They came, They rocked, they conquered..ATTACK OF THE ROCKIN POMS

G'day.....Time for yet another of my compilation blogaroos...this time, its the turn of the pommy invading rockers that werent the Beatles ...names like the Shadows, The Kinks, Hermans Hermits and The Who...sure, I've probably missed a couple of your faves out...so sorry, but here are mine

I must say, that we had a fair sized chunk of the British invasion stuff, hanging around the house growing up...Hell, I can clearly remember being a tiny little Recky and buying "The House of the rising sun" cause I saw the clip on some music show and the visual of the Animals just folliwing each other around while "playing" the song captivated me somewhat.

Someone in the place must of liked Cliff Richard, cause we had some of the early Cliff and the Shadows around, me personally, I didnt get into 'em until Cliff split and I saw Hank Marvin and the chaps bash out FBI, probably on Bandstand with Brian Henderson ( but dont quote me)

I was going through the stack of 45's one day and came across a single by a lad named David Jones ..fancy being named after a department store in Bankstown, not that has anything to do with the man who would become Ziggy..ANYWAY....I played the song and sure enough to this very day, I've always had laughing gnome around in whatever the popular format of the day is...not one of his classics BUT a cracking tune none the less.

One day on the radio, I can clearly remember the riff to the Kinks "You really got me" blaring out of the box, that was me hooked , I mean how can you not be, its one of rocks classic riffs , RIGHT, I recently found out that Ray Davies got that sound by attacking his amp cone with a razor blade, not something i'd be game to do, but, it worked for the lads

I also am quite a fan of The Rolling Stones, the alledged hard men of 60's rock, 
 always had a album or two of the lads hanging about, favourite line up..well, they done a majority of their greatness with Brian, and they punched out some classic tunes with Mick Taylor, but, I dig 'em the best when Woodsy arrived to partner Keef...(Lennon and the boys could have hospitalised the Stones without breaking a  sweat,I might add)

Back up in Liverpool, there was a hotbed of British Invasion acts, most notably being the Beatles, but we all knew that, so, I'm sticking in  Gerry and The Pacemaker,  anyone who dont like "Ferry cross the Mersey" must have a line of DNA missing

I was watching tele one Sunday an eon ago, and a movie called Mrs Brown you got a lovely daughter came on..yep, they made a movie about a Herman's Hermits song..lousy movie, great bloody tune.

I can vivdly remember seeing the movie Tommy and thinking, thats the Who made it then, and while they did pretty good for themselves, they didnt get as far as I thought they would, either that or i'm a nutcase...anyway, rock and roll should be forever greatful to Pete Townsend, for it was he that partially invented the P.A stack that all good bands blast their stuff through.

speaking of classic U.K hard rock acts, Led Zeppelin can thank their existence to Jimmy Page and the Yardbirds...although the Yardies done alright for themselves with rockin tunes like "train kept a rollin" and "Over under sideways down"

One of my all time favourite pommy tunes by any band ever is "Lazy Sunday Afternoon" by the Small Faces, absolutely brilliant band that was led by the genius that is Steve Marriot...the boys were considered rivals to the Who and The Stones...they also wrote "Itchycoo park" which is in my top 20 greatest ever pommy tunes

and finally, all the way from Manchester comes the Hollies, known for some awesome harmonies and the proud owners of jangly guitars...they done some awesome tunes,, my personal fave is "The air that you breathe" ...they formed in 1963 and a version was still touring in 2009.