I recently read the EPL Talk article ‘How I Fell in Love with Everton FC.’ As I read the article, it reminded me of my own story of discovering English football – a similar experience to that of the author, yet with an entirely different result.

I grew up playing the game in Texas (my claim to fame being that I was in the same league as Clint Dempsey), where youth soccer is very popular but American football reigns king. And while I had a passion for playing the sport, I was completely unaware of professional soccer outside of my local indoor Dallas Sidekicks (featuring the great Tatu) and the poster of Jurgen Klinsmann that hung on my bedroom wall. I had heard of teams like Manchester United and Liverpool, but even 15 years ago access to Premier League football in the States was much harder to come by.

And so as my playing career fizzled after high school, I eventually lost touch with the game. I would enjoy watching the occasional World Cup match, but that was the extent of my interest for some years. Until one day in late 2008 when I was bit by the football bug once again. I call this my football re-awakening.

I wish I could pinpoint a game or a film or a player that sparked this renewed interest, but I can’t. It truly was as simple as waking up and realizing how much I missed the sport I once loved. Regardless, I emailed an old friend, and former teammate, informing him of my intentions. He suggested that the easiest way to familiarize myself with the professional game would be to select a team to follow for the remainder of the season.

And so I decided, much like the author of the aforementioned article and many other new American fans, that I would simply pick a team to call my own. This would have to be an English team, as I was most familiar with those teams and their squads, not to mention we basically spoke the same language (although I still don’t understand about 5% of what’s said during an English broadcast). From there, it would have to be one of the top three or four teams so that I would have regular access to them on American TV. So I narrowed it down to Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. Hardly original I know.

After reading up on the teams, their players, their histories and their fans, it basically came down to two very random factors: I’ve been to London a couple of times, and I like the color blue. Therefore, Chelsea would henceforth be my team.

In the weeks that followed, I dove in head first. I bought a Chelsea shirt. Ordered the special television package so that I could watch every match. Studied up on the squad and pledged allegiance to the Blues. What happened next surprised even me. I genuinely fell in love with the game all over again.

Pretty soon I was waking up at 6am to watch Blackpool play Wolves. I was recording Italian games to watch late at night while my wife slept. I read books and scoured web sites to learn all that I could about the sport. And then one day on an American fan site for Chelsea, I saw a post that was too good to be true. In a pre-season friendly, Chelsea would play Mexico’s Club America at the Dallas Cowboys home stadium – not 30 minutes from my home.

And so I purchased the best seats I could find. Ordered the newest shirt (that hideous navy jersey with the light blue hoops) and counted down the days. The week of the match, Carlo Ancelotti and Michael Essien held a fan summit at a local pub where I got pictures with both and with the FA Cup. What a thrill! On match day I arrived early and waited with anticipation as the stadium filled.

After what seemed an eternity, the team emerged. Not 50 feet from me were John Terry, Frank Lampard and Peter Cech. All around me were Blues fanatics with flags waving and faces painted. And it was at that moment that I realized it was all a sham. For me at least.

Don’t get me wrong. I was thrilled to be there in that moment. But really no more excited than I would  have been to see United, Barcelona, or Inter Milan (as I did this past summer). I realized that day that, while I loved the sport more than I ever had before, my self-professed love affair with Chelsea rang hollow. In fact, if I was being honest, there were really things I didn’t like about them.

The point is, you can’t become a fanatical apologist for a team overnight. You can’t manufacture passion for a team based on an arbitrarily made decision. And while I encourage new soccer converts to follow the same path I did and select one team to start with, that path has created a culture of fake soccer fans in America. That’s not to say all American fans are frauds, but rather to suggest that you really can’t become an honest fan of anything overnight – or in nine months as the Everton fan claimed in his piece.

Part of the draw to the English game is the atmosphere that shines through even on the television screen. American soccer fans see passionate supporters singing songs and waving flags and feel an unspoken pressure to imitate. But what many don’t want to realize is that the fans in those sections of the stands didn’t just decide one day to support Arsenal. They didn’t use flash cards to memorize the songs. It’s who they are. It’s where they’re from. It’s part of them. It’s natural.

And so I’ve decided to accept my soccer reality, which is that I can love the sport without loving a team. There will always be a special place in my heart for Chelsea, as they helped rekindle my passion for the game. But why can’t I also enjoy rooting for Tottenham on their Champions League run? Why can’t I also pull for Fulham or Wolves or Blackpool or (dare I say it) United on a given Saturday? It may be heresy in England, but I’m not in England. This is Texas!

