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 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music 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 following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 2"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 3Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 5Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 7Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 8Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 9Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
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 12Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
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 15Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 16Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 17Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 18The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 19Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 20Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 21Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 22Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)

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The Ramones were an American punk rock band formed in the New York City neighborhood Forest Hills, Queens in 1974. Known for helping establish the punk movement in the United States and elsewhere, the Ramones are often cited as the first true punk band. Though initially achieving little commercial success, the band is seen today as highly influential in punk culture.

All members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname Ramone, although none were biologically related: they were inspired by Paul McCartney, who would check into hotels under the alias Paul Ramon. The Ramones performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. In 1996, after a tour with the Lollapalooza music festival, they played a farewell concert in Los Angeles and disbanded.

By 2014, all four of the band's original members had died – lead singer Joey Ramone (1951–2001), bassist Dee Dee Ramone (1951–2002), guitarist Johnny Ramone (1948–2004) and drummer Tommy Ramone (1949–2014). All of the surviving members of the Ramones – bassist C. J. Ramone (who replaced Dee Dee in 1989 and stayed with the band until its dissolution) and drummers Marky Ramone, Richie Ramone and Elvis Ramone – remain musically active.

Recognition of the band's importance has built over the years. The Ramones ranked number 26 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and number 17 in VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock". In 2002, the Ramones were ranked the second-greatest band of all time by Spin, trailing only the Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the original four members and Tommy's replacement on drums, Marky Ramone, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. In 2011, the group was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. (Full article...)

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George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician and singer-songwriter. In 1965, he co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd as the bassist. Following the departure of the songwriter, Syd Barrett, in 1968, Waters became Pink Floyd's lyricist, co-lead vocalist and conceptual leader until his departure in 1985.

Pink Floyd achieved international success with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979), and The Final Cut (1983). By the early 1980s, they had become one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful groups in popular music. Amid creative differences, Waters left in 1985 and began a legal dispute over the use of the band's name and material. They settled out of court in 1987. Waters's solo work includes the studio albums The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), Amused to Death (1992), and Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017). In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera translated from Étienne and Nadine Roda-Gils' libretto about the French Revolution.

In 1990, Waters staged one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall – Live in Berlin, with an attendance of 450,000. As a member of Pink Floyd, he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Later in 2005, he reunited with Pink Floyd for the Live 8 global awareness event, the group's only appearance with Waters since 1981. He has toured extensively as a solo act since 1999. He performed The Dark Side of the Moon for his world tour of 2006–2008, and The Wall Live, his tour of 2010–2013, was the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist at the time.

Waters incorporates political themes in his work and is a prominent supporter of Palestine in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He has called for the removal of the Israeli West Bank Barrier, supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and describes Israel's treatment of Palestinians as apartheid. Some of his comments, such as his likening of Israel to Nazi Germany, and elements of his live shows, drew accusations of antisemitism, which Waters dismissed as a conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. (Full article...)

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The untitled fourth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, was released on 8 November 1971 by Atlantic Records. Produced by the band's guitarist, Jimmy Page, it was recorded between December 1970 and February 1971, mostly in the country house Headley Grange. The album contains the band's most well-known recording, the eight-minute-long "Stairway to Heaven".

The informal recording environment inspired the band, allowing them to try different arrangements of material and create songs in various styles. After the band's previous album Led Zeppelin III (1970) received lukewarm reviews from critics, they decided their fourth album would officially be untitled and represented instead by four symbols – one chosen by each band member – without featuring the name or any other details on the cover. Unlike the prior two albums, the band was joined by guest musicians: the singer Sandy Denny on "The Battle of Evermore", and the pianist Ian Stewart on "Rock and Roll". As with prior albums, most of the material was written by the band, though there was one cover song, a hard rock re-interpretation of the Memphis Minnie blues song "When the Levee Breaks".

The album was an instant critical and commercial success and is Led Zeppelin's best-selling album, having shipped over 37 million copies worldwide. It is one of the best-selling albums in the United States and of all time, while critics have regularly placed it high on lists of the greatest albums of all time. (Full article...)

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"Achilles Last Stand" is a song by the English rock group Led Zeppelin released as the opening track on their seventh studio album, Presence (1976). Guitarist Jimmy Page and singer Robert Plant began writing the song during the summer of 1975 and were influenced by Eastern music, mythology, and exposure to diverse cultures during their travels. At roughly ten-and-a-half minutes, it is one of the group's longest studio recordings and one of their most complex, with interwoven sections and multiple, overdubbed guitar parts.

The song received mainly positive reviews from music critics, with some comparing "Achilles Last Stand" to other Zeppelin songs such as "Kashmir". The band featured it during concerts from 1977 to 1980, and a 1979 live performance is included on the Led Zeppelin DVD (2003). Page called it his favourite Led Zeppelin song in several interviews, and considers its guitar solo on a par with his "Stairway to Heaven" solo. (Full article...)

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Credit: Carlos Delgado CC-BY-SA

Paweł Mąciwoda, bassist of German rock band Scorpions, in Madrid, Spain in 2014.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that the Liverpool Echo described British rock and roll star Tommy Steele as "quite unable to sing and play the guitar at the same time" when reviewing his first album?
... that the neofolk album The Lone Furrow features several guest vocalists from heavy metal bands, and critics thought it might appeal to fans of that genre?
... that Dutch radio and TV presenter Hanneke Kappen presented the second Dutch radio show dedicated to heavy metal music?
... that raw material waste from the West influenced a generation of rock music in China?
... that Shin Hae-chul, who previously made hard rock and heavy metal albums, was inspired by big band music when he made The Songs for the One?

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Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s with the likes of the grunge, shoegaze, and Britpop subgenres in the United States and United Kingdom, respectively. During this period, many record labels were looking for "alternatives", as many corporate rock, hard rock, and glam metal acts from the 1980s were beginning to grow stale throughout the music industry. The emergence of Generation X as a cultural force in the 1990s also contributed greatly to the rise of alternative rock. (Full article...)