The Rock Music Portal
Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.
Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.
From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)
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The Clash achieved critical and commercial success in the United Kingdom with the release of their debut album The Clash (1977) and their second album Give 'Em Enough Rope (1978). Their experimental third album London Calling, which was released in the UK in December 1979, earned them popularity in the United States, where it was released the following month. A decade later, Rolling Stone named London Calling the best album of the 1980s. Following continued musical experimentation on their fourth album Sandinista! (1980), the band were more successful with the release of Combat Rock (1982), which includes the US top-10 hit "Rock the Casbah", helping the album to achieve a 2× platinum certification there.
In 1982, Headon left the band due to internal friction surrounding his increasing heroin addiction, and Jones departed the following year. With a new lineup, the band released their final album Cut the Crap in 1985 before disbanding a few weeks later.
In January 2003, shortly after the death of Joe Strummer, the band, including original drummer Terry Chimes, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the Clash number 28 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". (Full article...)
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Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi; his family relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was 13. His music career began there in 1954, at Sun Records with producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on guitar and accompanied by lead guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, drummer D. J. Fontana joined to complete the lineup of Presley's classic quartet and RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage him for the rest of his life. Presley's first RCA Victor single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the United States. Within a year, RCA Victor would sell ten million Presley singles. With a series of successful television appearances and chart-topping records, Presley became the leading figure of the newly popular rock and roll; though his performative style and promotion of the then-marginalized sound of African Americans led to him being widely considered a threat to the moral well-being of white American youth.
In November 1956, Presley made his film debut in Love Me Tender. Drafted into military service in 1958, he relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. Presley held few concerts, however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood films and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. Some of Presley's most famous films included Jailhouse Rock (1957), Blue Hawaii (1961), and Viva Las Vegas (1964). In 1968, following a seven-year break from live performances, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed NBC television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. However, years of prescription drug abuse and unhealthy eating habits severely compromised his health, and Presley died unexpectedly in August 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.
Presley is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales estimated around 500 million records worldwide. He was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, adult contemporary, and gospel. He won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame. He also holds several records, including the most RIAA-certified gold and platinum albums, the most albums charted on the Billboard 200, the most number-one albums by a solo artist on the UK Albums Chart, and the most number-one singles by any act on the UK Singles Chart. In 2018, Presley was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (Full article...)
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Here Come the Warm Jets is the debut solo album by Brian Eno (mononymously credited as "Eno"), released on Island Records on 8 February 1974. It was recorded and produced by Eno following his departure from Roxy Music, and blends glam and pop stylings with avant-garde approaches. The album features numerous guests, including several of Eno's former Roxy Music bandmates along with members of Hawkwind, Matching Mole, Pink Fairies, Sharks, Sweetfeed, and King Crimson. Eno employed unusual directions and production methods to coax unexpected results from the musicians.
Here Come the Warm Jets peaked at number 26 on the United Kingdom album charts and number 151 on the US Billboard charts, receiving mostly positive reviews. It was re-issued on compact disc in 1990 on Island Records and remastered in 2004 on Virgin Records, and continued to elicit praise. (Full article...)
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"Tomorrow Never Knows" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written primarily by John Lennon and credited to Lennon–McCartney. It was released in August 1966 as the final track on their album Revolver, although it was the first song recorded for the LP. The song marked a radical departure for the Beatles, as the band fully embraced the potential of the recording studio without consideration for reproducing the results in concert.
When writing the song, Lennon drew inspiration from his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD and from the 1964 book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner. The Beatles' recording employed musical elements foreign to pop music, including musique concrète, avant-garde composition and electro-acoustic sound manipulation. It features an Indian-inspired modal backing of tambura and sitar drone and bass guitar, with minimal harmonic deviation from a single chord, underpinned by a constant but non-standard drum pattern; added to this, tape loops prepared by the band were overdubbed "live" onto the rhythm track. Part of Lennon's vocal was fed through a Leslie speaker cabinet, normally used for a Hammond organ. The song's reverse guitar parts and effects marked the first use of reversed sounds in a pop recording, although the Beatles' 1966 B-side "Rain", which they recorded soon afterwards using the same technique, was issued over two months before the release of Revolver.
"Tomorrow Never Knows" was an early and highly influential recording in the psychedelic and electronic music genres, particularly for its pioneering use of sampling, tape manipulation and other production techniques. It also introduced lyrical themes that espoused mind expansion, anti-materialism and Eastern spirituality into popular music. On release, the song was the source of confusion and ridicule by many fans and journalists; it has since received praise as an effective representation of a psychedelic experience. Pitchfork placed the track at number 19 on its list of "The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s", and Rolling Stone ranked it at number 18 on the magazine's list of the 100 greatest Beatles songs. (Full article...)
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Mike Dirnt, singer and bassist of Green Day, stands on the Centerstage during Rock im Park ("Rock in the Park") Festival 2013.
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that the Diaspora Yeshiva Band infused rock and bluegrass with Jewish lyrics, creating a music style it called "Hasidic rock" or "Country and Eastern"?
- ... that the Liverpool Echo described British rock and roll star Tommy Steele as "quite unable to sing and play the guitar at the same time" when reviewing his first album?
- ... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?
- ... that before charting on the UK Albums Chart with Are We There Yet?, the indie rock musician James Marriott had made a career of mocking other YouTubers' music?
- ... that raw material waste from the West influenced a generation of rock music in China?
- ... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
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Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or '60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional. (Full article...)
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Californication is the seventh studio album by U.S. rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, released on June 8, 1999, on Warner Bros. Records. It was produced by Rick Rubin. Along with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Californication is one of the band’s best-selling albums.
Californication marked the return of guitarist John Frusciante, who'd previously appeared on Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and shifted the band's style. The lyrics incorporated the sexual innuendos already associated with the band, but added themes including death, suicide, California, drugs, globalization and travel. (Full article...)More did you know...
- ... that David Bowie's first gig as lead singer was at the Green Man, Blackheath?
- ... that Carlton le Willows Academy alumni include cricketer Mark Footitt, Air Supply singer/guitarist Graham Russell, and balloonist Janet Folkes?
- ... that the video for Marilyn Manson's soft-rock ballad "Running to the Edge of the World" was widely condemned for its depiction of violence against women?
- ... that Susan Beschta was a punk rocker and federal judge?
- ... that the FM Non-Duplication Rule adopted by the FCC 59 years ago led to the creation of the album-oriented and classic rock radio formats?
- ... that The Elvis Dead, a retelling of Evil Dead II in the style of Elvis Presley, features songs such as "Standing in a State of Shock", "I've Been Possessed", and "Wrapped Up in Vines"?
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