Skiffle was enormous in the fifties and kicked off the Stones, the Beatles, Eric Clapton, The Hollies, Led Zeppelin and most importantly Cliff Richard.

could there be a parallel between the way American music forms swept over England, displacing the former pop music in popularity with this Sunday's real football match at Wembley

Could this indeed be the same with football vs soccer?

The British remolded what they received from America and this was boomeranged back to America in the form of the British invasion in very short order.

PalenQ:
It really is pointless comparing football to lardball. Chalk and cheese (full fat)

We have Rugby, there is no gap in the market for Lardball.

Basketball took off cos we had no equivalent (other than netball which is played exclusively by school-girls)

You invented the blues but didn't actually like it. We did, and once it reached the Surrey Delta we improved and gave it back to you, the Yardbirds, Cream, Clapton, Zeppelin, Jeff Beck, The Faces etc.

Give us ten years and we might manage to tuen one of your games into something worth watching. then we'll sell it back to you for more than we paid for it.

We're clever like that. Clever old us.

Anyone who thinks Cream or the Yardbirds are an improvement over real blues is some kind of philistine. There's nothing funnier than watching some fresh-faced beardless English boy trying his heart's best to sound like an old black man from the Delta.

English pop got interesting when the groups figured out how to stop imitating the blues and start creating a new form and turning it into pop. The Rolling Stones were crap until they started writing their own songs instead of covering Muddy Waters.

"Northern Soul" a la the Wigan Casino was more a Seventies thing than Sixties. The records were all American, though.

Read the last installment of the "not grim up north" thread (actually read all of his posts as he's wonderful), and see why these soppy yank sports will never compete.

Re music:like I said; it takes us ten years to turn your stuff into solid gold, then we sell it back to you.

waring is right about the non-equivalent for basketball. American football will never replace FlopBall.

Warner's comparing the Yard Birds to American blues and jazz could be the basis for a stand-up comedy routine.

Oh do try to keep up old bean.

I said that we heard the blues and ten years later (via the yardbirds, animals etc) had worked it out and then turned it into a form that took over the world.

it takes us about ten years ie elvis to the beatles but we always seem to work it out.

I sometimes wonder why I bother - I suppose I wil get my reward in heaven for this missionary work educating the yanks.

Whether Jagger or Lennon were better at singing or playing blues than Blind Bill Bourbonswagger isn't really the point. What's incontestable is that, aided by Loog Oldham and Epstein, and produced by geniuses like George Martin, they sang and played blues <b> to Americans </b> more commercially than the entire population of the deep South could possibly manage in a month of Sundays.

And that's the kernel of the football code debate. Local renditions of American blues filled a real gap in part of the British market in the very early 60s that anyone who can remember Frank Ifield or Mike Sarne will still shiver at the memory of.

The stuff the British then produced, influenced by American blues, filled a gap in the US market in the mid-60s. Neither process owed much to big, ballyhooed, campaigns by people trying to convert the opposite side of the Atlantic to their way of life.

Personally, I think there is a (tiny, but potentially bigger) gap in the US market for real football. It's virtually impossible to see any kind of significant gap in any market outside North America for Blouseball - because there's no evidence anyone, in spite of the millions of Europeans (and especially Britons) who visit America, has the faintest interest in playing the game. And until people play it, it'll remain - like basketball - a marginal form of showbiz, with a following roughly on the scale of a second rate stand up comedian.

I do take kindly to lessons from the Brits on culture and history, but we Americans must scream &quot;foul&quot; at the advantage the UK has.

After all, you have an empire built on 500 years of brutal subjugation and colonization. It seems only fair that you allow the US to catch up. I'm sure beans on toast will become a delicacy in the US, given enough time.

Still smarting over Lennon moving to the US, eh? Now, please excuse me, I'm going to watch my video of &quot;The Commitments.&quot;

Still smarting over Lennon moving to the US, eh?

It didn't do him much good, did it?

You'll have to ask him. The talk was he'd rather be dead in NY than be alive on London.

&quot;you have an empire built on 500 years of brutal subjugation&quot;

No. We've handed our empire back. You now have the empire built on brutal subjugation. And the Mohicans, Sioux, Pawnees etc know they're never going to get it back.

I'm lost what is American football and why are half naked American women strutting their stuff on damp friday afternoons for a bunch of old age pensioners to gawp at (last night's TV was frankly dire)?

Meanwhile back to my empire is bigger than yours

&gt;&gt;In trendy circles, septics are now known as ham shanks.&lt;&lt;

In less trendy ones, &quot;Armitage&quot; will do.

You &quot;handed&quot; it back? LOL.

There's a whole genre about how the UK so graciously handed back countries to its native people -- after killing them and realizing world opinion wouldn't ignore it.

Go read &quot;Gandhi&quot; instead of making silly posts like that.

Ireland, India and Rhodesia were a bit messy, the African, Caribbean, Asian, Australasian and Canadian &quot;handovers&quot; were peaceful.

All bar Zimbabwe are members of the commonwealth, which it is not too late for you guys to join!

Anguilla wants to come back under British rule!

We tried it once. It didn't work out.

Haven't read all the posts---but I just wanted to mention this article:

Citing the Taylor Report, published in 1990, which examined an incident the prior year at Sheffield's Hillsborough stadium where 96 Liverpool fans died through overcrowding. In 1985, British soccer teams were banned from European play for five years after a riot by Liverpool fans resulted in 39 deaths and 350 injuries at a stadium in Brussels.

Both forms of football are boring if you don't understand the game; and drunk fans are annoying, and even dangerous, whether American, British, or whatever.