rock and roll

On July 5, 1954 a truck driver age 19 would change the course of music history to enter a small recording studio in Memphis to perform three songs. Among those three issues recorded a certain Elvis Aaron Presley was one of name That's All Right, which would mark the birth not only of a new musical genre but a form of artistic, social and cultural expression, and a style life: rock and roll.

Who would have thought that this music that fused the country sound of white rhythm and blues and blacks, remain in force 50 years after its inception, when they did not give more than five years of life-and that young born in Tupelo, Mississippi on January 8, 1935, it would become nothing less than the King of Rock, plus the most important and influential figure in popular music in the twentieth century.

Throughout these 50 years, the rock has been left for dead and risen from the ashes several times, but apparently the words spoken one day by King became a prophecy: "I do not think (the rock and roll) ever completely die because they will have to do something extraordinarily good to take his place. "

Although "officially" the birth of rock and roll is marked with the recording That's All Right, Elvis Presley, historically both the music and the name arose shortly before. For many historians, the dawn of the genre came with the song Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets, which was recorded on April 12, 1954-three months before King made history.

Meanwhile, the term "rock and roll" (slang expression for blacks to refer to the sexual act) I started using radio host Alan Freed in 1952 to define some songs that played on his show, like Rock the joint, Bill Haley precisely, and also at festivals beginning to realize where he hosted groups that played R & B.

However, considering the fact Elvis as the creator, primary developer and King of Rock, has much to do with his personality, his voice, his charisma and what he represented from the beginning not only for music but for the popular culture of the time, breaking schemes and transgressing moral and behavioral traditions.

But not everything in the 50s revolved around Elvis, as the rock and roll was born other important and transcendent figures would behoove those who write very important chapters on the genesis of his story.

rock history

Within that list, it could be very long, include basic characters like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, OrbisonEdie Roy Cochran and The Everly Brothers, among others.

The rise of this first generation of rock and roll came into 1956-57 and Elvis would be the same that would mark its decline when in 1958 he joined the United States Army, where he remained until 1960. While on his return popularity continued through the skies, his music stopped having the burden of rebellion and freshness with which young people were identified years earlier. The rock was ready to undergo its first metamorphosis.

I'll tell you how it started (The Rock)

After the decline of the first idols of rock and roll in the late 50s, the baton was taken by the artists of color, who in the early 60s began to dance everybody with Motown, a celebration of R & B, soul and funk.

That wave of artists are remembered, among many others to The Supremes, The Marvelletes, The Shirelles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the godfather of funk, James Brown, who gave a new meaning to the pop music with freshness and joy .

But the decade would be enough left to spend four years for a new movement, with such large dimensions and implications as the birth of the genre, be presented. With the "British invasion" of British music he was present and, as they would from then on, show that from there would always step forward to what was created in the United States.

Then the whole world vibrated to the rhythm of The Kinks, The Animals, The Who, The Zombies, The Shadows, The Hollies and, of course, with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the two most important and influential bands in rock history .

Meanwhile, in the US response would come a few years later, when last half of the decade the acid rock and psychedelia would take over the scene and bring a new rock movement, perhaps the most important and of great social and cultural impact .

After Bob Dylan decided to leave some folk and electrify his music, a great generation of American bands began to create a movement that years later, in 1969, would lead to the "Woodstock Nation," a three-day festival duration which drew nearly half a million people.

Of that generation include Jimi Hendrix (considered as the best rock guitarist of all time), Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane, The greateful Dead, The Byrds, Country Joe & The Fish, and a number of groups coming mainly West Coast of the United States.

With the Woodstock Festival, held in Woodstock, New York in 1969, the generation of "peace and love" had its utopian moment, its peak, but also marked the beginning of the end, which occurred months later concert Free The Rolling Stones that offered in Altamount, California, where a young black man was cruelly gunned down and killed by a gang of Hell's Angels, paradoxically hired by the Stones to provide security. The dream was over.

"The dream is over." With this phrase included in God song, John Lennon, begins the decade of the 70s in the rock. After experienced in the previous decade feast, the new well and did not look anything from the very dawn examples of this were given.

Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, two symbols of the generation of 60, killed in 1970 because of an overdose. In that same year, Paul McCartney officially announced the separation of The Beatles, the group, as Lennon once said, was almost as popular as Jesus Christ. A year later, in 1971, Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors and a major sex symbols and visual icons of rock history, also dies of overdose.

With these bad omens, the first half of the decade the rock undergoes its mass and establishing visual paraphernalia on large scales at concerts. Led Zeppelin will reign over the decade, and they will come after The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, with really impressive performances.

