Rock Bands

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Last updated 04 08 11

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What are Rock Bands: 

Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.

Musically, rock has centred around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.

By the late 1960s a number of distinct rock music sub-genres had emerged, including hybrids like blues-rock, folk rock, country rock, and jazz-rock fusion, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. New genres that emerged from this scene included progressive rock, which extended the artistic elements; glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style, and the diverse and enduring major sub-genre of heavy metal, which emphasized volume, power and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by overt political and social critiques. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of other sub-genres, including New Wave, post punk and eventually the alternative rock movement. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion sub-genres have since emerged, including pop punk, rap rock, and rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post punk revival at the beginning of the new millennium.
 

Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major sub-cultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the "hippie" counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

Rock music, sometimes also known as "rock and roll" is a style of music that became popular in the 1950s in America and Europe. Rock music is primarily based on older musical styles, such as the rhythm and blues music originated by African American performers such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard, with a heavy focus on guitar, drums, and powerful vocals.

One of the earliest and most famous performers in the early days of rock music was Elvis Presley, who shocked the world with his suggestive dancing and powerful music. He became an instant phenomenon, and led the way for many other rock music performers over the decades to come. In the 1960s, the Beatles were another hugely successful and popular rock music group, also inspired by rhythm and blues songs and by the work of other early British rock music performers, such as Cliff Richard.
 

Over the years, rock music has branched out into a wide variety of styles. Folk rock music, such as that made popular by Bob Dylan in the 1960s, often featured acoustic guitars and socially conscious lyrics, many with anti-war sentiments. Psychedelic rock music, such as that played by the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and the Doors, featured often dissonant music that was heavily influenced by the use of drugs such as LSD. Progressive rock music bands, such as the Moody Blues, Rush, and Yes, experimented with a wide range of instruments, and often included improvisational musical solos that could last for ten or even twenty minutes.

Rock music has also led the way for other music forms, such as heavy metal, which features extreme guitar sound and heavy distortion. Some of the earliest bands that could be classified as heavy metal are Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Both bands started out in the mid-1970s. Their heavy form of rock music has paved the way for other heavy metal bands, including Metallica and Megadeth.

Today, the term "rock music" is used to refer to a wide range of musical forms, including anything from soft pop to heavy metal. Rock music has essentially become a default term for any style of music that does not automatically fit into another category, such as R&B, country, or classical. The form has changed significantly since the days of Elvis Presley, but the term "rock music" can still refer to his songs as easily as they can refer to more recent bands like Nirvana or Pearl Jam.