rock-music

"To some people, new wave was the music made by bands who were too traditionally melodic to be classed as punk; bands that believed in good ol’ songwriting, in craft and – shock horror – quite liked the idea of having a hit (step forward The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, The Police etc). To others, new wave music was the futuristic, keyboard-based music made by people inspired as much by Berlin-era Bowie and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express as by punk itself (Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, Ultravox, Gary Numan et al). Then there’s the ‘art-punks’ – Wire, Gang Of Four, Pere Ubu, Delta 5, The Raincoats – bands obsessed with the form of their music, of avoiding ‘rockist' clichés and aiming for something more avant-garde and challenging. If these three camps are distinct enough, then consider that ska-punks like The Specials, The Beat and The Selecter are also considered part of the same movement/phenomenon and suddenly you’re faced with a musical genre that is futuristic-yet-retro, avant-garde-yet-traditional, populist-yet-obscure, solipsistic on one hand, political on the other."

"It took Bob Dylan to break the ice between the [country and rock music] camps. [...] While it would be a stretch to call Blonde on Blonde a country-rock record, the fact that Dylan, arguably the most important person in rock at the time, cut an album in the home of country music soon brought an influx of other musicians to Nashville. As Charlie McCoy, the multi-instrumentalist who starred on Blonde told Nashville Scene in 2011, “That's when the floodgates opened.""

"As the story goes, country slept with the blues in Memphis and gave birth to rock n’ roll. After a while, country got tired and went back to Nashville. And while that’s admittedly an oversimplification, a look at the intertwining history of the three genres reveals it to be an apt extended metaphor. Following the split, the blues gave rock a mother’s unconditional love, nurturing it through its difficult stages and always providing a welcome return no matter how far it strayed from home. On the other hand, country and rock have had the type of relationship one would expect of a child and its absentee father. As rock entered its formative years, it rebelled against country’s old-fashioned ways – sometimes openly mocking it – and became more successful in the process. Once it grew up, rock reconnected with country in search of paternal guidance and wisdom. Meanwhile, country hasn’t always been willing to acknowledge its more successful offspring, but on occasion has had to embrace rock for the money. All of which is a bit of a shame, because those moments when they’ve put aside their differences has resulted in some of the most enduring music of the rock era."

"Hybrids of country and blues had been played throughout the South since the ‘20s, most notably Jimmie Rodgers and the Western swing popularized by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. But it wasn’t until the mid-‘50s, when electrified rhythm and blues – given the term “rock n’ roll” a few years earlier by Cleveland DJ Alan Freed – mixed with country (often then called “hillbilly music”) at Sun Records in Memphis to create a new sound, “rockabilly.”"

"For two years after “I Want to Hold Your Hand” topped the U.S. charts in February 1964, the only sound that mattered had a British accent. The Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, Petula Clark: it was an obsession that went beyond the Beatles—and initially ignored the Rolling Stones."

"Today, the term “the British Invasion” is usually employed to describe (and market) the triumphal epoch of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who, with honorable mentions to the Kinks and the Animals. In hindsight, and on merit, this sounds about right—these are the best and most revered of the English bands who came of age in the 1960s—but the reality of the British Invasion, which was at its most intense in the two years immediately following the Beatles’ landfall, was somewhat different. Far from being solely a beat-group explosion, the Invasion was a rather eclectic phenomenon that took in everything from Petula Clark’s lushly symphonic pop to Chad and Jeremy’s dulcet folk-schlock to the Yardbirds’ blues-rock rave-ups."

"Being in an indie band back then, you weren’t allowed to have dreams of being huge. None of the major labels [had] touched anything that’s remotely left of field since the punk movement. It was all Huey Lewis. That changed with Sonic Youth and then Nirvana signing to Geffen. Alternative became this huge business, and now Arcade Fire or Vampire Weekend can be [number one]."

"Some post-rock artists explicitly and consciously sought to deconstruct rock music; others realised they'd done it after the event; yet more didn't give the process a moment’s thought. A lot of this deconstruction was made possible through the advent of the sampler, ushering in a new genre-bending mindset. Most of the post-rock bands used samplers in some form, but even the ones who didn't were influenced by sampling's possibilities for simultaneous structure and chaos."

"The point was, actually: take rock up a level."

"While it never solidified as a concise genre, post rock emerged in the early '90s from the work of a few disgruntled artists who did away with the worn out formula of rock & roll for the sake artistic expression and delving into peculiar new musical horizons. Since then, the movement has grown in volume and recognition enough that we might have at least a working definition of this take on music, but not so much to have had a clear heyday and a chance to grow stale, as there are still many musicians, fledgelings and veterans alike, who make great music true to the movement's ideas, which are no less relevant today than they were almost three decades ago."

