ROCK genre

Alternative pop/rock is essentially a catch-all term for post-punk bands from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. There is a multitude of musical styles within alternative rock, from the sweet melodies of jangle-pop to the disturbing metallic grind of industrial, yet are all tied together by a similar aesthetic — they all existed and operated oustide of the mainstream. In some ways, there are two waves of alternative bands, with Nirvana's unprecedented crossover success in 1991 acting as a dividing point. Throughout the '80s, the majority of alternative bands were on independent labels; those that eventually signed to major labels, such as Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, didn't break through to the mainstream and thereby were able to keep their hip credentials alive. If anything, Alternative Rock of the '80s was even more diverse and fractured than the mainstream; among the styles classified as alternative was roots rock, alternative dance, jangle-pop, post-hardcore punk, funk-metal, punk-pop, and experimental rock. All of these genres made into the mainstream, in some form or another, after Nirvana's success in 1991, but their edges were sanded down since many of the new alternative bands were signed by majors. Consequently, '90s altenative rock often sounds more sanitized and homogenous than its counterpart, especially since the heavier material proved to have greater commercial appeal than the quieter or quirkier elements of alternative rock. Most of these idiosyncratic bands didn't sign to majors (those that did quickly disappeared), deciding to stick to independent labels, where they had more artistic freedom. These bands were grouped together under the term indie rock. Although the term had been around since the '80s, in the '90s it connotated bands that were dedicated to their own independent status, either for musical or hipness reasons.

Art-Rock/Progressive-Rock intend to expand the limits of rock & roll. Inspired by the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, the first wave of Art-Rock musicians decided that the only way the genre could grow was if they could incorporate elements of European and classical music to rock. Early Art-Rock by and large consisted in multi-sectioned compositions (not songs) with long, complex instrumental passages driven by dramatic, grandiose flourishes. Often, technical prowess and overall conception was emphasized more than melody or songwriting, which is why the genre primarily focused on albums, since the extended running time gave the bands freedom to experiment musically and expand their ideas. Art-rockers also frequently wrote their music as a concept album or rock operas, with the intention for the entire record to be perceived as a larger work, not a series of songs. As the genre progressed, Art-Rockers that drew from jazz instead of classical emerged, but the genre never quite shook its fascination with European music.

Experimental rock is tangentally related to Art-Rock. It shares many of the same traits as Art-Rock, particularly in how it self-consciously expands the boundaries of the genre, yet it is more challenging, noisy and unconventional. It has more to do with modern art, particularly the avant garde, than classical music and consequentally Experimental Rock isn't nearly as easy to assimilate as conventional Art-Rock.

Folk-Rock and Country-Rock attempt to fuse the direct, honest style of traditional American music with the power, energy and melodicism of rock & roll. Folk-Rock emerged during the mid-'60s, as such groups as the Byrds attempted to play Bob Dylan songs as if they were Beatles songs. Their signature sound — chiming electric guitars and sweet, clear vocal harmonies — became the template for folk-rock. As the '60s drew to a close, more folk-rock groups emphasized the acoustic origins of folk and backed away from the ringing electric arrpeggios of the Byrds. At the time, certain folk-rock pioneers, began moving toward country music. Under the direction of new member Gram Parsons, the Byrds tackled country music on their 1968 album =Sweetheart of the Rodeo.= Parsons proved to be the guiding force in country-rock, as his solo records and albums with the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Byrds provided the blueprint for country-rock. As it turned out, Country-Rock was not just country played by rock bands, it was country informed by rock's counter-culture ideals, loud amplification, prominent back-beat, and pop melodies. Most of the initial country-rockers borrowed from traditional country, honky tonkers like Hank Williams and the Bakersfield Sound (Merle Haggard and Buck Owens). As it moved into the '70s, Country-Rock had its rough edges smoothed out by the Eagles, Poco, Pure Prairie League, and Linda Ronstadt. Their laid-back, mellow music was predominant sound of country-rock in the '70s, much like how the gentle sound of singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Jackson Browne were the sound of Folk-Rock. Starting in the mid-'80s, however, a new generation of musicians revived the classic Folk-Rock and Country-Rock sounds, updating them with a stripped-down, underground, do-it-yourself spirit, and they spawned yet another new generation of musicians, who kept the music alive in the '90s.