Some people will say that I’m not a real fan. And maybe I’m not. But I can assure you that I love the game as much as anyone. I watch multiple games each week. I’ve read a dozen books on the sport. I watched every 2010 World Cup match (yes, even Algeria-Slovenia). But no, I don’t truly love a team. Should I fake it? Should I memorize the songs and offer loud, insincere support? Isn’t that worse?

American soccer fans need to embrace this bi-partisanship. It’s actually quite freeing to be able to objectively enjoy a sport without blue or red or tangerine colored glasses. It’s nice not losing sleep after your team crashes out of a tournament or missing a penalty to win.

I do hope that one day I’ll bleed blue. Or red. Or whatever color finds me. I hope that I’ll experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows that come with being a die hard fan. But in the meantime, why not enjoy riding the even plane of objectivity? It’s ok not to care once in a while. In fact, what could be more American than that?

Our Anglophile’s guide to British music gives just a taste of the depth and greatness of Great Britain in pop culture.

Great Britain has given us The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin and many other famous bands. This article features none of them. Instead, we’ll focus on lesser-known – but just as worthy – British musicians. Get out your ear plugs …

The Anglophile’s Guide to British Music

NOT SINGING THE BLUES

In the late 1960s, nearly every British rock band – Cream, the Stones, Led Zeppelin – was playing the blues. One, however, decided to look to its own country’s musical tradition for inspiration. The mighty Fairport Convention released a series of rock albums increasingly rooted in British folk, the best of which – 1969’s Liege & Leif – is an explosive mix of the two genres. Violinist Dave Swarbrick trades licks with virtuoso guitarist Richard Thompson on tracks like “Matty Groves” and “Tam Lin,” while singer Sandy Denny (who guests on Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore”) imbues the proceedings with a majestic grandeur. Sandy left soon afterward, followed by Richard Thompson and nearly every other original member. The band still survives, releasing pleasant but disposable folk rock, and is perhaps best known for supplying Jethro Tull with a ready supply of master musicians (bassist Dave Pegg, multi-instrumentalist Martin Allcock, drummer Dave Mattacks and more).

Richard Thompson went on to a successful career as a singer/songwriter, specializing in dark, brooding guitar workouts (“Shoot out the Lights”), gorgeous acoustic ballads (“Beeswing”), straight-ahead rock (“Cooksferry Queen”) and wonderful folk rock gems (“When I Get to the Border,” which mixes mandolins, crumhorns and searing electric guitar; “I Feel So Good,” a cheery tale of a psychopath featuring a catchy hurdy-gurdy refrain, and many others). He also produced a few of the late Sandy Denny’s albums, which are sad and lovely masterpieces, and played guitar on the Nick Drake’s gorgeous Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter. These last two are must-haves for the melancholy among you, while Pink Moon – his final album before his suicide/overdose – is recommended primarily for the seriously morose.

ROCKING WITH ROXY & ENO

Brian Eno is best known as U2’s producer, but he’s also a groundbreaking artist in his own right. The four albums he made in the 1970s – Here Come the Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Another Green World and Before and After Science – are wonderfully bizarre, with everything from bass-driven rockers (Third Uncle”) to ambient instrumentals (“The Big Ship”) to quirky pop gems (“Burning Airlines Give You So Much More”). The lyrics are mostly nonsensical, with a focus on sound rather than meaning, and the music is chock full of strange effects and experimental sounds (courtesy of prog rock luminaries like Robert Fripp, a pre-bland Phil Collins and others). If you’re sick of by-the-numbers rock, give any of these four albums – each a bubbly and squelchy sonic stew – a try.

Before going solo in 1973, Eno was a member of Roxy Music. This was not the Avalon-era band, churning out sophisticated ballads for tuxedo-wearing casanovas, but the Roxy Music that wore makeup, dressed in women’s clothes and wrote love songs to blow-up sex dolls (“In Every Dream Home a Heartache”). The two albums from this era – Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure – are truly original, mixing 50s-type rock with spacey keyboards, offbeat lyrics and Bryan Ferry’s distinctive vibrato. Two other Roxy-related albums are also worthy of mention: guitarist Phil Manzanera’s Diamond Head, which heavily features Eno, and the amazing 801 Live, which features Manzanera, Eno, John Wetton and some other guy.

