Portal:Rock music

The Rock Music Portal

Rock music is a 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 styles from the late 50s to mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It has its roots beginning as classic rock and roll, a style that drew from the African-American 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 styles. Rock is typically centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with an 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; however, 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 1960s up 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 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. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (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 3Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 4LaVern Baker was an R&B singer who was influential on rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Chuck Berry in 1958 (from Rock and roll)
Image 7Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 8Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 9Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 10Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 11Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 12The transistor radio (1958 Emerson pictured) introduced FM radio and rock and roll music to baby boomer children in American households. (from Rock and roll)
Image 13Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 14Disc jockey Alan Freed is credited with popularizing the term "rock and roll" and introducing the genre across racial barriers in the 1950s (from Rock and roll)
Image 15Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 16Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 17"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 18Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 20Cliff Richard became an early British rock and roll star with his 1958 hit "Move It". (from Rock and roll)
Image 21Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 22Kiss on stage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 23Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 24Johnny Rivers was a key 1960s rock artist known for hits like "Memphis" and his "Go-go" style. (from Rock and roll)
Image 25Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 26Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 27The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)

Selected article

Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Newcastle, New South Wales, with Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars, Ben Gillies on drums, and Chris Joannou on bass guitar. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo competition conducted by SBS TV show Nomad and ABC radio station Triple J. The band was signed by Murmur and were successful in Australia and internationally. Silverchair has sold over 10 million albums worldwide.

Silverchair have won more ARIA Music Awards than any other group in history, earning 21 wins from 49 nominations. They also received six APRA Awards, with Johns winning three songwriting awards in 2008. All five of their studio albums debuted at number one on the ARIA Albums Chart: Frogstomp (1995), Freak Show (1997), Neon Ballroom (1999), Diorama (2002), and Young Modern (2007). Three singles reached the number-one slot on the related ARIA Singles Chart: "Tomorrow" (1994), "Freak" (1997), and "Straight Lines" (2007).

Silverchair's alternative rock sound evolved throughout their career, with differing styles on specific albums growing more ambitious over the years, from grunge on their first two albums to later works displaying orchestral and art rock influences. Writers at 106.3 The Buzz consider Silverchair one of the "Big Four" of post-grunge. The songwriting and singing of Johns had evolved steadily while the band had developed an increased element of complexity.

In 2003, following the release of Diorama the previous year, Silverchair went on hiatus. The band reunited at the 2005 Wave Aid concerts; released their fifth album, Young Modern, in 2007; and played the Across the Great Divide tour with contemporaries Powderfinger. In May 2011, Silverchair announced an indefinite hiatus. (Full article...)

Selected biography

Promotional photograph of Elvis Presley, taken in 1954.

Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Presley's energetic and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a mixture of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and initial controversy.

Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi; his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, when he was 13. He began his music career in 1954 at Sun Records with the producer Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African-American music to a wider audience. Presley, on guitar and accompanied by the guitarist Scotty Moore on lead and the bassist Bill Black, was a pioneer of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country music and rhythm and blues. In 1955, the 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 managed him for the rest of his career. Presley's first RCA Victor single, "Heartbreak Hotel", was released in January 1956 and became a number-one hit in the US. Within a year, RCA Victor sold 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 performing style and promotion of the then-marginalized sound of African Americans led to his 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, and, guided by Parker, devoted 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, he returned to the stage in the acclaimed NBC television comeback special Elvis, which led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and several highly profitable tours. In 1973, Presley gave the first concert by a solo artist to be broadcast around the world, Aloha from Hawaii. Many years of substance abuse and unhealthy eating severely compromised his health, and Presley died in August 1977 at his Graceland estate at the age of 42.

Presley is one of the best-selling music artists in history, having sold an estimated 500 million records worldwide. He was commercially successful in many genres, including pop, country, rock and roll, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, adult contemporary, and gospel. Presley won three Grammy Awards, received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36, and has been posthumously inducted into multiple music halls of fame. He holds several records, including the most Recording Industry Association of America (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...)

Selected album

Idlewild South is the second studio album by American rock band the Allman Brothers Band. With the exception of one song, the album was produced by Tom Dowd and was released on September 23, 1970 in the United States, by Atco Records and Capricorn Records. Following the release of their 1969 debut, the Allman Brothers Band toured the United States extensively to promote the album, which had little commercial success. Their performances, however, did create positive word of mouth exposure that extended to more famous musicians, such as Eric Clapton, who invited group leader Duane Allman to contribute to his 1970 album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

As a result of the band's relentless touring schedule, Idlewild South was recorded gradually over a period of five months in various cities, including New York, Miami, and Macon, Georgia, the band's adopted home. Tom Dowd had previously been sought to record the group's debut but had been unavailable. The material presented on Idlewild South was written during this period and tested out on the road at shows. The album's title, derived from busy Idlewild Airport in New York City, comes from the band's nickname for a rustic cabin the band rented out and used for rehearsals, as well as parties. Idlewild South contains two of the band's best-known songs, the ballad "Midnight Rider" (later a solo hit for Gregg Allman, and covered by various artists) and the instrumental "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", which became one of the band's best-known concert numbers.

The album was released in September 1970, but again failed to achieve significant success. Sales began to grow, however, due to over 300 shows the band put on in 1970, setting the stage for their artistic and commercial breakthrough with 1971's live follow-up double-album, At Fillmore East. Following the band's increased fame in the early 1970s, this album and its self-titled debut, The Allman Brothers Band, were repackaged into the compilation album Beginnings. In 1973, Beginnings was certified gold for sales of 500,000 copies, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. (Full article...)

Selected song

"Kicks" is a song composed by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, best known as a 1966 hit for American rock band Paul Revere & the Raiders.

Mann and Weill wrote the song for the Animals, but the band's lead singer Eric Burdon turned it down. Instead, Paul Revere & the Raiders recorded and released it as a single in 1966. The single was a number one hit in Canada, and reached number four in the United States. "Kicks" was included on the band's fifth album, Midnight Ride, released in May 1966. A live version of the song was recorded on the band's 1996 Greatest Hits Live compilation album.

Considered one of the earliest anti-drug songs, "Kicks" was composed and released during an era in which pro-hippie, pro-experimentation, and other counterculture themes were gaining popularity on U.S. FM radio stations. The song's message was consequently perceived as outdated by the emerging youth counterculture, as popular artists ranging from the Beatles to Jefferson Airplane had written songs whose themes sharply contrasted that of "Kicks." However, the song has received generally positive reviews by music critics in the decades since its release. In 2004, "Kicks" was ranked number 400 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. (Full article...)

Selected picture

(Then) Cat Stevens in Boeblingen, Germany in 1976.

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that Rolling Stone listed Ácido Argentino as the most essential album of Argentine heavy metal?
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... 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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... that raw material waste from the West influenced a generation of rock music in China?

Selected genre

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 1990s, with the success of acts such as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein and Rob Zombie (Full article...)