To some, Hard Rock and Heavy Metal are nearly interchangeable terms, since they share so many similarities. In both styles, loud, distorted guitars are prominent and the band is fronted by a lead singer who rarely plays another instrument. However, there's a key difference — Hard Rock stays true to the bluesy rock & roll of the Stones and has a certain swing in the back beat. Heavy Metal has no swing — it relies on brutal guitar riffs and pummelling rhythms.

Hard rock evolved in the late '60s, as psychedelia and blues rock began pushing the boundaries of amplification and blues-based riffs. Hard-Rock relies less on improvisation than blues-rock and it isn't as loud as heavy metal, even if it shared the same distorted guitars and long solos. In Hard Rock, it's the songs, rhythms, riffs and hooks that matter, and they should all be played as loud as possible.

Heavy Metal also derived from the shatteringly loud blues-rock and psychedelia of the late '60s. Metal sanded away most of the blues influences and leaving the powerful, loud guitar riffs. In the early '70s, heavy metal established itself as one of the most commercially successful forms of rock & roll. In the next three decades, metal adapted itself to the times and it never completely disappeared from the charts. At its core, heavy metal is an adolescent experience; teenagers — primarily white males — form the majority of its audience. Some critics dismiss metal as simplistic primal pounding. Certainly, a fair share of heavy metal is nothing but three-chord riffing, yet most metal bands place a premium on technical skill. Metal guitarists have always been innovators in technique, speed, and skill. In every subgenre of heavy metal, the guitar is the center of the music. The songs are assembled around the riff, with the gutiar solo taking prominence. By and large, heavy metal is rock & roll with all of the roll stripped away — the blues remains, but it doesn't swing. All of the rhythms are fairly rigid, almost military in origin. In every metal style, from pop-metal to thrash, bombast is the key — from the drums to the guitars, it's about being as loud as possible.

Pop/Rock is a catchall phrase, referring to nearly any pop music made after rock & roll was absorbed into the pop mainstream. In general, it is melodic, catchy music that relies equally on tightly constructed songs and well-crafted and produced records. Pop/Rock can refer to anything from the Everly Brothers and the Beatles to Madonna and Crowded House.

Punk Rock returned rock & roll to the basics — three chords and a simple melody. It just did it louder and faster and more abrasively than any other rock & roll in the past. Although there had been several bands to flirt with what became known as punk rock — including the garage rockers of the '60s and the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls — it wasn't until the mid-'70s that punk became its own genre. On both sides of the Atlantic, young bands began forsaking the sonic excesses that distinguished mainstream hard rock and stripping the music down to its essentials. In New York, the first punk band was the Ramones; in London, the first punk band was the Sex Pistols. Although the bands had different agendas and sounds — the Ramones were faster and indebted to bubblegum, while the Pistols played Faces riffs sloppier and louder than the Faces themselves — the direct approach of the bands revolutionized music in both the U.K. and the U.S. In America, punk remained an underground sensation, eventually spawning the hardcore and indie-rock scenes of the '80s, but in the UK, it was a full-scale phenomenon. In the U.K., the Sex Pistols were thought of as a serious threat to the well-being of the government and monarchy, but more importantly, they caused countless bands to form. Some of the bands stuck close to the Pistols' original blueprint, but many found their own sound, whether it was the edgy pop of the Buzzcocks, the anthemic, reggae-informed rock of the Clash, or the arty experiments of Wire and Joy Division. Soon, punk splintered into post-punk (which was more experimental and artier than punk), new wave (which was more pop-oriented), and hardcore, which simply made punk harder, faster, and more abrasive.

