LONDON—Having never been in London before, I suppose I should feel some shame at spending my first night in a comfortably Americanish club called The Venue watching John Hiatt perform. I don't, though—in fact, it's the best display of clear-cut cultural differences I've found here yet: Hiatt is here on a one-off, playing this one-time-only solo gig as a warm-up for a show later in the week. That show will be Ry Cooder's—the same Ry Cooder who's won critical acclaim in his American homeland for years but has to come to the U.K. to reap his deserved 'superstar' glories. Oddly enough, Hiatt is a part of Cooder's current band—a situation not too far removed from the Dave Edmurids/Nick Lowe & Rockpile union that's brought me over here in the first place. Yet here I am watching John Hiatt, thinking about him and about Ry Cooder and about Rockpile and about everybody's respective homeland, and wondering what unwritten rule makes these performers 'dependable craftsmen' at home and bona fide rock heroes abroad.

And I haven't been able to come up with an answer yet.