"Post-rock, Reynolds suggested, was opposed to notions of 'collective toil' and 'authenticity'; instead, it used musicians for a 'palette of textures' and, in doing so, rejected the ego of rock. Later, Reynolds would go further, claiming post-rock had 'given up the idea of mass success or even indie cult-hood, and accepted the idea of being marginal, forever'."

"[Radiohead's] Kid A is the return-with-a-vengeance of a phenomenon that had seemingly petered out: post-rock. This highly contested genre dates back to 1993-94, when various smart operators began to notice the glaring and ever-widening gap in sonic vividness between guitar-based music and "sampladelia" (the whole area of digital music that encompasses dance, atmospheric electronics, and hip hop). The result was a loosely connected network of artists engaged in closing that innovation gap [...] What all these phases had in common was their partial or total abandonment of live performance as the model for recording: the willingness for music to be unrealistic, anti- naturalistic, a studio-spun figment."

"Post-rock draws its inspiration and impetus from a complex combination of sources. Some of these come from post-rock's own tradition—a series of moments in history when eggheads and bohemians have hijacked elements of rock for non-rock purposes."

"Post-rock means using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords. Increasingly, post-rock groups are augmenting the traditional guitar/bass/drums line up with computer technology: the sampler, the sequencer and MIDI. While some post-rock units prefer lo-fi or outmoded technology, others are evolving into cyber rock, becoming virtual."

"I think [alternative rock becoming mainstream] made it worse [for bands]. It made it such big business. Made it harder to get played on most alternative stations. There was a lot of money to be made and they got a lot more focused and they started narrowing down their playlist to like twenty songs."

"Soon after punk hit, intense, speed-driven hardcore bands formed in California and New York and DC, and their fans built an infrastructure — a coast-to-coast network of clubs, mimeographed fanzines, college radio stations, record shops, and small record labels that would make indie possible. Some of them (Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies) sounded like the indie that would come after; some of them (Black Flag) didn’t. But the movement — whether called alternative rock, modern rock, college radio, or whatever — was now grounded."

"When the hot fusion bands came to town, the stage often resembled a mad scientist's laboratory, packed with strange and wonderful equipment of futuristic appearance and unknown powers. This music was often dismissed by purists as a sellout at the time of its initial release, and some feared that jazz was, for the first time in its history, backing away from its mandate to move forward, to experiment, to embrace the most progressive currents. And, true, in some instances, tired commercial formulas got overworked, and the music was dumbed down. But the best fusion work was innovative and expanded the jazz vocabulary at a time when many concluded that everything that could be done in jazz had been done."

"The phrase “alternative rock” generally makes people think of the ’90s, but it’s been well documented that Nevermind was the culmination of something that had been bubbling up since the ’80s, not the genre’s birthplace. It’s never really possible to pinpoint an exact time or place that a genre was born, but for alternative rock–especially the kind that was born out of the American punk underground–1984 might have been the first year that multiple pivotal, widely-influential albums came out at once."

"Soon after punk hit, intense, speed-driven hardcore bands formed in California and New York and DC, and their fans built an infrastructure — a coast-to-coast network of clubs, mimeographed fanzines, college radio stations, record shops, and small record labels that would make indie possible. Some of them (Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies) sounded like the indie that would come after; some of them (Black Flag) didn’t. But the movement — whether called alternative rock, modern rock, college radio, or whatever — was now grounded."

"In the 1990s, a great deal of music which had been considered underground, punk, or just plain weird in the 1980s could suddenly be found in the mainstream; playing on commercial television, on the radio, in shopping centres and sporting arenas. By the decade’s end, alternative music was both triumphant and meaningless. Its stars played to massive crowds and its music was used to sell cars on television. It had integrated itself completely into the media spectacle, and could no longer reasonably claim to be offering an alternative to it. At the time, this was cause for both celebration and despair -- and from our current vantage point, both reactions might seem a little over-the-top. We may choose to see the alt-rock crossover as just another turn of pop culture’s eternal cycle, its artists subject to rock-and-roll’s most basic physical law—what comes up, must sell out. [...] On the one hand, this gave rise to a resilient and resourceful underground, and on the other, to a hunger for pop justice, for a future world where good music could be popular, and popular music could be good. Thus, when underground music finally broke through to the mainstream in 1991, the event was either denounced as a gigantic sellout or celebrated as a revolution, sometimes both at the same time. It was an intellectual balancing act that could only pulled off with the help of that staple of ‘90s pop life—postmodern irony."

"The '80s indie and alt-rock era would ultimately diverge in many directions, detouring to the depths of goth-rock and riding the speedway of punk while hitting the off-ramp to post-punk on the way, before finally nestling into the safe harbors of jangle pop. But amidst the chaos, fresh music was forged via increasingly interesting and off-beaten techniques."

"Musical genres collided more in the 90s than in any other decade, making ‘alternative’ rock ever harder to define."

