DJ John Peel whose studio sessions promoted many of these acts when airplay was much more relevant to launching music careers.
In the early "double-zeroes"I was in Wisconsin serving a spanish-speaking LDS mission and although I did occasionally hear popular music, I wasn't able to soak it up like I love to do. Or if I did, it was mostly ranchera music booming out of camillonetas or trocas on the calle (that too holds a special place in my heart.)
When I returned home in May 2003, I was blown away with the resurgence of good rock music coming from across the pond in what the many called the post-punk revival. I had never made the connection, but it was much like the music I heard as a boy mixed with the creative juices flowing from all directions in the beginning of this new millennia.
While britpop pioneer Damon Albarn worked on his projects, brilliant acts like Bloc Party shared a new look at this great era of rock, citing the Cure as a major influence. My favorite of these bands just arriving on the british music scene has to be those chimps from the north, the Arctic Monkeys. They burst forth as the internet era of music brought them to more people quicker than ever before. After seeing them last monday and their new "interestingly-titled" album coming out today in the states, I am convinced that their brand of rock revives only the best in the british music of the yesteryear.
