Cultural impact of rock and roll music

Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. In addition, rock and roll may have helped the cause of the civil rights movement because both African American teens and white American teens enjoyed the music.

Many early rock and roll songs dealt with issues of cars, school, dating, and clothing. The rock and roll songs described events and conflicts that most listeners could relate to from some point in their lives. Topics that were generally considered taboo, such as sex, began to be introduced in rock and roll music. This new music tried to break boundaries and express the real emotions that people were feeling, but didn’t talk about. An awakening in the young American culture began to take place.

Race

In the cross-over of African American "race music" to a growing white youth audience, the popularization of rock and roll involved both black performers reaching a white audience and white performers appropriating African American music. Rock and roll appeared at a time when racial tensions in the United States were entering a new phase, with the beginnings of the civil rights movement for desegregation, leading to the Supreme Court ruling that abolished the policy of "separate but equal" in 1954, but leaving a policy which would be extremely difficult to enforce in parts of the United States. The coming together of white youth audiences and black music in rock and roll, inevitably provoked strong white racist reactions within the US, with many whites condemning its breaking down of barriers based on color. Many observers saw rock and roll as heralding the way for desegregation, in creating a new form of music that encouraged racial cooperation and shared experience.

Dance styles

From its early-1950s inception through the early 1960s, rock and roll music spawned new dance crazes. Teenagers found the irregular rhythm of the backbeat especially suited to reviving the jitterbug dancing of the big-band era. "Sock hops," gym dances, and home basement dance parties became the rage, and American teens watched Dick Clark's American Bandstand to keep up on the latest dance and fashion styles. From the mid-1960s on, as "rock and roll" yielded gradually to "rock," later dance genres followed, starting with the twist, and leading up to funk, disco, house, techno, and hip hop.

Decline

Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the initial rock and roll era had come to an end. There was also a process that has been described as the "feminisation" of rock and roll, with the charts beginning to be dominated by love ballads, often aimed at a female audience, and the rise of girl groups like The Shirelles and The Crystals. Some historians of music have pointed to important and innovative developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including multitrack recording, developed by Les Paul, the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the Wall of Sound productions of Phil Spector, continued desegregation of the charts, the rise of surf music, garage rock and the Twist dance craze.

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Early rock and roll music

Rockabilly

"Rockabilly" usually (but not exclusively) refers to the type of rock and roll music which was played and recorded in the mid 1950s by white singers such as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, who drew mainly on the country roots of the music. Many other popular rock and roll singers of the time, such as Fats Domino and Little Richard, came out of the black rhythm and blues tradition, making the music attractive to white audiences, and are not usually classed as "rockabilly".

In July 1954, Elvis Presley recorded the regional hit "That's All Right (Mama)" at Sam Phillips' Sun Studio in Memphis. Three months earlier, on April 12, 1954, Bill Haley & His Comets recorded "Rock Around the Clock". Although only a minor hit when first released, when used in the opening sequence of the movie Blackboard Jungle, a year later, it really set the rock and roll boom in motion. The song became one of the biggest hits in history, and frenzied teens flocked to see Haley and the Comets perform it, causing riots in some cities. "Rock Around the Clock" was a breakthrough for both the group and for all of rock and roll music. If everything that came before laid the groundwork, "Rock Around the Clock" introduced the music to a global audience.

In 1956 the arrival of rockabilly was underlined by the success of songs like "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash, "Blue Suede Shoes" by Perkins and "Heartbreak Hotel" by Presley. For a few years it became the most commercially successful form of rock and roll. Later rockabilly acts, particularly performing songwriters like Buddy Holly, would be a major influence on British Invasion acts and particularly on the song writing of The Beatles and through them on the nature of later rock music.

Doo wop

Doo wop was one of the most popular forms of 1950s rock and roll, with an emphasis on multi-part vocal harmonies and meaningless backing lyrics (from which the genre later gained its name), which were usually supported with light instrumentation. Its origins were in African American vocal groups of the 1930s and 40s, like the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers, who had enjoyed considerable commercial success with arrangements based on close harmonies. They were followed by 1940s R&B vocal acts like The Orioles, The Ravens and The Clovers, who injected a strong element of traditional gospel and, increasingly, the energy of Jump blues. By 1954, as rock and roll was beginning to emerge, a number of similar acts began to cross over from the R&B charts to mainstream success, often with added honking brass and saxophone, with The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scoring major hits. Despite the subsequent explosion in records from doo wop acts in the later 50s, many failed to chart or were one-hit wonders. Exceptions included The Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955) and The Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958), both of which ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the era. Towards the end of the decade there were increasing numbers of white, particularly Italian American, singers taking up Doo Wop, creating all-white groups like The Mystics and Dion and the Belmonts and racially integrated groups like The Dell Vikings and The Impalas. Doo wop would be a major influence on vocal surf music, soul and early Merseybeat, including The Beatles.

