Some info about music genres: Rock Music

     Rock and roll, also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles.

     The term rock and roll is broad, and its boundaries loosely-defined. It is sometimes used to describe a number of genres only distantly related, including soul, heavy metal and even hip hop. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in America in the 1950s, though elements of rock and roll can be seen in rhythm and blues records as far back as the 1920s. Early rock and roll combined elements of blues, boogie woogie, jazz and rhythm and blues, and is also influenced by traditional folk music, gospel music (Gospel music may refer either to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the 1930's or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by white Christian artists), black and white, and country and western (Country music, once known as Country and Western music, is a popular musical form developed in the southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, and the blues). Going back even further, rock and roll can trace a foundational lineage to the old Five Points district of mid-19th century New York City, the scene of the first fusion of heavily rhythmic African shuffles and sand dances with melody driven European genres, particularly the Irish jig (the jig is a folk dance type as well as the accompanying "dance tune type", popular in Ireland and Scotland, and particularly associated with the former.)

     Rocking was a term first used by gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual rapture. By the 1940s, however, the term was used as a double entendre, ostensibly referring to dancing, but with the hidden subtextual meaning of sex; an example of this is Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight". "Good Rocking Tonight" and similar songs were relegated to "race music" (the music industry code name for rhythm and blues) outlets and were barely known by mainstream white audiences. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed would begin playing this type of music for his white audience, and it is Freed who is credited with coining the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the rollicking R&B music that he brought to the airwaves.

Early North American rock and roll (1953-1963)

     On March 21, 1952 in Cleveland, Alan Freed produced the first rock and roll concert. The audience and the performers were mixed in race and the evening ended after one song in a near-riot as thousands of fans tried to get into the sold-out venue.

     By the end of the decade, rock had spread throughout the world. In Australia, for example, Johnny O'Keefe became perhaps the first modern rock star of the country, and began the field of Australian rock.

Rockabilly

     It was two years later that the first major white rock star began recording. In 1954, Elvis Presley began recording with Sam Philips, starting with the hit "That's All Right, Mama". Elvis played a rock and country & western fusion called rockabilly, and he became possibly the first celebrity musician and teen idol to perform in the genre.

Diversification of American rock

     With the runaway popular success of rock, the style began to influence other genres. Vocalized R&B became doo wop (Doo-wop is a style of vocal-based rhythm and blues music popular in the mid-1950s to the early 1960s in America; the term was coined after the fact, by a DJ in the 1970s. The style was at first characterized by upbeat harmony vocals that used nonsense syllables from which the name of the style is derived. The name was later extended to group harmony ballads. Examples of doo-wop can be found in the music of The Clovers, The Ravens, and The Larks), for example, while uptempo, secularized gospel music became soul, and audiences flocked to see Appalachian-style folk bands playing a rock-influenced pop version of their style. Young adults and teenagers across the country were playing in amateur rock bands, laying the roots for local scenes, garage rock and alternative rock. More immediately, places like Southern California produced their own varieties of rock, such as surf.

Surf Music

British rock

     American rock and roll had an impact across the globe, perhaps most intensely in the United Kingdom, where record collecting and trend-watching were in full bloom among the youth culture prior to the rock era, and where color barriers were less of an issue. Countless British youths listened to R&B and rock pioneers and began forming their own bands to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts. Britain quickly became a new center of rock and roll, leading to the British Invasion from 1958 to 1969.

     In 1958 three British teenagers formed a rock and roll group, Cliff Richard and the Drifters (later renamed Cliff Richard and the Shadows). The group recorded a hit, "Move It", marking not only what is held to be the very first true British rock 'n' roll single, but also the beginning of a different sound — British rock. Richard and his band introduced many important changes, such as using a "lead guitarist" (virtuoso Hank Marvin) and an electric bass. Richard inspired many British teens to begin buying records and follow the music scene, thus laying the groundwork for Beatlemania.

British Invasion

1960s Garage rock

Bob Dylan and Folk-rock (starting 1963)

     As the British Invasion led by The Beatles picked up steam, a homegrown American trend was making itself felt, led by Bob Dylan. By 1963 the 22 year old Dylan had assimilated a variety of regional American styles and was set to create a new genre, usually dubbed "folk-rock". From 1961 to mid-1963 Dylan had kept his distance from rock and roll even though his first adolescent musical forays owed more to early rockers like Buddy Holly and Little Richard than to any of the more obscure folk and blues artists he would later revere as paradigms (in particular, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Robert Johnson). Dylan and others on the new folk circuit tended to view The Beatles as bubblegum (that is, tritely commercial), but admitted to a grudging respect for their melodic originality and energetic, danceable delivery. In 1963 Dylan's release of the album The Times They Are A-Changin was a watershed event, bringing "relevant" and highly poetic lyrics to the edge of rock and roll. The Beatles listened to this album incessantly and moved away from the exclusively romantic/interpersonal themes of their songs to date.

Psychedelic rock

A more esoteric form of British psychedelia and the Canterbury Sound is exemplified by the Soft Machine, who accompanied Hendrix on his first U.S. tour. Pink Floyd found their roots in British psychedelia, moving on to becoming more of a progressive rock, and arena rock band later in their careers.

     The culmination of rock and roll as a socially-unifying force was seen in the rock festivals of the late '60s, the most famous of which was Woodstock which began as a three-day arts and music festival and turned into a "happening", as hundreds of thousands of youthful fans converged on the site.

Progressive rock

     The music itself broadened past the guitar-bass-drum format; while some bands had used saxophones and keyboards before, now acts like The Beach Boys and The Beatles (and others following their lead) experimented with new instruments including wind sections, string sections, and full orchestration. Many bands moved well beyond three-minute tunes into new and diverse forms; increasingly sophisticated chord structures, previously limited to jazz and orchestrated pop music, were heard.

     Dabbling heavily in classical, jazz, electronic, and experimental music resulted in what would be called progressive rock (or, in its German wing, krautrock). Progressive rock could be lush and beautiful or atonal and dissonant, highly complex or minimalistic, sometimes all within the same song. At times it was hardly recognizable as rock at all. Some notable practitioners include King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant, The Nice, Yes, Gong, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Magma, Can, and Faust.

Birth of heavy metal

Arena rock

     The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had set the table for massive live performances in stadiums and arenas. The growing popularity of metal and progressive rock led to more bands selling out large venues. The corporate world saw the chance for huge profits and began marketing a series of what came to be called arena rock bands.

Soft Rock/Pop

     Even rock music would get soft, or at least in between soft and hard. Out of the short-lived "bubble gum pop" era came such groups as The Partridge Family, The Cowsills, The Osmonds, and The Archies (the latter "group" actually being one person, Ron Dante, who would go on to help manage the career of Barry Manilow).

     With the demise of The Beatles as a group, other bands and artists would take this emerging soft rock format and add a touch of orchestration to partially form some of the first "power ballads". Solo artists such as Manilow, Elton John, Billy Joel, Olivia Newton-John, and Eric Carmen, and groups such as Bread, The Carpenters, and England Dan & John Ford Coley would make popular the format we know today as Soft rock.

     Other well-known artists from the 1960s such as Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand were continuing to chart.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_roll