Re: (TV) TV in England

[Russell Breen <russell_breen@yahoo.com>]

Living in London at the time, I recall Nicky Horne on
Capital Radio playing a lot of Television. That's how
I picked up on them anyhow.

--- nick powell <nick_bug@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Michael
> 
> There are probably various reasons why MM was more
> successful over here than 
> in the States but a lot of it is about size of the
> country etc.
> The UK is tiny compared to the US. It is therefore
> much easier for something 
> to get around by word of mouth. In 1977 we had 3
> national music 
> weeklies--NME, Melody Maker and Sounds. NME had a
> really big circulation in 
> those days. All 3 of these publications waxed
> lyrical about MM--I think 
> everyone has seen the famous Nick Kent NME
> review.This particular review was 
> published, from memory, something like a month
> before the UK release of MM. 
> At the same time as this John Peel had started
> playing tracks on national 
> radio. In those days, anyone that wanted to hear
> anything a little bit 
> different on the radio only had Peely to listen to,
> such was the 
> restrictions in radio stations and programming. This
> meant that a certain 
> amount of momentum was able to build up.
> I think quite a lot of enlightened music fans had
> already picked up on Patti 
> Smith and the Ramones and realised something was
> happening with regards to 
> New York.
> Another thing was that people who slagged off punk
> because of the 'poor' 
> musicianship were able to get into MM because there
> was great playing on it. 
> So they could be cool whilst still listening to
> great musicians.
> Television then played a tour over here with Blondie
> which even got some 
> attention in the mainstream press from what I can
> remember.I do remember 
> persuading  my local record store owner at the time
> to buy a batch of copies 
> of MM which he had not heard of. He ordered a dozen
> and they sold in no 
> time.
> 
> So when it comes down to it I just think it's much
> easier to get the message 
> around in the UK because of it's size.........and we
> are obviously more open 
> minded and have better taste!!
> 
> Seriously though I think a good example of how
> different it is in the States 
> is ZZ Top. Whenever I used to see their name
> mentioned back in the 70s it 
> always used to say how they were absolutely massive
> in Texas but virtually 
> unknown in the rest of the country(I know that
> changed later). That would be 
> impossible in the UK.
> 
> Does that make sense?
> 
> >From: "Michael Olcsvary" <olcsvary@icehouse.net>
> >Reply-To: tv@obbard.com
> >To: "TV" <tv@obbard.com>
> >Subject: (TV) TV in England
> >Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 14:34:54 -0700
> >
> >As I'm sure everyone on this list knows, Marquee
> Moon barely made a dent in
> >the US charts when it was released, yet was top ten
> in England.  And I've
> >been wondering, why for?  I've got my suspicions as
> to the reasons why -
> >like a lot of press and radio play (especially the
> latter; there just
> >weren't - and possibly aren't now - the morass of
> radio stations in England
> >that exist in the states), along with their
> "founding fathers of the
> >Movement" status, but I was wondering if our
> friends across the Atlantic 
> >had
> >any insight.
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> 
> 
>
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