Cover versions

Many of the earliest white rock and roll hits were covers or partial re-writes of earlier black rhythm and blues or blues songs. Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, R&B music had been gaining a stronger beat and a wilder style, with artists such as Fats Domino and Johnny Otis speeding up the tempos and increasing the backbeat to great popularity on the juke joint circuit. Before the efforts of Freed and others, black music was taboo on many white-owned radio outlets, but artists and producers quickly recognized the potential of rock and roll. Most of Presley's early hits were covers of black rhythm and blues or blues songs, like "That's All Right" (a countrified arrangement of a blues number), its flip side "Blue Moon of Kentucky", "Baby, Let's Play House", "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" and "Hound Dog".

Rock'n'roller Little Richard performing in 2007

Covers were customary in the music industry at the time; it was made particularly easy by the compulsory license provision of United States copyright law (still in effect). One of the first relevant successful covers was Wynonie Harris's transformation of Roy Brown's 1947 original jump blues hit "Good Rocking Tonight" into a more showy rocker and the Louis Prima rocker "Oh Babe" in 1950, as well as Amos Milburn's cover of what may have been the first white rock and roll record, Hardrock Gunter's "Birmingham Bounce" in 1949. The most notable trend, however, was white pop covers of black R&B numbers. The more familiar sound of these covers may have been more palatable to white audiences, there may have been an element of prejudice, but labels aimed at the white market also had much better distribution networks and were generally much more profitable. Famously, Pat Boone recorded sanitized versions of Little Richard songs. Later, as those songs became popular, the original artists' recordings received radio play as well.

The cover versions were not necessarily straightforward imitations. For example, Bill Haley's incompletely bowdlerized cover of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" transformed Big Joe Turner's humorous and racy tale of adult love into an energetic teen dance number, while Georgia Gibbs replaced Etta James's tough, sarcastic vocal in "Roll With Me, Henry" (covered as "Dance With Me, Henry") with a perkier vocal more appropriate for an audience unfamiliar with the song to which James's song was an answer, Hank Ballard's "Work With Me, Annie". Elvis' rock and roll version of "Hound Dog" was very different from the blues shouter that Big Mama Thornton had recorded.

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Rock and roll music

Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll or rock 'n' roll) is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country , jazz, and gospel music. Though elements of rock and roll can be heard in country records of the 1930s, and in blues records from the 1920s, rock and roll did not acquire its name until the 1950s.

The term "rock and roll" now has at least two different meanings, both in common usage. The American Heritage Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary[9] both define rock and roll as synonymous with rock music. Encyclopaedia Britannica, on the other hand, regards it as the music that originated in the mid-1950s and later evolved "into the more encompassing international style known as rock music." For the purpose of differentiation, this article uses the second definition, while the broader musical genre is discussed in the rock music article.

In the earliest rock and roll styles of the late 1940s and early 1950s, either the piano or saxophone was often the lead instrument, but these were generally replaced or supplemented by guitar in the middle to late 1950s. The beat is essentially a blues rhythm with an accentuated backbeat, the latter almost always provided by a snare drum. Classic rock and roll is usually played with one or two electric guitars (one lead, one rhythm), a string bass or (after the mid-1950s) an electric bass guitar, and a drum kit.

Rock and roll began achieving wide popularity in the 1960s. The massive popularity and eventual worldwide view of rock and roll gave it a widespread social impact. Bobby Gillespie writes that "When Chuck Berry sang 'Hail, hail, rock and roll, deliver me from the days of old,' that's exactly what the music was doing. Chuck Berry started the global psychic jailbreak that is rock'n'roll."

Far beyond simply a musical style, rock and roll, as seen in movies and on television, influenced lifestyles, fashion, attitudes, and language. It went on to spawn various sub-genres, often without the initially characteristic backbeat, that are now more commonly called simply "rock music" or "rock."

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Social impact of rock music

The worldwide popularity of rock music meant that it became a major influence on culture, fashion and social attitudes. Different sub-genres of rock were adopted by, and became central to, the identity of a large number of sub-cultures. In the 1950s and 1960s, respectively, British youths adopted the Teddy Boy and Rockers subcultures, which revolved around US rock and roll. The counter-culture of the 1960s was closely associated with psychedelic rock. The mid-1970s punk subculture began in the US, but it was given a distinctive look by British designer Vivian Westwood, a look which spread worldwide. Out of the punk scene, the Goth and Emo subcultures grew, both of which presented distinctive visual styles.