DAMNED IF YOU DO

Who released the first punk rock single? If you answered “The Sex Pistols,” you’re dead wrong. It was The Damned, with their blistering 1976 single “New Rose.” Unlike their contemporaries, however, The Damned quickly moved from three-chord thrashers to more advanced musical terrain, with albums like 1982’s Strawberries brimming with harpsichords, trumpets, organs and hummable melodies. They reached the top of the UK charts in the mid-80s with goth- pop masterpiece Phantasmagoria, broke up a few years later, got back together, had a nasty fight with drummer Rat Scabies (featured in the “I.S.F.T.” video below) and are still going, Scabies-less. Their new album, So Who’s Paranoid, is a colorful psychedelic masterpiece that also rocks quite hard.

WITH ME LITTLE UKULELE IN ME ‘AND

No artist was more British than George Formby, a Northern entertainer who set the U.K. alight in the 1930s and beyond with hits such as “When I’m Cleaning Windows” and “With My Little Ukulele in My Hand” (surprisingly dirty for its time; not so surprisingly banned by the BBC). Formby strummed a “banjolele” (a ukulele/banjo combination), sang in a natural Lancashire accent and was so popular that the Queen requested a special performance. Unlike most old music hall-types, his music is still very amusing today: Tracks such as “It’s Turned out Nice Again” and “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock” are immense fun and sure to raise a smile. Interestingly, the late George Harrison was a huge fan, even going so far as to take up the uke and attend the occasional George Formby convention. Other celebrity fans include angst-icon Morrissey and the aforementioned Richard Thompson, whose cover of Formby’s “Why Don’t Women Like Me?” can be found on 2006’s RT box set.

For further info:

www.officialdamned.com

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/

www.richardthompson-music.com

www.fairportconvention.com

http://sandydenny.blogspot.com/

http://www.brytermusic.com/

Scott Miller wishes he could call his band “The Technicolour Gramophone” instead of “The Technicolor Gramophone,” but unfortunately they’re not British. Check out the video for their blistering new single, “I.S.F.T. (Fuzz Bass Freakout)” below.

This Anglophile’s Guide to British TV discusses some of the United Kingdom’s greatest shows on TV.

When I was an impressionable 12-year old, I saw something on Channel 13 that changed my life. A lecherous older man was surrounded by dozens of lovely girls, all of whom had very charming British accents and very short skirts. The man was Benny Hill, of course, and from that moment on I’ve been a devoted aficionado of British TV. Now, thousands of videos, DVDs and PBS shows later, I feel uniquely qualified to tell you what to watch.

The Anglophile’s Guide to British TV

Are You ‘Avin a Laugh?

When it comes to comedy, the entire Monty Python oeuvre – the original as well as offshoots like John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers and Michael Palin’s Ripping Yarns – is a must. Blackadder, starring Rowan Atkinson, is also top shelf, mixing witty dialogue with a novel concept (the same characters inhabit different time periods, ranging from the 1600s to World War I).

If you only know Atkinson as the mostly silent Mr. Bean, the wicked verbosity of his Blackadder character is sure to surprise. The show also features the future Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) as well as his pal Stephen Fry, a modern-day Oscar Wilde. The duo later worked together on two great comedies: Jeeves & Wooster, based on the much-loved P.G. Wodehouse stories, and A Bit of Fry & Laurie, a highbrow take on Python-style humor.

But the most creative comedy of all appeared in the late 1990s. The bizarre and macabre League of Gentlemen is set in a small village populated with murderous “local shop” owners, cross-dressing taxi drivers and other loonies. The show improved each year, culminating in a final season that devoted each episode to one character (a sad-sack businessman trying to be a stand-up comic, an amateur masseuse who realizes he enjoys the “happy endings” he gives to blindfolded male clients, and more).

It was followed by a show very similar in style and content: Little Britain. This extremely funny series features recurring characters such as Daffyd, “the only gay in the village” and Vicky Pollard, the “yes, but no but” girl. All characters are played by the two stars: Matt Lucas, who is gay, Jewish and bald, and David Walliams, who is none of those things.

Also recommended: The Office (BBC version), Extras, Spaced, Peep Show, The Thin Blue Line and Yes, Minister.

The Ever-Popular Murder Mystery

The Brits love their murder mysteries, and can kill off an impressive number of victims in an hour. The best of these is Cracker, starring the very large Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid of Harry Potter fame). He plays Fitz, an alcoholic chain-smoking gambler and brilliant criminal psychologist. The episodes are intense, thought-provoking and gripping … and, at 90 minutes each, they’re more like movies than TV shows.

