The Rock Music Portal
Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.
Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.
From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)
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The band's lineup shifted frequently during its early years. Taylor recorded Act of Depression, Cries of the Past, and The Changing of Times with the band and remained with the group until his departure in 2003; Chamberlain replaced him as lead vocalist, and the lineup has remained mostly stable since. The band then released They're Only Chasing Safety and Define the Great Line, and both earned gold certifications by the RIAA. These two albums remain their most commercially successful releases, and provided them with mainstream status; the latter of the two holds their highest Billboard 200 entry, peaking at no. 2. Following their sixth studio album, Lost in the Sound of Separation, which also reached a top-ten peak on the Billboard 200, Gillespie left the group and was replaced by former Norma Jean drummer Daniel Davison. Their seventh album, Ø (Disambiguation), was released in 2010; Chamberlain and McTague provided more prominent clean vocals in Gillespie's absence. On October 2, 2012, Underoath announced that they would be disbanding in 2013; they played their final show that January.
On August 17, 2015, the band announced they had reunited; in doing so, Gillespie returned to the lineup. After performing at A Day to Remember's Self Help Fest in 2016, Underoath announced their eighth studio album, Erase Me, would be released 2018. It was their first album in 8 years and their first in 10 years with Gillespie; the band also publicly abandoned their Christian musical approach starting with this record. The follow-up, Voyeurist, was released in January 2022. (Full article...)
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Mullen was born in Dublin, where he attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School. In 1976, he co-founded U2 after posting a message on the school's notice board in search of musicians. Mullen has worked on numerous side projects during his career. In 1990, he produced the Ireland national football team's song "Put 'Em Under Pressure" for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. In 1996, he worked with U2 bandmate Adam Clayton on a dance re-recording of the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has also collaborated with musicians such as Maria McKee, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, and Alice Cooper. Mullen has sporadically acted in films, most notably in Man on the Train (2011) and A Thousand Times Good Night (2013).
Mullen has received 22 Grammy Awards and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked Mullen the 96th-greatest drummer of all time. (Full article...)
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Agharta is a 1975 live double album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. By the time he recorded the album, Davis was 48 years old and had alienated many in the jazz community while attracting younger rock audiences with his radical electric fusion music. After experimenting with different line-ups, he established a stable live band in 1973 and toured constantly for the next two years, despite physical pain from worsening health and emotional instability brought on by substance abuse. During a three-week tour of Japan in 1975, the trumpeter performed two concerts at the Festival Hall in Osaka on February 1; the afternoon show produced Agharta, and the evening show was released as Pangaea the following year.
Davis led a septet at the concert; saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, and guitarist Pete Cosey were given space to improvise against a dense backdrop of riffs, electronic effects, cross-beats, and funk grooves from the rhythm section – drummer Al Foster, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and percussionist James Mtume. Davis controlled their rhythmic and musical direction with hand and head gestures, phrases played on his wah-wah processed trumpet, and drones from an accompanying electronic organ. The evolving nature of the performance led to the widespread misunderstanding that it had no compositional basis, while its dark, angry, and somber musical qualities were seen as a reflection of the bandleader's emotional and spiritual state at the time.
Agharta was first released in Japan by CBS/Sony in August 1975 just before Davis temporarily retired due to increasingly poor health and exhaustion. At the record label's suggestion, it was titled after the legendary subterranean city. Davis enlisted Japanese artist Tadanori Yokoo to design its artwork, which depicted the cityscape of an advanced civilization with elements inspired by Eastern subterranean myths, Afrofuturism, and ufology. An alternate cover was produced for its 1976 release in North America by Columbia Records.
A highly divisive record, Agharta further challenged Davis' jazz audience and was widely panned by contemporary critics; reviewers found the music discordant and complained of Cosey's loud guitar sounds and Davis' sparse trumpet playing. It was reevaluated positively in subsequent years, however, as a generation of younger musicians was influenced by the band's abrasive music and cathartic playing, particularly Cosey's effects-laden free improvisations. Agharta has since been viewed as an important jazz-rock record, a dramatically dynamic group performance, and the culmination of Davis' electric period spanning the late 1960s and mid-1970s. (Full article...)
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"Live Forever" is a song by the English rock band Oasis. Written by Noel Gallagher, the song was released as the third single from their debut album Definitely Maybe (1994) on 8 August 1994, just prior to that album's release. Gallagher wrote the song in 1991, before he joined Oasis.
Inspired by the Rolling Stones' "Shine a Light", "Live Forever" features a basic song structure and lyrics with an optimistic outlook that contrasted with the attitude of the grunge bands popular at the time. The song was the first Oasis single to enter the top ten in the United Kingdom, and garnered critical acclaim. In 2017, lead singer Liam Gallagher declared the song his favourite Oasis song. The British Phonographic Industry certified the song double platinum in August 2021. (Full article...)
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Paweł Mąciwoda, bassist of German rock band Scorpions, in Madrid, Spain in 2014.
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Baroque pop (sometimes called baroque rock) is a fusion genre that combines rock music with particular elements of classical music. It emerged in the mid-1960s as artists pursued a majestic, orchestral sound and is identifiable for its appropriation of Baroque compositional styles (contrapuntal melodies and functional harmony patterns) and dramatic or melancholic gestures. Harpsichords figure prominently, while oboes, French horns, and string quartets are also common. (Full article...)
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Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) is the third studio album by American heavy metal band Slipknot, released on May 25, 2004, by Roadrunner Records. A special edition, containing a bonus disc, was released on April 12, 2005. It is the band's only album produced by Rick Rubin. Following the band's tour to promote its second album in 2002, speculation regarding the future began. Some band members had already been involved in side projects including Murderdolls, To My Surprise, and the reformation of Stone Sour. In 2003, Slipknot moved into The Mansion to work on the album. Initially, the band was unproductive; lead vocalist Corey Taylor was drinking heavily. Nevertheless, the band managed to write more than enough material for a new album. Vol. 3 is credited as Slipknot's first to incorporate more traditional, melodic song structures, guitar solos and acoustic instruments.
The album received generally positive reviews. Slipknot was praised by AllMusic for its "dedication to making it a Slipknot album", while Q added that the album was "a triumph". The album peaked within the top ten in album sales across eleven countries, and went Platinum in the United States. The band also received the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for the song "Before I Forget". At the end of 2009, "Before I Forget" was listed as "AOL's Top Metal Song of the Decade". Roadrunner Records have listed the music video for "Duality" as the best music video in Roadrunner history. (Full article...)More did you know...
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- ... that The Elvis Dead, a retelling of Evil Dead II in the style of Elvis Presley, features songs such as "Standing in a State of Shock", "I've Been Possessed", and "Wrapped Up in Vines"?
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