Portal:Rock music

The Rock Music Portal

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the black musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as 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 is typically 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 and 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 until its decline in 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 few 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, heavy metal, which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, 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 following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Johnny Rivers was a key 1960s rock artist known for hits like "Memphis" and his "Go-go" style. (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 3Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Ritchie Valens best known for his 1958 hit "La Bamba", which blended traditional Mexican music with rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 6Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 7Cliff Richard became an early British rock and roll star with his 1958 hit "Move It". (from Rock and roll)
Image 8Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 9The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 10Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 11"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 12Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 13Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 14Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 15Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 16Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 17Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 18Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 19Alan Freed disc jockey who is credited with popularizing the term "rock and roll" in the 1950s, helping break down racial barriers. (from Rock and roll)
Image 20Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 21Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 22LaVern Baker was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991. “Jim Dandy” and “Tweedlee Dee” helped shape the sound of the 1950s rock scene. (from Rock and roll)
Image 23Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 24Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 25Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 26Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 27Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)

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Thin Lizzy are an Irish rock band formed in Dublin in 1969. The band initially consisted of bass guitarist, lead vocalist and principal songwriter Phil Lynott, drummer Brian Downey, guitarist Eric Bell and organist Eric Wrixon although Wrixon left after a few months. Bell left at the end of 1973 and was briefly replaced by Gary Moore, who himself was replaced in mid-1974 by twin lead guitarists: Scott Gorham, who remained with the band until their break-up in 1983, and Brian Robertson, who remained with the band until 1978 when Moore re-joined. Moore left a second time and was replaced by Snowy White in 1980, who was himself replaced by John Sykes in 1982. The line-up was augmented by keyboardist Darren Wharton in 1980.

The singles "Whiskey in the Jar" (1972), "The Boys Are Back in Town" (1976) and "Waiting for an Alibi" (1979) were international hits, and several Thin Lizzy albums reached the top ten in the UK. The band's music reflects a wide range of influences including blues, soul music, psychedelic rock, and traditional Irish folk music, but is generally classified as hard rock or sometimes heavy metal. Lynott led the group throughout their fourteen-year recording career of twelve studio albums, writing or co-writing almost all the band's material. He was the first Black Irishman to achieve commercial success in the field of rock music. Thin Lizzy featured several guitarists throughout their history, with Downey and Lynott as the rhythm section on the drums and bass guitar. As well as being multiracial, the band drew their early members not only from both sides of the Irish border but from both the Catholic and Protestant communities during The Troubles.

After Lynott's death in 1986, various incarnations of the band emerged over the years based initially around guitarists Gorham and Sykes although Sykes left the band in 2009. Gorham later continued with a new line-up which included Downey. In 2012, Gorham and Downey decided against recording new material as Thin Lizzy so a new band, Black Star Riders, was formed to tour and produce new releases. Thin Lizzy have since reunited for occasional concerts.

Rolling Stone magazine describes the band as distinctly hard rock, "far apart from the braying mid-70s metal pack". AllMusic critic John Dougan wrote, "As the band's creative force, Lynott was a more insightful and intelligent writer than many of his ilk, preferring slice-of-life working-class dramas of love and hate influenced by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and virtually all of the Irish literary tradition." (Full article...)

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Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), known professionally as Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper, actor, and television host. Born in Dallas, raised in Miami, he was the first solo white rapper to achieve commercial success following the 1990 release of his best-known hit "Ice Ice Baby". He is credited with breaking down racial barriers in rap and hip-hop for future white rappers, most notably Eminem.

Ice released his debut album, Hooked, on the independent Ichiban Records before signing a contract with SBK Records, a record label of the EMI Group, which released a reformatted version under the title To the Extreme; it became the fastest-selling hip hop album of all time and "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard charts. Followed by the live album Extremely Live (1991), Ice made a cameo appearance on the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) where he performed "Ninja Rap", which he co-wrote. He was soon offered and starred in his own film, Cool as Ice (1991), which included the single "Cool as Ice (Everybody Get Loose)" with Naomi Campbell; the film itself was a box office failure.

His fast rise in popularity was quickly marred by media controversies about his background, and criticism about his appeal of hip hop to a mainstream audience alongside MC Hammer. Ice later regretted his business arrangements with SBK, who had also published fabricated biographical information without his knowledge. Ice's second studio album, Mind Blowin' (1994), featured a major image change but was commercially unsuccessful. Following rap rock performances in the underground scene and playing in a local grunge band, Ice released the dark nu metal album Hard to Swallow (1998), followed by the independently released Bi-Polar (2001) and Platinum Underground (2005).