The juxtaposition of Fitz’s disastrous personal life and his amazing insight into other people’s provides excellent drama as well as a few laughs. Other top crime dramas include Touching Evil (featuring the ubiquitous Robson Green), the intense Prime Suspect, the gory Wire in the Blood (with Robson Green; see, I told you he was ubiquitous) and the charming Midsomer Murders, in which an insanely disproportionate number of murders occurs in an idyllic set of country towns.

Also recommended: The Sweeney (watch cops beat the crap out of cockney upstarts), Hetty Wainthropp Investigates, Inspector Morse, Foyle’s War and Rumpole of the Bailey.

And Don’t Forget:

• Bad Girls – set in a women’s prison!
• Grafters – another with Robson Green
• Lovejoy – Deadwood’s Ian McShane with mullet instead of mustache
• House of Cards – political drama more entertaining than the Dem/Rep bailout fights
• Tipping the Velvet – for all lovers of 19th century lesbians

Now it’s time to open a can of good British ale, pop in a DVD and get transported to a land of spotted dick, upper class twits, insane shop owners, full frontal nudity and overweight Welsh gays who dress in red plastic and hang out in the local pub. You’ll be glad you did.

Postscript: I’m not a big sci-fi fan, but I love the new Dr. Who, which stars the luscious and lovable Billie Piper. (See video below.) The show is smart, fun and entertaining for adults and kids alike. While you’re ogling yummy Ms. Piper, your offspring can lap up the disgusting monsters and fantastic special effects.

One of the best places to experience Premier League football, other than in person at a stadium, is at your local British pub. But, if you’re like me and you’re not a expert on what ale or lager to buy, here’s a helpful article from EPL Talk writer Scott Miller:

Samuel Johnson, who liked a pint or two after a hard day of writing his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), said, “There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.” And, centuries later, nothing has changed. But we are not talking about trendy nightclubs or tacky sports bars. No: For coziness, warmth, good conversation and fine ale, one must go to a pub. And when one arrives, one must know what to order.

Pull My Lever

Bass Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale and many of the other British ales offered in the U.S. are better than their American counterparts, but they lack flavor. Ale should taste like ale – strong, woody, nutty and reminiscent of “liquefied tree bark,” as one friend put it. That is why, whenever possible, one should drink Fuller’s ESB (“Extra Special Bitter”). This ale is incredibly flavorful, fun to drink and alarmingly potent (5.9% alcohol, which is probably why it’s so fun to drink). It is best served from a hand tap, which means the barmaid has to pull a lever repeatedly until enough liquid emerges to fill a pint glass (no snickering!). Unfortunately, it is not widely available, but it is certainly worth seeking out. Just make sure one has a designated driver – the man who told me “this stuff will knock you off your arse” was not wrong.

Black is Beautiful

If Fuller’s ESB is not available, acceptable alternatives include Old Speckled Hen (a deliciously creamy British ale, much better than the more commonly served Boddingtons) and Ireland’s Guinness Stout.

Everyone is familiar with Guinness, but due to its color, misconceptions abound. It is not “like a meal” or “very heavy” or “incredibly fattening.” In fact, when served properly, it is a delightfully drinkable stout that lends itself well to all-night sessions. But be warned: Almost all the Guinness served in the U.S. is poured incorrectly and therefore not as good as it could be. In a real Irish pub, one has to wait at least 10 minutes for the frothy black delight. The barmaid will pour about 60% into a pint glass, let it settle for a few minutes, and then fill the rest. When one receives it, it should still be settling and forming the head, which is often pouring over the side of the glass. If it is simply poured out in one quick motion and thrown in front of you, tell the proprietor that he is not according the Guinness the care and respect it deserves, and walk out.

Squiffy in the Supermarket

What is the dedicated ale enthusiast to do in the bleak hours when the pub is not yet open? Go to the supermarket, of course, and quickly bypass those silly food aisles until one arrives at the cold beverages. Surprisingly, two varieties of Guinness sold in stores – the 14 oz. draught can and the 11.5 oz. draught bottle – are excellent. Both contain widgets that very nicely replicate a draught pint. I am less enthused about the Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and the regular Guinness bottles, which lack the frothiness and creaminess of the draught varieties. One can also buy bottled Fuller’s ESB, and while good, it does not compare to the experience of drinking ESB fresh out of the tap in a cozy British pub. Plus, it typically does not involve lever pulling (although your experience may differ).

Scott Miller is one half of The Technicolor Gramophone, a band that likes its ESB.