When an international rock culture developed, it was able to supplant cinema as the major sources of fashion influence. Paradoxically, followers of rock music have often mistrusted the world of fashion, which has been seen as elevating image above substance. Rock fashions have been seen as combining elements of different cultures and periods, as well as expressing divergent views on sexuality and gender, and rock music in general has been noted and criticised for facilitating greater sexual freedom. Rock has also been associated with various forms of drug use, including the stimulants taken by some mods in the early to mid-1960s, through the LSD linked with psychedelic rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and sometimes to cannabis, cocaine and heroin, all of which have been eulogised in song.

Rock has been credited with changing attitudes to race by opening up African-American culture to white audiences; but at the same time, rock has been accused of appropriating and exploiting that culture. While rock music has absorbed many influences and introduced Western audiences to different musical traditions, the global spread of rock music has been interpreted as a form of cultural imperialism. Rock music inherited the folk tradition of protest song, making political statements on subjects such as war, religion, poverty, civil rights, justice and the environment. Political activism reached a mainstream peak with the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" single (1984) and Live Aid concert for Ethiopia in 1985, which, while successfully raising awareness of world poverty and funds for aid, have also been criticised (along with similar events), for providing a stage for self-aggrandisement and increased profits for the rock stars involved.

Since its early development rock music has been associated with rebellion against social and political norms, most obviously in early rock and roll's rejection of an adult-dominated culture, the counter-culture's rejection of consumerism and conformity and punk's rejection of all forms of social convention, however, it can also be seen as providing a means of commercial exploitation of such ideas and of diverting youth away from political action.

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The new millennium of rock music (the 2000s)

Teppei Teranishi and Dustin Kensrue of Thrice performing at Indio, CA

Post-hardcore and emo

Post-hardcore developed in the US, particularly in the Chicago and Washington, D.C areas, in the early-to-mid 1980s, with bands that were inspired by the do-it-yourself ethics and guitar-heavy music of hardcore punk, but influenced by post-punk, adopting longer song formats, more complex musical structures and sometimes more melodic lyrics. Existing bands that moved on from hardcore included Fugazi. From the late 1980s they were followed by bands including Quicksand, Girls Against Boys and The Jesus Lizard. Bands that formed in the 1990s included Thursday, Thrice, Finch, and Poison the Well.

Emo also emerged from the hardcore scene in 1980s Washington, D.C., initially as "emocore", used as a term to describe bands who favored expressive vocals over the more common abrasive, barking style. The style was pioneered by bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, the last formed by Ian MacKaye, whose Dischord Records became a major centre for the emerging D.C. emo scene, releasing work by Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi. Fugazi emerged as the definitive early emo band, gaining a fanbase among alternative rock followers, not least for their overtly anti-commercial stance. The early emo scene operated as an underground, with short-lived bands releasing small-run vinyl records on tiny independent labels. The mid-'90s sound of emo was defined by bands like Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate who incorporated elements of grunge and more melodic rock. Only after the breakthrough of grunge and pop punk into the mainstream did emo come to wider attention with the success of Weezer's Pinkerton (1996) album, which utilised pop punk. Late 1990s bands drew on the work of Fugazi, SDRE, Jawbreaker and Weezer, including The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids, Braid, Texas Is the Reason, Joan of Arc, Jets to Brazil and most successfully Jimmy Eat World, and by the end of the millennium it was one of the more popular indie styles in the US.

Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2003). The new emo had a much more mainstream sound then in the 90s and a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its earlier incarnations. At the same time, use of the term emo expanded beyond the musical genre, becoming associated with fashion, a hairstyle and any music that expressed emotion. The term emo has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and disparate groups such as Paramore and Panic at the Disco, even when they protest the label. By 2003 post-hardcore bands had also caught the attention of major labels and began to enjoy mainstream success in the album charts. A number of these bands were seen as a more aggressive offshoot of emo and given the often vague label of screamo. Around this time, a new wave of post-hardcore bands began to emerge onto the scene that incorporated more pop punk and alternative rock styles into their music, including The Used, Hawthorne Heights, Senses Fail, From First to Last and Emery and Canadian bands Silverstein and Alexisonfire. British bands like Funeral For A Friend, The Blackout and Enter Shikari also made headway.

