Having spent the last two columns riffing on the careers of Robbie Williams and Texas, two acts that sped my acclimation to the U.K. during my family’s late-’90s stint as Londoners, I’ve spent the last week exploring the roots of my musical Anglophilia. I eventually traced it to fall of 1982, and the local debut of a syndicated radio show called Rock Over London that got me hooked on British music – and on the notion that if the show introduced me to an artist whose music hadn’t been released yet in the States, I would have a bit of information that my friends didn’t, and therefore (via the transitive property of hoarded knowledge) I would be Cool.

If you’re a Popdose regular of a certain age (ouch!), you’re probably enough of a radio geek that you remember Rock Over London, which debuted sometime during the early ’80s and continued running into the ’90s. It was hosted by Graham Dene, who was then Capital FM’s morning DJ, and it began airing on Rock-105 in southwestern Virginia during that fall of ’82 – just as mainstream American pop and AOR radio (which was all we had in my hometown – we didn’t even have MTV yet) was beginning to realize that there were bands in the U.K. other than the Police.

Rock Over London didn’t offer up the Human League, Soft Cell and Flock of Seagulls hits that had already assaulted the U.S. charts that year; it played new hits by acts you knew, plus it introduced American audiences to artists who had launched in England, but who didn’t yet have contracts to release their music over here. Of course, those acts sometimes included one-hit wonders or Brit novelties like Hayzee Fantayzee, Marilyn or Toyah Willcox (little-known fact: Toyah, who’s also Mrs. Robert Fripp, provided voices for the Teletubbies); however, as bizarre one-offs from England are almost always more interesting than their equivalents from the U.S., I didn’t mind the intrusion.

Besides, Rock Over London quickly proved revelatory during that fall of ’82 when it introduced Americans to Tears for Fears. The hip cachet in going to the local Record Exchange to order an import copy of The Hurting should not be underestimated. “Tears for Fears? Who’s that?” came the response from the college kid behind the counter, and I was triumphant. (Of course, I was retroactively deflated a bit when it was later revealed to me that a truly cool kid at that time needed to own an E.P. called Chronic Town by some Georgia band that I hadn’t yet heard of, and wouldn’t for another eight months.) (more…)