New Wave was usually used a catch-all term for the music that directly followed punk rock; often, the term encompassed punk itself, as well. In retrospect, it's became clear that the music that followed punk could be divided, more or less, into two categories — post-punk and new wave. Where post-punk was arty, difficult, and challenging, new wave was pop music, pure and simple. It retained the fresh vigor and irreverence of punk music, as well as a fascination with electronics, style, and art. Therefore, there was a lot of stylistic diversity to new wave. It meant the nervy power pop of bands like XTC and Nick Lowe, but it also meant synth rockers like Gary Numan or rock revivalists like Graham Parker and Rockpile. There were edgy new wave songwriters like Elvis Costello, pop bands like Squeeze, tough rock & rollers like the Pretenders, pop-reggae like the Police, mainstream rockers like the Cars, and ska revivalists like the Specials and Madness. As important as these major artists were, there were also countless one-hit wonders that emerged during early new wave. These one-hit groups were as diverse as the major artists, but they all shared a love of pop hooks, modernist, synthesized production, and a fascination for being slightly left of center. By the early '80s, new wave described nearly every new pop/rock artist, especially those that used synthesizers like the Human League and Duran Duran. New wave received a boost in the early '80s by MTV, who broadcast endless hours of new wave videos in order to keep themselves on the air. Therefore, new wave got a second life in 1982, when it probably would have died out. Instead, 1982 and 1983 were boom years for polished, MTV-radio new wave outfits like Culture Club, Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Haircut 100, and A Flock of Seagulls. New wave finally died out in 1984, when established artists began to make professional videos and a new crop of guitar-oriented bands like the Smiths and R.E.M. emerged to capture the attention of college-radio and underground rock fans. Nevertheless, new wave proved more influential than many of its critics would have suspected, as the mid-'90s were dominated by bands — from Blur to Weezer — that were raised on the music.

In its purest form, Rock & Roll has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody. Early rock & roll drew from a variety of sources, primarily blues, R&B, and country, but also gospel, traditional pop, jazz, and folk. All of these influences combined in a simple, blues-based song structure that was fast, danceable, and catchy. The first wave of rock & rollers — Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley, Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, the Everly Brothers, and Carl Perkins, among many others — set the template for rock & roll that was followed over the next four decades. During each decade, a number of artists replicated the sound of the first rockers, while some expanded that definition and others completely exploded the constrictions of the genre. From the British Invasion, folk-rock, and psychedelia, and through hard rock, heavy metal, glam rock, and punk, most subgenres of rock & roll initially demonstrated an allegiance to the basic structure of rock & roll. Once these permutations emerged, traditional rock & roll faded away from the pop charts, yet there were always artists that kept the flame alive. Some, like the Rolling Stones and the Faces, adhered to the basic rules of traditional rock & roll but played the music fast and loose. Others, like proto-punk rockers the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, and the Stooges, kept the basic song structure, but played it with more menace. Still others, like Dave Edmunds and Graham Parker, became rock & roll traditionalists, writing and recording music that never wavered from the sound of the late '50s and early '60s. Although the term "rock & roll" came to refer to a number of different music styles in the decades following its inception, the essential form of the music never changed.

During the mid-'80s, a generation of bands reacted to the slick, pop-oriented sounds of new wave by reverting back to the traditional rock & roll values of the '50s and '60s. By bringing rock back to its roots — whether that was rock & roll, blues, or country — the groups managed to sound like a fresh alternative, which brought them critical praise and heavy airplay from American college radio stations. Most of the leading bands of the era — such as the Beat Farmers, Del Lords, the Long Ryders, and the Del Fuegos — filtered many of their traditional values through the music of Creedence Clearwater Revival, but there was an equally large number of groups that simply worked in a "rootsy" fashion, without any direct influence outside of the concept of traditional rock and blues. In the late '80s, Roots Rock ceased to be a hip music in the American underground, but most of the bands continued to record and perform into the '90s. Throughout the '90s, a small number of new roots rockers emerged, although they weren't afforded the same exposure as their predecessors.

Soft rock emerged in the early '70s, partially as a reaction to the extreme sounds of the late '60s. Soft rock was commercial and inoffensive, taking the sound of singer/songwriter and pop/rock but smoothing out all the edges. Bands like Bread, the Carpenters, and Chicago relied on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. Throughout the '70s, soft rock dominated the airwaves and it eventually metamorphosized into the syntheszed sounds of adult contemporary in the '80s.