Electric Six

Garage rock/post-punk revival

In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock, emerged into the mainstream. They were variously characterised as part of a garage rock, post-punk or New Wave revival. Because the bands came from across the globe, cited diverse influences (from traditional blues, through New Wave to grunge), and adopted differing styles of dress, their unity as a genre has been disputed. There had been attempts to revive garage rock and elements of punk in the 1980s and 1990s and by 2000 scenes had grown up in several countries. The Detroit rock scene included The Von Bondies, Electric Six, The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras and that of New York Radio 4, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Rapture. Elsewhere, other lesser-known acts such as Billy Childish and The Buff Medways from Britain, The (International) Noise Conspiracy from Sweden, The 5.6.7.8's from Japan, and the Oblivians from Memphis enjoyed underground, regional or national success.

The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, who emerged from the New York club scene with their début album Is This It (2001); The White Stripes, from Detroit, with their third album White Blood Cells (2001); The Hives from Sweden after their compilation album Your New Favourite Band (2001); and The Vines from Australia with Highly Evolved (2002). They were christened by the media as the "The" bands, and dubbed "The saviours of rock 'n' roll", leading to accusations of hype. A second wave of bands that managed to gain international recognition as a result of the movement included Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Killers, Interpol and Kings of Leon from the US, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Editors, Franz Ferdinand and Placebo from the UK, Jet from Australia and The Datsuns and The D4 from New Zealand.

Lamb of God

Contemporary heavy metal, metalcore and retro metal

Metal remained popular in the 2000s, particularly in continental Europe. By the new millennium Scandinavia had emerged as one of the areas producing innovative and successful bands, while Belgium, Holland and especially Germany were the most significant markets. Established continental metal bands that placed multiple albums in the top 20 of the German charts between 2003 and 2008, including Finnish band Children of Bodom, Norwegian act Dimmu Borgir, Germany's Blind Guardian and Sweden's HammerFall.

Metalcore, originally an American hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk, emerged as a commercial force in the mid-2000s. It was rooted in the crossover thrash style developed two decades earlier by bands such as Suicidal Tendencies, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, and Stormtroopers of Death and remained an underground phenomenon through the 1990s. By 2004, melodic metalcore, influenced by melodic death metal, was sufficiently popular for Killswitch Engage's The End of Heartache and Shadows Fall's The War Within to debut at number 21 and number 20, respectively, on the Billboard album chart. Bullet for My Valentine, from Wales, broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts with Scream Aim Fire (2008). Metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and the Download Festival. Lamb of God, with a related blend of metal styles, reached number 2 on the Billboard charts in 2009 with Wrath.

The success of these bands and others such as Trivium, who have released both metalcore and straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon, who played in a progressive/sludge style, inspired claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by some critics the "New Wave of American Heavy Metal". Its roots have been traced to the music of acts like Pantera, Biohazard and Machine Head, drawing on New York hardcore, thrash metal and punk, helping to inspire a move away from the Nu Metal of the early 2000s and a return to riffs and guitar solos.

The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Texas-based The Sword, California's High on Fire, Sweden's Witchcraft, and Australia's Wolfmother. The Sword's Age of Winters (2006), drew heavily on the work of Black Sabbath and Pentagram, while Witchcraft added elements of folk and psychedelic rock and Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album combined elements of the sounds of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

Ratatat

Digital electronic rock

In the 2000s, as computer technology became more accessible and music software advanced, it became possible to create high quality music using little more than a single laptop computer. This resulted in a massive increase in the amount of home-produced electronic music available to the general public via the expanding internet, and new forms of performance such as laptronica and live coding. These techniques also began to be used by existing bands, as with industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails' album Year Zero (2007), and by developing genres that mixed rock with digital techniques and sounds, including indie electronic, electroclash, dance-punk and new rave.

Indie electronic, which had begun in the early 1990s with bands like Stereolab and Disco Inferno, took off in the new millennium as the new digital technology developed, with acts including Broadcast from the UK, Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany and The Postal Service, and Ratatat from the US, mixing a variety of indie sounds with electronic music, largely produced on small independent labels. The electroclash sub-genre began in New York at the end of the 1990s, combining synth pop, techno, punk and performance art. It was pioneered by I-F with their track "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1998), and pursued by artists including Felix da Housecat, Peaches, Chicks on Speed, and Ladytron. It gained international attention at the beginning of the new millennium and spread to scenes in London and Berlin, but rapidly faded as a recognisable genre. Dance-punk, mixing post-punk sounds with disco and funk, had developed in the 1980s, but it was revived among some bands of the garage rock/post-punk revival in the early years of the new millennium, particularly among New York acts such as Liars, The Rapture and Radio 4, joined by dance-oriented acts who adopted rock sounds such as Out Hud. In Britain the combination of indie with dance-punk was dubbed new rave in publicity for The Klaxons and the term was picked up and applied by the NME to bands including Trash Fashion, New Young Pony Club, Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test Icicles and Shitdisco, forming a scene with a similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music.

