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 typically 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 and utilizing 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 1Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to 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 3Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 4Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 5Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 6Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 7The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 8Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 9Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 10Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 11Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 12Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 13Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 14Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 15Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 16"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 17Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 18Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 19Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 20Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 21Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 22Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)

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Life is a memoir by the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, written with the assistance of journalist James Fox. Published in October 2010, in hardback, audio and e-book formats, the book chronicles Richards' love of music, charting influences from his mother and maternal grandfather, through his discovery of blues music, the founding of the Rolling Stones, his often turbulent relationship with Mick Jagger, his involvement with drugs, and his relationships with women including Anita Pallenberg and his wife Patti Hansen. Richards also released Vintage Vinos, a compilation of his work with the X-Pensive Winos, at the same time.

Co-writer James Fox interviewed Richards and his associates over a period of five years to produce the book. Life was generally well received by critics and topped The New York Times non-fiction list in the first week of release. (Full article...)

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Lydia Canaan (born December 2, 1967) is a Lebanese singer-songwriter, poet, humanitarian activist, and diplomat. She is noted for her four-octave vocal range, distinctive vocal stylings, and for being the first Lebanese artist in music history to achieve global success. Widely regarded as the first "rock star" of the Middle East, she is cataloged in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's Library and Archives.

Canaan is credited as the first recording artist to exclusively release English-language music in the Middle Eastern region, along with pioneering in having music videos featured on MTV Global, MTV Russia, MTV Southeast Asia, and MTV Middle East.

Canaan rose to fame in the mid-1980s as a teen rock singer performing amid enemy attacks during the Lebanese Civil War, holding concerts in vicinities of Lebanon as they were being bombed. "In a small country that was ripped by war," Society writes, "there was this young girl making a difference".

Canaan's career is described as having defied tradition and convention and challenged millennia-old gender roles. Arabian Woman reports, "As a girl who grew up in the midst of a bloody civil war, Canaan was breaking down seemingly insurmountable barriers. She rocked the establishment". (Full article...)

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Led Zeppelin II is the second album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, released on 22 October 1969 in the United States and on 31 October 1969 in the United Kingdom by Atlantic Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at several locations in both the United Kingdom and North America from January to August 1969. The album's production was credited to the band's lead guitarist and songwriter Jimmy Page, and it was also Led Zeppelin's first album on which Eddie Kramer served as engineer.

The album exhibited the band's evolving musical style of blues-derived material and their guitar riff-based sound. It has been described as the band's heaviest album. Six of the nine songs were written by the band, while the other three were reinterpretations of Chicago blues songs by Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf. One single, "Whole Lotta Love", was released outside of the UK (the band would release no UK singles during their career), and peaked as a top-ten single in over a dozen markets around the world.

Led Zeppelin II was a commercial success, and was the band's first album to reach number one on charts in the UK and the US. The album's cover designer David Juniper was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package in 1970. On 15 November 1999, the album was certified 12× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales reaching 12 million copies in the US. Since its release, various writers and music critics have cited Led Zeppelin II as one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time. (Full article...)

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"Laugh, Laugh" is a song by American rock group the Beau Brummels, written by guitarist Ron Elliott and produced by Sylvester Stewart, later known as Sly Stone. Released in December 1964 as the band's debut single, the song reached number 15 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart the following February. "Laugh, Laugh" was the first hit single to come out of the emerging San Francisco music scene in response to the British Invasion. The song was later included on the band's first full-length album, Introducing the Beau Brummels, released in April 1965.

The Beau Brummels promoted the single by appearing on several television shows, including a 1965 episode of The Flintstones in which the band gave an animated performance as the Beau Brummelstones. In 1994, "Laugh, Laugh" was selected to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll exhibit. Lead singer Sal Valentino reworked the song for his 2008 solo album, Every Now and Then. (Full article...)

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Credit: Ollie Atkins

Elvis Presley meeting with US President Richard Nixon. On December 21, 1970.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that heavy metal led Ossian D'Ambrosio to druidism?
... that raw material waste from the West influenced a generation of rock music in China?
... 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?
... that Canadian punk rock musician Talli Osborne had only briefly spoken to the frontman of NOFX before the band wrote a song about her?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that the heavy metal band Cradle of Filth released a T-shirt that was so offensive that several people were arrested for wearing it?

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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...)