The heavy metal, hard rock and glam rock take over the taste of the masses over the first half of the decade, so groups like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Queen, Kiss, Bad Company live their moments of glory.

However, all that mass, glamor, visual paraphernalia and, in the case of progressive rock, virtuosity, alienates his street roots rock and rebellion, so that young people no longer find an ID and a flag on it. It is then that in the New York suburbs punk arises rock derived which incorporates the rebellion, along with a dose of anarchism, hedonism and politicization, making it one of the significant moments in the history of the genre.

The punk was born in New York engendered by now legendary Ramones, but the English The Sex Pistols lead him to the end. Other notable significance bands are The Clash, The Damn, Generation X, The Misfits and Black Flag. So while the rock was in a deep and disco reigned over the charts, the last great movement of the genre was present.

Like its predecessor, the 80s begins with deaths and separations. John Lennon, leader and founder of the Beatles, political and social activist is murdered outside his New York apartment on December 8, 1980. The whole world cries, the song Imagine sounds around the globe and rock and Western popular culture are mourning.

John Bonham, Led Zeppelin drummer, dies of an alcoholic congestion 25, 1980; months later, Jimmy Page announced the separation of the group. Bob Marley, the highest figure in reggae music, died on May 11, 1981 cancer victim. The Eagles, one of the great country-rock groups of the 70 announced their separation in May 1982, they will meet only say "until hell freezes over" (which "happen" in the spring of 1994, when They came together again).

The 80s were characterized by the wide diversity of music styles, proposals, forms and aesthetics, thanks to the birth of various subgenres of rock (new wave, post-punk, techno, dark, electronic, rap, breakdance, dark metal , new romantic ...), which were incorporated into the scene throughout the decade, some with massive features, in terms of their exposure, others rather underground or alternative.

In the first half of the decade it highlights a British trio born punk but had evolved and changed their sound: The Police, whose mix of rock, reggae and jazz became the best band in the world, until they separated in 1985, just when experiencing their highest point, artistically and commercially speaking.

I'll tell you how it started (The Rock)

Before the disintegration of the Police who take the baton are the Irish band U2, which for the late 80s and had become the biggest rock band in the world, to the great levels as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, among others.

Talking Heads, Simple Minds, The Pretenders, XTC, Men an Work, Madness, The Cars, The Cure, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears, OMD, Pet Shop Boys, Ultravox, Duran Duran are just some of the many stars of the decade.

music

A couple of years before they became extinct 80, a band of Los Angeles come to give a fresh injection of vitality to Rock Guns N 'Roses, whose hard rock, glam and his scruffy appearance between the personality of its singer Axl Rose and his debut album, Apettite for destruction, conquered the world.

If diversification is experienced in the 80s, the 90s were the decade of technology in music in general. The implementation of new recording techniques and computer use were made basic elements in music production.

However, the 90 began with what can be considered as the last great movement in the rock: grunge, which in turn throw the last martyr of the genre: Kurt Cobain.

In a situation somewhat similar to the birth of punk in the late 70s, at the end of the 80 it began to take shape in Seattle movement musically conjuntaba the power and ferocity of punk and heavy metal, and ideologically conveyed a message of indifference , introspection and isolation, to what was happening in American society and the world in general.

This movement mainly highlighted two bands: Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, but it would mark the first that an entire generation with his song Smells like teen spirit and your hard Nevermind, but also by its singer, Kurt Cobain, who would become, like they did at the time Morrison, Hendrix, Janis, the hero and martyr of that time to kill himself the April 5, 1994.

In response, the British revived this wave of Britpop of the 60s, and this time championed by groups like Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Supergrass, Pulp, The Verve, a mid gave new meaning and direction to rock .

Of these bands, Oasis and Blur were what led moving but that Radiohead would be to late to stop one of the most celebrated artistic testimonies in rock history with his album OK computer, where they got an admirable balance between the use of technology with the rock in its basic form.

The decade closed with the presence of groups called rap metal as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Deftones, Stain, POD, which despite having a lot of followers, mainly in his native United States, could not compete with the teen pop Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, 'N Sync and the like which are posesionaría for sale listings.

The arrival of the new millennium would bring another resurgence of rock, with groups like The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Libertines, The Vines, The Hives, who retaking musical and aesthetic elements of the late 70s and early 80 will return the simplicity, harmony and attitude that this genre had lost since he was born was destined to stay forever, and now at 50 years of age shows that still a rebel and in their best years.