Renewed interest in electronic music and nostalgia for the 1980s led to the beginnings of a synthpop revival, with acts including Adult and Fischerspooner. In 2003-4 it began to move into the mainstream with Ladytron, the Postal Service, Cut Copy, the Bravery and, with most commercial success, The Killers all producing records that incorporated vintage synthesizer sounds and styles which contrasted with the dominant sounds of post-grunge and nu-metal. The style was picked up by a large number of performers, particularly female solo artists, leading the British and other media to proclaim a new era of the female electropop star. Artists named included British acts Little Boots, La Roux and Ladyhawke. Male acts that emerged in the same period included Calvin Harris, Frankmusik, Hurts, Kaskade, LMFAO, and Owl City, whose single "Fireflies" (2009) reached the top of the Billboard chart.

Cut Copy

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Punk and its aftermath of rock music (mid-1970s to the 1980s)

The Clash

Punk rock

Punk rock was developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.

By late 1976, acts such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world. Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.

By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk rock.[151] Since punk rock's initial popularity in the 1970s and the renewed interest created by the punk revival of the 1990s, punk rock continues to have a strong underground following. This has resulted in several evolved strains of hardcore punk, such as D-beat (a distortion-heavy subgenre influenced by the UK band Discharge), anarcho-punk (such as Crass), grindcore (such as Napalm Death), and crust punk. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to New Wave, post-punk and the alternative rock movement.

The Go-Go's

New Wave

Although punk rock was a significant social and musical phenomenon, it achieved less in the way of record sales (being distributed by small specialty labels such as Stiff Records), or American radio airplay (as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and album-oriented rock). Punk rock had attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as Talking Heads, and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description "New Wave" began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands. Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as The Cars, and The Go-Go's can be seen as pop bands marketed as New Wave; other existing acts, including The Police, The Pretenders and Elvis Costello, used the New Wave movement as the springboard for relatively long and critically successful careers, while "skinny tie" bands exemplified by The Knack, or the photogenic Blondie, began as punk acts and moved into more commercial territory.

Between 1982 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk, David Bowie, and Gary Numan, British New Wave went in the direction of such New Romantics as Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Talk Talk and the Eurythmics, sometimes using the synthesizer to replace all other instruments. This period coincided with the rise of MTV and led to a great deal of exposure for this brand of synthpop, creating what has been characterised as a second British Invasion. Some more traditional rock bands adapted to the video age and profited from MTV's airplay, most obviously Dire Straits', whose "Money for Nothing" gently poked fun at the station, despite the fact that it had helped make them international stars, but in general guitar-oriented rock was commercially eclipsed.

Jim O'Rourke additional guitarist of Sonic Youth

Post-punk

If hardcore most directly pursued the stripped down aesthetic of punk, and New Wave came to represent its commercial wing, post-punk emerged in the later 1970s and early '80s as its more artistic and challenging side. Major influences beside punk bands were The Velvet Underground, The Who, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, and the New York based no wave scene which placed an emphasis on performance, including bands such as James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and Sonic Youth. Early contributors to the genre included the US bands Pere Ubu, Devo, The Residents and Talking Heads.

The first wave of British post-punk included Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, who placed less emphasis on art than their US counterparts and more on the dark emotional qualities of their music. Bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cure, and The Sisters of Mercy, moved increasingly in this direction to found Gothic rock, which had become the basis of a major sub-culture by the early 1980s. Similar emotional territory was pursued by Australian acts like The Birthday Party and Nick Cave. Members of Bauhaus and Joy Division explored new stylistic territory as Love and Rockets and New Order respectively. Another early post-punk movement was the industrial music developed by British bands Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, and New York-based Suicide, using a variety of electronic and sampling techniques that emulated the sound of industrial production and which would develop into a variety of forms of post-industrial music in the 1980s.

The second generation of British post-punk bands that broke through in the early 1980s, including The Fall, The Pop Group, The Mekons, Echo and the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes, tended to move away from dark sonic landscapes. Arguably the most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, who incorporated elements of religious imagery together with political commentary into their often anthemic music, and by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world. Although many post-punk bands continued to record and perform, it declined as a movement in the mid-1980s as acts disbanded or moved off to explore other musical areas, but it has continued to influence the development of rock music and has been seen as a major element in the creation of the alternative rock movement.