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Garage Rock was a simple, raw form of rock & roll created by a number of American bands in the mid-'60s. Inspired by British Invasion bands like the Beatles, Kinks, and Rolling Stones, these midwestern American groups played a variation on British Invasion rock. Since they were usually young and amateurish, the results were much cruder than their inspirations but that is what made the sound exciting. Most of the band emphasized their amateurishness, playing the same three chords, bashing their guitars and growling their vocals. In many ways, the garage bands were the first wave of do-it-yourself punk rockers. Hundreds of garage bands popped up around America and a handful of them — the Shadows of Knight, the Count 5, the Seeds, the Standells — had hits, but most were destined for obscurity. In fact, nearly all of the bands were forgotten in the early '70s, but the Nuggets compilation brought them back to the spotlight. In the '80s, there was a garage rock revival that saw a number of bands earnestly trying to replicate the sound, style, and look of the '60s garage bands.

The spirit of Garage emboldened Psychedelic Rock, as well. Psychedelic Rock emerged in the mid-'60s, as British Invasion and folk-rock bands began expanding the sonic possibilities of their music. Instead of confining themselves to the brief, concise verse-chorus-verse patterns of rock & roll, they moved toward more free-form, fluid song structures. Just as important — if not more so — the groups began incorporating elements of Indian and Eastern music and free-form jazz to their sound, as well as experimenting with electronically altering instruments and voices within the recording studio. Initially, around 1965 and 1966, bands like the Yardbirds and the Byrds broke down the boundaries for psychedelia, creating swirling layers of fuzz-toned guitars, sitars, and chanted vocals. Soon, numerous groups followed their pattern, including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, both of whom recorded psychedelia in 1966. In no time, groups on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the possibilities of the new genre, and the differences were notable. In Britain, psychedelia tended to be whimsical and surrealistic. Nevertheless, bands — most notably Pink Floyd and Traffic — played extended instrumentals that relied on improvisation as much as their American contemporaries the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Love, and Jefferson Airplane. In other corners of America, garage bands began playing psychedelic rock without abandoning their raw, amateurish foundation of three-chord rock — they just layered in layers of distortion, feedback, and effects. Eventually, psychedelic evolved into acid rock, heavy metal, and art rock, but there continued to be revivals of psychedelia in the decades that followed, most notably in the American underground of the mid-'80s.

The term Euro-Pop came to be associated with a style of pop music that was deliberately lightweight, silly, and slickly produced; true to its name, much (though not quite all) of it originated on the European continent, although there were also occasional British or American acts influenced by the style. ABBA was the definitive Euro-Pop band, crafting effortless, compulsively catchy songs with bouncy dance beats and frothy lyrics. Since the lyrics weren't an important part of appreciating the music, it could easily spread to non-English-speaking countries as well; songs could also be recorded in the native languages of more localized markets without losing lyrical nuance. Although ABBA became worldwide superstars during the '70s, much Euro-Pop remained confined to continental Europe, especially France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden. In the decades that followed, Sweden produced the vast majority of the Euro-Pop acts that made a splash in the English-speaking world, including Army of Lovers and Roxette in the '80s and Ace of Base and Robyn in the '90s. The '90s dance-pop revival spearheaded by groups like Take That, the Spice Girls, and the Backstreet Boys owed a great deal to the sound and style of Euro-Pop, while English-speaking artists who imitated the style for its incessant catchiness often added elements of irony and/or trashy camp.

Foreign Language Rock is rock & roll and pop/rock — forms developed by American and British artists — performed in a non-English language by artists from South America, Europe, Asia, or Africa. Stylistically, the music is identical to that from America or Britain, but it is sung in another tongue and it is made specifically for their indigenous market.

The British Invasion occurred in the mid-'60s, when a wave of English rock & roll bands crossed over into the American market after the breakthrough success of the Beatles. Though not all of the bands sounded similar — they ranged from the hard rock of the Rolling Stones and the Kinks to the sweet pop of Gerry & the Pacemakers and Herman's Hermits — each group was heavily influenced by American rock & roll, blues, and R&B. British Invasion bands were either blues-based rockers or pop/rockers with ringing guitars and catchy hooks & melodies. Between 1964 and 1966, the British bands dominated the American charts, as well as the charts in the U.K. In that time, there was a second wave of British Invasion bands — such as the Who and the Zombies — which was indebted to both American rock and British Invasion pop. By the late '60s, many of the bands had become rock icons but a greater number didn't survive the transition into the post-Sgt. Pepper era.