Wednesday 5 January 2011

Representation of Rock and its sub-genres.


The term "rock music" was mainly coined in the 1960's with such bands as The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds, although it has had its feet firmly in the roots of 1950's rhythm and blues and country acts (most famously Elvis Presley).
From then many sub genres of rock have been introduced, some of these include:
  • Hard Rock-> System Of A Down
  • Psych Rock-> Jimi Hendrix
  • Progressive (Prog) Rock- Pink Floyd
  • Nu-Metal/Rock-Limp Bizkit
Of course all of these types of rock music had a social impact on those days youth. Fashion and sub cultures were affected and not always for the best. Often people found image elevated way above the music itself and with festivals such as Woodstock drugs and alcohol often found their way into the lifestyles of musicians and their lyrics.
From the times of youth rebellion and going against the "norm", Grunge and Punk was formed. Iconic Punk bands include:
  • The Clash
  • The Sex Pistols
  • The Buzzcocks
Often the lyrics were about going against authority or people of a political status e.g "God Save The Queen, She Ain't No Human Being" (from The Sex Pistol's song God Save The Queen) which sparked the whole image of Punk music (The Mohawks, Piercings, Plaid Trousers, Combat Boots) and that can still be seen to this day although more American bands take the trophy with the genre of "Horror Punk" e.g Misfits and The Damned.

In the 80's we see the emerge on New Wave and Indie music. The music drew much influences from Punk but the lyrics change and drastically so does the image. It becomes clean cut. The lyrics are often to do with emotions. The king of being cynical being Morrissey from The Smiths.
"I was looking for a job and I found a job, heaven knows I'm miserable now" from Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The Smiths. The image was now based around gelling up your hair into quiffs and not Mohawks and your jeans being tight without holes in. Some say this was the golden era of music because the impact it had on the youth. No lewd behaviour, no bad mouthing, no long hair swinging in front of your face (except for the birth of Hair/Glamour Rock that was born in America e.g Whitesnake, Def Leppard).

In the 90's we see the emerge of rap and house music, the use of electric music taking place of live musicians.
Sometimes there were no lyrics used in the songs, just repetitive phrases of riffs or licks, the image changed as this style of music appealed more to the black audience. The lyrics changed becoming more egotistical and about fame and sex, the use of swearing became more apparent so influenced the way that the youth of that generation spoke especially with the use of the "N" word, some say today that it has influenced the violence that has happened today. We also see the use of rap music coming in with heavy metal, where the lyrical and vocal style is still the same as rap but the electronic samples is replaced with live musicians and has the characteristics of heavy metal. The singer's ethnicity often changed to white so sometimes it lost respect of the black audience but it was able to make the crossover into the white audience so the fashion was made the hype, with baseball caps, baggy jeans and XL tshirts.

In the 00's/10's of today we see all this music and this is still apparent in today's youth with the social groups of:
  • Chavs
  • Emos
  • Preppies (Indie Kids)
  • Scene Kids
  • Rockabilly/Nautical
  • Punk
Today is the golden age of music in sense of progression and style, there is no minority in music so today's contemporary magazines will often link all the music together (except rap and metal as they contrast greatly)
so that their profits can increase because their target audience so thus get more readership.

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