Iron Maiden

New waves and genres in heavy metal

Although many established bands continued to perform and record, heavy metal suffered a hiatus in the face of the punk movement in the mid-1970s. Part of the reaction saw the popularity of bands like Motörhead, who had adopted a punk sensibility, and Judas Priest, who created a stripped down sound, largely removing the remaining elements of blues music, from their 1978 album Stained Class. This change of direction was compared to punk and in the late 1970s became known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). These bands were soon followed by acts including Iron Maiden, Vardis, Diamond Head, Saxon, Def Leppard and Venom, many of which began to enjoy considerable success in the USA. In the same period Eddie Van Halen established himself as a metal guitar virtuoso after his band's self-titled 1978 album. Randy Rhoads and Yngwie Malmsteen also became established virtuosos, associated with what would be known as the neoclassical metal style.

Inspired by NWOBHM and Van Halen's success, a metal scene began to develop in Southern California from the late 1970s, based on the clubs of L.A.'s Sunset Strip and including such bands as Quiet Riot, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, and W.A.S.P., who, along with similarly styled acts such as New York's Twisted Sister, incorporated the theatrics (and sometimes makeup) of glam rock acts like Alice Cooper and Kiss. The lyrics of these glam metal bands characteristically emphasized hedonism and wild behavior and musically were distinguished by rapid-fire shred guitar solos, anthemic choruses, and a relatively melodic, pop-oriented approach. By the mid-1980s bands were beginning to emerge from the L.A. scene that pursued a less glam image and a rawer sound, particularly Guns N' Roses, breaking through with the chart-topping Appetite for Destruction (1987), and Jane's Addiction, who emerged with their major label debut Nothing's Shocking, the following year.

In the late 1980s metal fragmented into several subgenres, including thrash metal, which developed in the US from the style known as speed metal, under the influence of hardcore punk, with low-register guitar riffs typically overlaid by shredding leads. Lyrics often expressed nihilistic views or deal with social issues using visceral, gory language. It was popularised by the "Big Four of Thrash": Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer. Death metal developed out of thrash, particularly influenced by the bands Venom and Slayer. Florida's Death and the Bay Area's Possessed emphasized lyrical elements of blasphemy, diabolism and millenarianism, with vocals usually delivered as guttural "death growls," high-pitched screaming, complemented by downtuned, highly distorted guitars and extremely fast double bass percussion. Black metal, again influenced by Venom and pioneered by Denmark's Mercyful Fate, Switzerland's Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, and Sweden's Bathory, had many similarities in sound to death metal, but was often intentionally lo-fi in production and placed greater emphasis on satanic and pagan themes. Bathory were particularly important in inspiring the further sub-genres of Viking metal and folk metal. Power metal emerged in Europe in the late 1980s as a reaction to the harshness of death and black metal and was established by Germany's Helloween, who combined a melodic approach with thrash's speed and energy. England's DragonForce and Florida's Iced Earth have a sound indebted to NWOBHM, while acts such as Florida's Kamelot, Finland's Nightwish, Italy's Rhapsody of Fire, and Russia's Catharsis feature a keyboard-based "symphonic" sound, sometimes employing orchestras and opera singers. In contrast to other sub-genres doom metal, influenced by Gothic rock, slowed down the music, with bands like England's Pagan Altar and Witchfinder General and the United States' Pentagram, Saint Vitus and Trouble, emphasizing melody, down-tuned guitars, a 'thicker' or 'heavier' sound and a sepulchral mood. American bands such as Queensrÿche and Dream Theater pioneered an often instrumentally challenging fusion of NWOBHM and progressive rock called progressive metal, with bands such as Symphony X combining aspects of power metal and classical music with the style, while Sweden's Opeth developed a unique style indebted to both death metal and atmospheric 70s prog rock.

Bruce Springsteen in East Berlin in 1988

Heartland rock

American working-class oriented heartland rock, characterized by a straightforward musical style, and a concern with the lives of ordinary, blue collar American people, developed in the second half of the 1970s. The term heartland rock was first used to describe Midwestern arena rock groups like Kansas, REO Speedwagon and Styx, but which came to be associated with a more socially concerned form of roots rock more directly influenced by folk, country and rock and roll. It has been seen as an American Midwest and Rust Belt counterpart to West Coast country rock and the Southern rock of the American South. Led by figures who had initially been identified with punk and New Wave, it was most strongly influenced by acts such as Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Morrison, and the basic rock of '60s garage and the Rolling Stones.

