Portal:Rock music

Rock music is a genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew from the black musical genres of blues and rhythm and blues, as well as from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other styles. 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 using a verse–chorus form; however, 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 up 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 and 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...)

U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky is a concert film by Irish rock band U2. It was recorded on 5 June 1983 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, United States, on the group's War Tour. Originally released in 1984 on videocassette, U2 Live at Red Rocks was the band's first video release. It accompanied a 1983 live album entitled Under a Blood Red Sky, on which two tracks from the film appear. The video was directed by Gavin Taylor and produced by Rick Wurpel and Doug Stewart.

The film was arranged by U2 management to showcase the band's live act and to promote them to American audiences. It depicts the band's performance at Red Rocks on a rain-soaked evening. The concert was almost cancelled because of the inclement weather, but the band had invested in the filming with Island Records and concert promoter Barry Fey and wished to proceed with the gig. The rain and the torch-lit atmosphere of the surroundings made U2's performance dramatic. Segments of U2 Live at Red Rocks were shown in regular rotation on MTV, and were also broadcast on other television networks.

Critics praised the concert and the video, and it subsequently became a best-seller. The video, along with Under a Blood Red Sky, helped establish U2's reputation as remarkable live performers and boosted Red Rocks' stature as a live venue. A remastered edition of U2 Live at Red Rocks was released on DVD in September 2008 with previously unreleased tracks, coinciding with a remastered edition of Under a Blood Red Sky. Rolling Stone selected the film's performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as one of the "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll". (Full article...)

Robert Matthew Van Winkle (born October 31, 1967), known professionally as Vanilla Ice, is an American rapper, actor, and television host. Born in Dallas, raised in Miami, he was the first solo white rapper to achieve commercial success following the 1990 release of his best-known hit "Ice Ice Baby". He is credited with breaking down racial barriers in rap and hip-hop for future white rappers, most notably Eminem.

Ice released his debut album, Hooked, on the independent Ichiban Records before signing a contract with SBK Records, a record label of the EMI Group, which released a reformatted version under the title To the Extreme; it became the fastest-selling hip hop album of all time and "Ice Ice Baby" was the first hip hop single to top the Billboard charts. Followed by the live album Extremely Live (1991), Ice made a cameo appearance on the film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991) where he performed "Ninja Rap", which he co-wrote. He was soon offered and starred in his own film, Cool as Ice (1991), which included the single "Cool as Ice (Everybody Get Loose)" with Naomi Campbell; the film itself was a box office failure.

His fast rise in popularity was quickly marred by media controversies about his background, and criticism about his appeal of hip hop to a mainstream audience alongside MC Hammer. Ice later regretted his business arrangements with SBK, who had also published fabricated biographical information without his knowledge. Ice's second studio album, Mind Blowin' (1994), featured a major image change but was commercially unsuccessful. Following rap rock performances in the underground scene and playing in a local grunge band, Ice released the dark nu metal album Hard to Swallow (1998), followed by the independently released Bi-Polar (2001) and Platinum Underground (2005).

In the 2000s, Ice began appearing on television reality shows including The Surreal Life. In 2010, Ice began hosting The Vanilla Ice Project on DIY Network which ran for nine seasons until 2019. In 2022, he started another home improvement television program, The Vanilla Ice Home Show. He is also involved in motocross racing and real estate. (Full article...)

Black Ice is the fifteenth studio album by Australian rock band AC/DC. First released in Europe on 17 October 2008 and released internationally on 20 October 2008, it was produced by Brendan O'Brien. It marked the band's first original recordings since Stiff Upper Lip (2000), with the eight-year gap being the longest between AC/DC's successive studio albums. The album was the band's final studio release to feature founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, who left the band in September 2014 after being diagnosed with dementia, and died three years later.

The album's development was delayed because bass guitarist Cliff Williams sustained an injury and the band changed labels from Elektra Records to Sony Music. The first composing sessions between guitarists/brothers Angus and Malcolm Young were in London in 2003. Recording happened during March and April 2008 at The Warehouse Studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. O'Brien tried to recapture the rock sound of the band's early work, as opposed to the blues orientation of Stiff Upper Lip, with suggestions such as adding "soul crooning" to Brian Johnson's singing. The songs were mostly recorded live in the studio; engineer Mike Fraser used only sparse overdubs and effects to keep the tracks as close to the originals as possible.

Black Ice was released exclusively in physical formats, as the group did not sell its music digitally at the time. Wal-Mart received exclusive rights to distribute the album in North America. Its release was promoted with an extensive marketing campaign, which included displays of AC/DC memorabilia. The four singles issued from the album were, "Rock 'n' Roll Train", "Big Jack", "Anything Goes", and "Money Made". Black Ice peaked at number one in 29 countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States. It was the second best-selling record of 2008, behind Coldplay's Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends and had shipped 6 million copies worldwide by December. Critical reviews were generally positive, praising the music and its resemblance to the classic AC/DC sound, although some critics found the work too long and inconsistent. The track "War Machine" won the Best Hard Rock Performance category at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards. The album itself was nominated for many awards, including the Grammy, Brit, Juno and ARIA Music Awards; and was supported by a world tour between 2008 and 2010. (Full article...)

"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and first released on his 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. It was written in the summer of 1964, first performed live on October 10, 1964, and recorded on January 15, 1965. It is described by Dylan biographer Howard Sounes as a "grim masterpiece".

Among the well-known lines sung in the song are "He not busy being born is busy dying," "Money doesn't talk, it swears," "Although the masters make the rules, for the wisemen and the fools" and "But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked." The lyrics express Dylan's anger at the perceived hypocrisy, commercialism, consumerism, and war mentality in contemporary American culture. Dylan's preoccupations in the lyrics, nevertheless, extend beyond the socio-political, expressing existential concerns, touching on urgent matters of personal experience.

Dylan said that "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" is one of his songs that means the most to him, and he has played the song often in live concerts. Since its original release on Bringing It All Back Home, live versions of the song have been issued on The Bootleg Series Vol. 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964, Concert at Philharmonic Hall, Before the Flood, The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings, and Bob Dylan at Budokan. Dylan can also be seen performing the song in the film Dont Look Back and the video of the HBO special Hard to Handle. The song has been covered by a number of other artists, including Roger McGuinn, the Byrds, Billy Preston, Hugo Race, Terence Trent D'Arby, Mick Farren, Caetano Veloso, Marilyn Scott, and The Duhks. (Full article...)

Henrik Freischlader performing in Saarbrücken, Germany in 2009.

• ... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
• ... 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 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 Desulfovibrio vulgaris can remove toxic heavy metals from the environment?

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 Keane, Snow Patrol, Stereophonics, Feeder, and particularly Travis and 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...)

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