"Back then, you weren’t allowed to have dreams of being huge. None of the major labels [had] touched anything that’s remotely left of field since the punk movement. It was all Huey Lewis. That changed with Sonic Youth and then Nirvana signing to Geffen. Alternative became this huge business, and now Arcade Fire or Vampire Weekend can be [number one]."

"And likely, whether you're using Arcade Fire as some background ambience or a '90s alt-rock Pandora station as encouragement to fight for your right to rage against the machine (even as you dutifully fill out your tax returns), alternative music as a genre is perfect for any number of moods."

"When bands like Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX and Rancid helped pop punk explode in 1994/1995, the mainstream called it a “punk revival” because it was the first time that punk had a real mainstream presence since the first-wave ’70s bands. But as many people knew then and even more people know now, the mid ’90s pop punk boom wasn’t a revival of anything; it was the culmination of a sound that had been bubbling on an underground level since the early 1980s."

"When punk’s first wave started to die down and make way for the more digestible, mainstream-embraced sound of new wave, a new crop of bands took the loud, fast sounds of the Ramones and the Dead Boys in a more extreme direction: hardcore. Once hardcore bands realized they could combine the genre’s speed, intensity, and simplicity with bright, catchy melodies, pop punk was born."

"Like with any genre of music, there are so many variations of pop punk. Some are closer to its punk rock roots—raw, gritty, screamy, and not necessarily radio-friendly—and some are super polished and sit perfectly on mainstream radio."

"Pop punk doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves, and it’s often overlooked when talking about gear. We’re at a point in time now where many guitarists in their 20s and 30s were inspired to start playing just as much, if not more, by the bands like blink-182 and Green Day as they were by the likes of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin."

"Throughout musical history, the prevalence of jazz has never particularly waned. Countless musicians have come and gone, each leaving their own unique mark on the genre. Despite the musical differences between jazz and rock, the two worlds are invariably linked."

"The return-to-simplicity credo was also the working principle for a scene that would develop on US college campuses in the late 1980s, known as "college rock." As an outgrowth of hardcore, this scene celebrated its lack of affiliation with major labels and corporations, as its music was circulated through small independent labels (or sometimes by the bands themselves), airplay on college radio stations, and live performances at clubs that formed a circuit on the country's most important college towns."

"I included nearly every record I ever rem[em]ber hearing."

"Audio of 1978 edition"

"Rock and roll music ... is not rhythm and blues music; it's not country and western music; it's not jazz; it's a combination of these things."

"What they call rock and roll now is rhythm and blues: I've been playing for 15 years in New Orleans."

"I wanted to write about school because most of my audience at the particular time was of a school element."

"Ever since I was 12 years old, I've had to defend my love of heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it, or you don't. If metal doesn't give you that overwhelming surge of power and make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, you might never get it. And you know what? That's ok; because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me, we're doing just fine without you."

"Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards."

"Rock and roll outfits, commence!"

"If it's illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!"

"Hail, hail rock and roll; deliver me from the days of old. Long live rock and roll; the beat of the drums, loud and bold. Rock, rock, rock and roll; the feelin' is there, body and soul."

"Blackboard Jungle is perhaps best remembered for its theme song, “Rock Around the Clock,” performed by Bill Haley and the Comets over the film’s opening title sequence. The song, written by Max C. Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight (a pseudonym for James E. Myers), was first recorded by Sonny Dae and His Knights, but it was not until Haley’s 1954 version was used on the film’s soundtrack that it held the #1 spot on the Billboard Chart for seven weeks (July 9–August 20, 1955). After receiving national airplay (the first for a rock song), “Rock Around the Clock” became the bestselling single to date. An expression of teenage defiance and rebellion against authority, coupled with its link to a film about juvenile delinquency, “Rock Around the Clock” was adopted by teenagers around the world as their official anthem."

""Rock and Roll" is about me. If I hadn't heard rock and roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet. Which would have been devastating to think that everything, everywhere was like it was where I come from. That would have been profoundly discouraging. Movies didn't do it for me. TV didn't do it for me. It was the radio that did it."

"The heart of rock and roll is the beat."

"As the story goes, country slept with the blues in Memphis and gave birth to rock n’ roll. After a while, country got tired and went back to Nashville. And while that’s admittedly an oversimplification, a look at the intertwining history of the three genres reveals it to be an apt extended metaphor."

"I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?"

"Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes."

"… I just know that, right now, … the biggest record selling business there is is rock and roll."

"Rock and Roll is a means of pulling the White Man down to the level of the Negro. It is part of a plot to undermine the morals of the youth of our nation."

"Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music Any old way you choose it It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it Any old time you use it It's gotta be rock roll music If you want to dance with me"

"When I listen to this rock and roll and look at you kids, I don't think it's a whole lot different than the Charleston and the Varsity Drag."