Exemplified by the commercial success of singer songwriters Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, along with less widely known acts such as Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, it was partly a reaction to post-industrial urban decline in the East and Mid-West, often dwelling on issues of social disintegration and isolation, beside a form of good-time rock and roll revivalism. The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential peak in the mid-1980s, with Springsteen's Born in the USA (1984), topping the charts worldwide and spawning a series of top ten singles, together with the arrival of artists including John Mellencamp, Steve Earle and more gentle singer/songwriters such as Bruce Hornsby. It can also be heard as an influence on artists as diverse as Billy Joel, Kid Rock and The Killers.

Heartland rock faded away as a recognized genre by the early 1990s, as rock music in general, and blue collar and white working class themes in particular, lost influence with younger audiences, and as heartland's artists turned to more personal works. Many heartland rock artists continue to record today with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp, although their works have become more personal and experimental and no longer fit easily into a single genre. Newer artists whose music would perhaps have been labelled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or 1980s, such as Missouri's Bottle Rockets and Illinois' Uncle Tupelo, often find themselves labeled alt-country.

R.E.M

The emergence of alternative rock

The term alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe rock artists who did not fit into the mainstream genres of the time. Bands dubbed "alternative" had no unified style, but were all seen as distinct from mainstream music. Alternative bands were linked by their collective debt to punk rock, through hardcore, New Wave or the post-punk movements. Important alternative rock bands of the 1980s in the US included R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies, and in the UK The Cure, New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Smiths. Artists were largely confined to independent record labels, building an extensive underground music scene based on college radio, fanzines, touring, and word-of-mouth. They rejected the dominant synthpop of the early 1980s, marking a return to group-based guitar rock.

Few of these early bands, with the exceptions of R.E.M. and The Smiths, achieved mainstream success, but despite a lack of spectacular album sales, they exerted a considerable influence on the generation of musicians who came of age in the 1980s and ended up breaking through to mainstream success in the 1990s. Styles of alternative rock in the U.S. during the 1980s included jangle pop, associated with the early recordings of R.E.M., which incorporated the ringing guitars of mid-1960s pop and rock, and college rock, used to describe alternative bands that began in the college circuit and college radio, including acts such as 10,000 Maniacs and The Feelies. In the UK Gothic rock was dominant in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade indie or dream pop like Primal Scream, Bogshed, Half Man Half Biscuit and The Wedding Present, and what were dubbed shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and the Boo Radleys. Particularly vibrant was the Madchester scene, produced such bands as Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses. The next decade would see the success of grunge in the United States and Britpop in the United Kingdom, bringing alternative rock into the mainstream.

Pixies

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Progression of rock Music (late 1960s to mid-1970s)

Roots rock

Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to a more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde. This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, have been seen as creating the genre of country folk, a route pursued by a number of, largely acoustic, folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group The Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival, both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George, and influenced the work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970).

In 1968 Gram Parsons recorded Safe at Home with the International Submarine Band, arguably the first true country-rock album. Later that year he joined the Byrds for Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968), generally considered one of the most influential recordings in the genre. The Byrds continued in the same vein, but Parsons left to be joined by another ex-Byrds member Chris Hillman in forming The Flying Burrito Brothers who helped establish the respectability and parameters of the genre, before Parsons departed to pursue a solo career. Country rock was particularly popular in the Californian music scene, where it was adopted by bands including Hearts and Flowers, Poco and New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Beau Brummels and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Some performers also enjoyed a renaissance by adopting country sounds, including: the Everly Brothers; one-time teen idol Rick Nelson who became the frontman for the Stone Canyon Band; former Monkee Mike Nesmith who formed the First National Band; and Neil Young. The Dillards were, unusually, a country act, who moved towards rock music. The greatest commercial success for country rock came in the 1970s, with artist including the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles (made up of members of the Burritos, Poco and Stone Canyon Band), who emerged as one of the most successful rock acts of all time, producing albums that included Hotel California (1976).

The founders of Southern rock are usually thought to be the Allman Brothers Band, who developed a distinctive sound, largely derived from blues rock, but incorporating elements of boogie, soul, and country in the early 1970s. The most successful act to follow them were Lynyrd Skynyrd, who helped establish the "Good ol' boy" image of the sub-genre and the general shape of 1970s guitar rock. Their successors included the fusion/progressive instrumentalists Dixie Dregs, the more country-influenced Outlaws, jazz-leaning Wet Willie and (incorporating elements of R&B and gospel) the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. After the loss of original members of the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the genre began to fade in popularity in the late 1970s, but was sustained the 1980s with acts like .38 Special, Molly Hatchet and The Marshall Tucker Band.