In the 2000s, Ice began appearing on television reality shows including The Surreal Life. In 2010, Ice began hosting The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network which ran for nine seasons until 2019. In 2022, he started another home improvement television program, The Vanilla Ice Home Show. He is also involved in motocross racing and real estate. (Full article...)

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Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Dylan continued the musical approach of his previous album Bringing It All Back Home (1965), using rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album in a further departure from his primarily acoustic folk sound, except for the closing track, the 11-minute ballad "Desolation Row". Critics have focused on the innovative way Dylan combined driving, blues-based music with the subtlety of poetry to create songs that captured the political and cultural climate of contemporary America. Author Michael Gray argued that, in an important sense, the 1960s "started" with this album.

Preceded by the hit single "Like a Rolling Stone", the album features songs that Dylan has continued to perform live over his long career, including "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the title track. He named the album after the major American highway which connected his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to southern cities famed for their musical heritage, including St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and the Delta blues area of Mississippi.

Highway 61 Revisited peaked at No. 3 on the US Billboard Top LPs chart and No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart. Positively received on release, the album has since been described as one of Dylan's best works and among the greatest albums of all time, ranking No. 4 on Rolling Stone's "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list in 2003 and repositioned to No. 18 in the 2020 revision. It was voted No. 26 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000) and was featured in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2010). "Like a Rolling Stone" was a top-10 hit in several countries, and was listed at No. 4 on Rolling Stones "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2021. Two other songs, "Desolation Row" and "Highway 61 Revisited", were listed at No. 187 and No. 373 respectively on the 2010 list. ('Full article...)

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"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on July 20, 1965, by Columbia Records. Its confrontational lyrics originated in an extended piece of verse Dylan wrote in June 1965, when he returned exhausted from a grueling tour of England. Dylan distilled this draft into four verses and a chorus. "Like a Rolling Stone" was recorded a few weeks later as part of the sessions for the forthcoming album Highway 61 Revisited as its opening track.

During a difficult two-day preproduction, Dylan struggled to find the essence of the song, which was demoed without success in ³
₄ time. A breakthrough was made when it was tried in a rock music format, and rookie session musician Al Kooper improvised the Hammond B2 organ riff which contributed to the track's signature sound. Columbia Records was unhappy with both the song's length at over six minutes and its heavy electric sound, and was hesitant to release it. It was only when, a month later, a copy was leaked to a new popular music club and heard by influential DJs that the song was put out as a single. Although radio stations were reluctant to play such a long track, "Like a Rolling Stone" reached No. 2 in the US Billboard charts (No. 1 in Cashbox) and became a worldwide hit.

Critics have described "Like a Rolling Stone" as revolutionary in its combination of musical elements, the youthful, cynical sound of Dylan's voice, and the directness of the question "How does it feel?". It completed the transformation of Dylan's image from folk singer to rock star, and is considered one of the most influential compositions in postwar popular music. Rolling Stone magazine listed it at No. 1 on their 2004 and 2010 "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" lists. It has been covered by many artists, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Rolling Stones to the Wailers, Cat Power, Titus Andronicus and Green Day. At an auction in 2014, Dylan's handwritten lyrics to the song fetched $2 million, a world record for a popular music manuscript. (Full article...)

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Credit: Carlos Delgado CC-BY-SA

Amparo Llanos of Spanish band Dover in 2014 during their Dover came to me tour.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that heavy metal band Judas Priest took their name from Bob Dylan's song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest"?
... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?
... that heavy metal led Ossian D'Ambrosio to druidism?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that Canadian punk rock musician Talli Osborne had only briefly spoken to the frontman of NOFX before the band wrote a song about her?
... 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?

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Industrial metal is the fusion of heavy metal and industrial music, typically employing repeating metal guitar riffs, sampling, synthesizer or sequencer lines, and distorted vocals. Prominent industrial metal acts include Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Fear Factory, Rammstein, KMFDM, and Godflesh.

Industrial metal developed in the late 1980s, as industrial and metal began to fuse into a common genre. Industrial metal did well in the early 1990s, particularly in North America, with the success of groups such as Nine Inch Nails, but its popularity began to fade in the latter half of the 1990s. (Full article...)

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