Portal:Rock music

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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 rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and 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 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 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...)

General images - load new batch

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

Image 1Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 2The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 3Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 4Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 7Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
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 9Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 10Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 11Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 12Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 13Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 14Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 15Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 16Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 17Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 18"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 20Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 21Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 22Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)

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Arctic Monkeys are an English rock band formed in Sheffield in 2002. The group consists of lead singer Alex Turner, drummer Matt Helders, guitarist Jamie Cook and bassist Nick O'Malley; bassist and co-founder Andy Nicholson left the band in 2006.

Arctic Monkeys were heralded as one of the first bands to come to public attention via the Internet, with commentators suggesting they represented the possibility of a change in the way in which new bands are promoted and marketed. Their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006), received widespread critical acclaim upon release and topped the UK Albums Chart, becoming the fastest-selling debut album in British chart history at the time. It won Best British Album at the 2007 Brit Awards and has since been hailed as one of the greatest debut albums. The band's second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007), was also acclaimed by critics and won Best British Album at the 2008 Brit Awards. They went on to release Humbug (2009) and Suck It and See (2011), both of which were well-received critically, though not to the extent of their first two albums.

The band's wider international fame came with the success of their critically acclaimed fifth album AM (2013), which was supported by the global hit "Do I Wanna Know?". It topped four Billboard charts and was certified 3× platinum in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). At the 2014 Brit Awards, the album became their third to win British Album of the Year. Their sixth album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (2018), was a major departure from the band's previous guitar-heavy work, instead being piano-oriented. Their seventh album, The Car (2022), received nominations for the Ivor Novello Awards and the Mercury Prize in 2023. It received a Best Alternative Music Album nomination at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, their third to do so, and their second consecutive nomination after Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

In the United Kingdom, the band became the first independent-label band to debut at number one in the UK with their first five albums. The band have won seven Brit Awards; winning Best British Group and British Album of the Year three times, becoming the first band to ever "do the double"—that is, win in both categories—three times; a Mercury Prize for Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not; an Ivor Novello Award and 20 NME Awards. In addition, they have been nominated for nine Grammy Awards, and received Mercury Prize nominations in 2007, 2013, 2018 and 2023. Both Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not and AM are included in NME and different editions of Rolling Stones lists of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". ('Full article...)

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Ronald Charles McKernan (September 8, 1945 – March 8, 1973), known as Pigpen, was an American musician. He was a founding member of the San Francisco band the Grateful Dead and played in the group from 1965 to 1972.

McKernan grew up heavily influenced by African-American music, particularly the blues, and enjoyed listening to his father's collection of records and taught himself how to play harmonica and piano. He began socializing around the San Francisco Bay Area, becoming friends with Jerry Garcia. After the pair had played in various folk and jug bands, McKernan suggested they form an electric group, which became the Grateful Dead. He was the band's original frontman and played harmonica and electric organ, but Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh's influences on the band became increasingly stronger as they embraced psychedelic rock. McKernan struggled to keep up with the changing music, causing the group to hire keyboardist Tom Constanten, with McKernan's contributions essentially limited to vocals, harmonica, and percussion from November 1968 to January 1970. He continued to be a frontman in concert for some numbers, including his interpretations of Bobby Bland's "Turn On Your Love Light" and the Rascals' "Good Lovin'".

Unlike the other members of the Grateful Dead, McKernan avoided psychedelic drugs, preferring to drink alcohol (namely whiskey and flavored fortified wine). By 1971, his health had been affected by alcoholism and liver damage and doctors advised him to stop touring. Following a hiatus, he resumed touring with the group in December 1971 but was forced to retire from touring altogether in June 1972. McKernan was found dead of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage on March 8, 1973, aged 27, and is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park in Palo Alto. (Full article...)

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Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell is the sixth studio album by American rock singer Meat Loaf and the second one in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy, which was written and produced by Jim Steinman. It was released on September 14, 1993, sixteen years after Meat Loaf's first solo album Bat Out of Hell. The album reached number 1 in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Five tracks were released as singles, including "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which reached number 1 in 28 countries.

The album was released by Virgin Records outside of North America, where it was released by MCA. The third part of the Bat trilogy, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, was released in 2006.

Like the first album of the trilogy, Bat Out of Hell II was a commercial success. It sold over 14 million copies worldwide. (Full article...)

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"Captain Jack" is a song by Billy Joel featured on his 1973 album Piano Man as its closing track with a live version on his 1981 album Songs in the Attic.

It is considered by some to be the most important and pivotal of his early compositions because his performance of the song at an April 15, 1972, live radio concert at Sigma Studios on WMMR in Philadelphia, and the subsequent airplay this live version received on the station brought him to the attention of major record labels, including Columbia, with which he would sign a recording contract in 1973. (Full article...)

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Credit: Stefan Krause LAL

Henrik Freischlader performing in Saarbrücken, Germany in 2009.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?
... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?
... that Rolling Stone listed Ácido Argentino as the most essential album of Argentine heavy metal?
... that Skálmöld & Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands documents a symphony orchestra playing heavy metal music?
... 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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Post-Britpop is an alternative rock subgenre and is the period in the late 1990s and early 2000s, following Britpop, when the media were identifying a "new generation" or "second wave" of guitar bands influenced by acts like Oasis and Blur, but with less overt British concerns in their lyrics and making more use of American rock and indie influences, as well as experimental music. Bands in the post-Britpop era that had been established acts, but gained greater prominence after the decline of Britpop, such as Radiohead and the Verve, and new acts such as Travis, Keane, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics, Feeder, and particularly Coldplay, achieved much wider international success than most of the Britpop groups that had preceded them, and were some of the most commercially successful acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. (Full article...)