Brit invasion’s new equation

Two years ago, the Subways won a competition that put the young rock band on the second biggest stage at the huge Glastonbury Festival -- a gig that attracted tens of thousands and instantly established the group as a force in the British rock scene. Minted stars at home, here on Saturday the Subways was just another band from across the Atlantic hoping its music would translate.

“We have to start from square one,” lead singer Billy Zunn said after playing one of the many weekend parties keyed to the annual South by Southwest Music Conference, which ended Sunday. “If you come to America, you can forget about the amount of records you sold in the U.K. or your chart position there. You can’t bring it with you here.”

That is a fact. One music business axiom of the past decade is that success in England is no passport to American stardom. Or to put it another way: Robbie Williams stops traffic in London but can’t get a cab in Manhattan, this despite a memorably intense campaign by his record label to promote him here a few years ago.

“So many bands have said, ‘I’m not coming back from America until I’m king,’ but they end up returning with their tail between their legs,” Zunn said with a shrug. “It’s happened again and again.”

There are exceptions, of course (Coldplay springs quickly to mind), but the problem has become so entrenched that the BPI, the U.K. record industry trade association, and the British government’s Office of Trade and Investment, came to SXSW with a calculated campaign to promote their nation’s talent to American tastemakers.

More than 100 acts came to Austin under the banner of the Union Jack, led by critics’ darlings of the moment such as the Arctic Monkeys, KT Tunstall, the Go! Team, Hard-Fi and Editors. There were also plenty of veterans, such as Morrissey, Charlatans U.K., Belle & Sebastian and Echo & the Bunnymen.

The Wall Street Journal, no bastion of rock-scene coverage, devoted a lengthy article this month to the efforts by representatives of the Arctic Monkeys to crack the code of American success -- a puzzle that couldn’t be solved by the Kaiser Chiefs, the Darkness and other bands that came with bags full of breathless reviews and a strong overseas sales history.

The idea of business-page coverage and support from government bureaucrats is a bit off-putting for veterans of a rock scene once defined by the young Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols and other heroes of the scruffy anti-establishment.

“I’m from the old school, where if you were in rock you didn’t want anything to do with the government, just the opposite, and now you have them paying to help bring managers and bands here,” said Gail Colson, co-manager of the Subways who also works with the Pretenders and has been on the music scene for decades. “At the Brit Awards, which are like our version of the Grammys, there were eight or nine members of Parliament. I suppose it shows how much things have changed.”

The more relevant change affecting the overall feckless performance of U.K. rock exports to the U.S., the world’s largest and most lucrative music market: American ears today are tuned to hip-hop, R&B; and pop sounds far removed from the rhythms of the U.K. rock scene.

According to statistics released by the office of British Trade Minster Ian Pearson, U.K. music hit a high of about 32% market share in 1986; by 1999 it had shrunk to less than 1% and now hovers at an anemic 8% or so. As James Blunt, the British singer with the sentimental radio hit “Beautiful,” reached No. 2 on the U.S. album charts this week, his home country’s government officials hailed it as a possible turnaround point.

Blunt’s success brought a groan from Jasper Future, the guitarist in Art Brut, one of the young British bands in Austin, as did his government’s decision to spend its promotional budget on acts with major label backing, instead of the baby bands that paid their own way to Texas.

“It’s cool that British music is being supported, but it’s stupid that some stiff in a suit in an office is making the decisions,” Future said. “And the whole thing about lumping people together, it’s easy to do but, really, every band has to connect with an audience on their own.”

For Zunn and the Subways, that meant playing a battery of shows in Austin, among them an odd daytime party staged by Yahoo on the loading bay of an old produce warehouse and aired online. The Subways probably had more fans watching back home; the 100 or so in Austin were a bit listless too, despite the band’s rollicking efforts. Zunn, in a red, white and blue Budweiser T-shirt, said the oddball setting was appropriate. The Subways may be boss at home, but America will require heavy lifting.

“To make it here, we are willing to take off the director’s badge and go back to work in the factory and put some sweat into it,” Zunn said. “That’s why we’re here.”