British Invasion

Ray Davies has learned to embrace his long season of reinvention. In recent years, the Kinks frontman has lamented the indefinite hiatus of the band he led for decades, but as of late he's responded with renewed energy and ambition unknown to many of his surviving contemporaries from rock's original British Invasion. In 2008, he released a moving and at times autobiographical solo album, "Working Man's Cafe"; this year, he began reinterpreting his life's work with a large choir on the just-released "The Kinks Choral Collection."

Gordon Waller, half of the popular 1960s British singing duo of Peter & Gordon, who shot to the top of the charts in 1964 with "A World Without Love," has died. He was 64. Waller, who lived in Ledyard, Conn., died early Friday morning at William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, Conn., a hospital spokesman said. He had gone into cardiac arrest before being taken to the emergency room, according to the official Peter & Gordon website, www.peterandgordon.net.

Spencer Davis, Stephen Bishop and the '60s cover band the Ravers will perform Sunday at a music event sponsored by the Mods & Rockers Festival to celebrate the holiday season and pay tribute to the late Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison. "A Very British Sixties Christmas" will be held from 8 to 11 p.m. at the Pig 'n' Whistle restaurant and bar at 6714 Hollywood Blvd. Admission is $3 at the door; there are no age restrictions.

A new chain of mid-size grocery stores -- each about the size of a Trader Joe's -- is quietly being readied for a full-scale assault this fall on Southern California. With little fanfare so far, Tesco, Britain's largest retailer, is spending as much as $2 billion to launch Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, starting in the Southland, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Tesco, with more than $80 billion in annual sales, already operates in 13 countries and has about 370,000 employees.

The touted British invasion of the Grammy Awards didn't turn out too well on Sunday, as most of the high-profile English nominees, such as James Blunt and Corinne Bailey Rae, went home from Staples Center empty-handed. There's no such problems with the Brit Awards, whose main honors are reserved for British acts.

Say you're British and don't really look at July 4 -- America's Independence Day -- as something to celebrate. Or maybe you just don't like fireworks. Humorist Martin Lewis has an alternative. He's producing a British-themed party at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood featuring performances by Spencer Davis, Denny Laine and Gordon Waller and screenings of two films: "Go-Go Mania," with many of the British Invasion bands of the 1960s, and "Goal!

Dave Gorman often seems to be laughing when he takes the stage, as if he's reliving a private joke with himself. He's probably not chuckling at a line of his own but rather at the strange and astonishing people he's met while building his routine -- and perhaps the sense that he's survived it all. The pale, gangly Gorman, once a stand-up comedian in his native England, now practices what a London Times reviewer dubbed "documentary comedy."

Oh those posh Brits. Those accents. That wit. "We've always had a cultural inferiority complex with regard to the Brits," Stanford University linguist Geoffrey Nunberg says, "that they speak correctly and we don't. We even say we 'use the queen's English.' And why should that matter to us?" Just such intellectual Anglophilia may be what's behind a virus that's infecting American media these days: Britspeak.