Progressive rock

Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock, was an attempt to move beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From the mid-1960s The Left Banke, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords, wind and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967), with its Bach inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesisers. Classical orchestration, keyboards and synthesisers were a frequent edition to the established rock format of guitars, bass and drums in subsequent progressive rock.

Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things' SF Sorrow (1968), The Who's Tommy (1969) and The Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969) introduced the format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums, often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King, which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron, with jazz and symphonic music, is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in the early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts.

The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Gong, and National Health. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing the skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance, formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring the three-octave voice of Annie Haslam. Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market.

The American brand of prog rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat and Tears, to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey and Styx. These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO, all demonstrated a prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, issuing in the era of pomp or arena rock, which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s.

The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (1973), the first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synth rock. With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ultravox and Simple Minds, showed the influence of prog, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences.

Jazz rock

In the late 1960s jazz rock emerged as a distinct sub-genre out of the blues rock, psychedelic and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into the new music. In Britain the sub-genre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of Cream, had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York-based The Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use the label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and early 1970s.

British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum. From the psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis, particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Weather Report. The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan, Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music.

Glam rock

Glam rock emerged out of the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of and reaction against those trends. Musically diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as much as a fashion as a musical sub-genre. Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamor, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war Cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics. It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender identity manipulation of American acts such as The Cockettes and Alice Cooper.

The origins of glam rock are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo to T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in December 1970 wearing glitter, to perform what would be his first number 1 single "Ride a White Swan". From 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act. These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust. While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts. In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976. A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, even the Rolling Stones. It was also a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and Adam Ant, and less directly on the formation of gothic rock and glam metal as well as on punk rock, which helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976. Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals through bands such as Chainsaw Kittens, The Darkness and in R n' B crossover act Prince.

Soft rock, hard rock and early heavy metal

From the late 1960s it became common to divide mainstream rock music into soft and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies. Major artists included Carole King, Cat Stevens and James Taylor. It reached its commercial peak in the mid- to late '70s with acts like Billy Joel, America and the reformed Fleetwood Mac, whose Rumours (1977) was the best selling album of the decade. In contrast, hard rock was more often derived from blues-rock and was played louder and with more intensity. It often emphasised the electric guitar, both as a rhythm instrument using simple repetitive riffs and as a solo lead instrument, and was more likely to be used with distortion and other effects. Key acts included British Invasion bands like The Who and The Kinks, as well as psychedelic era performers like Cream, Jimi Hendrix and The Jeff Beck Group. Hard rock-influenced bands that enjoyed international success in the later 1970s included Queen, Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith and AC/DC.

From the late 1960s the term heavy metal began to be used to describe some hard rock played with even more volume and intensity, first as an adjective and by the early 1970s as a noun. The term was first used in music in Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" (1967) and began to be associated with pioneer bands like Boston's Blue Cheer and Michigan's Grand Funk Railroad. By 1970 three key British bands had developed the characteristic sounds and styles which would help shape the sub-genre. Led Zeppelin added elements of fantasy to their riff laden blues-rock, Deep Purple brought in symphonic and medieval interests from their progressive rock phrase and Black Sabbath introduced facets of the gothic and modal harmony, helping to produce a "darker" sound. These elements were taken up by a "second generation" of heavy metal bands into the late 1970s, including: Judas Priest, UFO, Motörhead and Rainbow from Britain; Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Blue Öyster Cult from the US; Rush from Canada and Scorpions from Germany, all marking the expansion in popularity of the sub-genre. Despite a lack of airplay and very little presence on the singles charts, late-1970s heavy metal built a considerable following, particularly among adolescent working-class males in North America and Europe.

Christian rock

Rock has been criticized by some Christian religious leaders, who have condemned it as immoral, anti-Christian and even demonic. However, Christian rock began to develop in the late 1960s, particularly out of the Jesus movement beginning in Southern California, and emerged as a sub-genre in the 1970s with artists like Larry Norman, usually seen as the first major "star" of Christian rock. The genre has been particularly popular in the United States. Many Christian rock performers have ties to the contemporary Christian music scene, while other bands and artists are closely linked to independent music. Since the 1980s Christian rock performers have gained mainstream success, including figures such as the American gospel-to-pop crossover artist Amy Grant and the British singer Cliff Richard. While these artists were largely acceptable in Christian communities the adoption of heavy rock and glam metal styles by bands like Petra and Stryper, who achieved considerable mainstream success in the 1980s, was more controversial. From the 1990s there were increasing numbers of acts who attempted to avoid the Christian band label, preferring to be seen as groups who were also Christians, including P.O.D and Collective Soul.

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