The Blue Road To Atlantis

The Shadows are usually thought of as the quintessential British instrumental group and, along with the American band the Ventures and the Swedish group the Spotnicks, one of the most popular instrumental groups in the world. But that barely tells the story of their true significance in the history of British rock & roll – including the fact that they were the first homegrown British rock & roll band to dominate the U.K. charts, or that they weren't originally an instrumental group, either.

Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat (after bands from Liverpool and nearby areas beside the River Mersey) is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll (mainly Chuck Berry guitar style and the midtempo beat of artists like Buddy Holly), doo-wop, skiffle and R&B. The genre provided many of the bands responsible for the British Invasion of the American pop charts starting in 1964, and provided the model for many important developments in pop and rock music, including the format of the rock group around lead, rhythm and bass guitars with drums. The Beat Of The Pops - excellent selection of beat tracks.

The British Invasion was a phenomenon that occurred in the mid-1960s when rock and pop music acts from the United Kingdom,as well as other aspects of British culture, became popular in the United States, and significant to the rising "counterculture" on both sides of the Atlantic. Pop and rock groups such as The Beatles, The Dave Clark Five, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits and The Whowere at the forefront of the invasion