Pinxter Azalea – Rhododendron periclymenoides

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

Opeth are a Swedish progressive metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. The band incorporates folk, blues, classical, and jazz elements into its usually lengthy compositions, as well as strong influences from death metal, especially in their early works. Songs may include acoustic guitar passages, Mellotrons, death growls, and strong dynamic shifts.

The group have been through several personnel changes since early in their history, including the replacement of every original member. Lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has been Opeth's driving force since the departure of founder and lead vocalist David Isberg in 1992. The band rarely made live appearances supporting their first four albums, but since their first world tour in support of the 2001 album Blackwater Park, they have had several other major world tours.

Opeth have released 13 studio albums, four live DVDs, four live albums (three that are in conjunction with DVDs), and two boxsets. The band released its debut album Orchid in 1995. With their eighth studio album, Ghost Reveries (2005), the band achieved chart success in several dozen countries, including Top Ten in Sweden. Their ninth studio album, Watershed (2008), topped the Finnish albums chart in its first week of release, and reached 23 on the US Billboard 200 chart. As of November 2009, the band have sold over 1.5 million copies of their albums and DVDs worldwide, including 300,000 collective SoundScans of their albums Blackwater Park, Damnation, and Deliverance in the United States. (Full article...)

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James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix (born Johnny Allen Hendrix; November 27, 1942 – September 18, 1970) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. Although his mainstream career spanned only four years, he is widely regarded as the greatest and one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of popular music, and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."

Born in Seattle, Washington, Hendrix began playing guitar at age 15. In 1961, he enlisted in the US Army, but was discharged the following year. Soon afterward, he moved to Clarksville, then Nashville, Tennessee, and began playing gigs on the chitlin' circuit, earning a place in the Isley Brothers' backing band and later with Little Richard, with whom he continued to work through mid-1965. He then played with Curtis Knight and the Squires before moving to England in late 1966 after bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals became his manager. Within months, Hendrix had earned three UK top ten hits with his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience (consisting of bassist Noel Redding, drummer Mitch Mitchell, and Hendrix himself): "Hey Joe", "Purple Haze", and "The Wind Cries Mary". He achieved fame in the US after his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and in 1968 his third and final studio album, Electric Ladyland, reached number one in the US. The double LP was Hendrix's most commercially successful release and his only number one album. The world's highest-paid rock musician, he headlined the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 before his accidental death in London from barbiturate-related asphyxia in September 1970.

Hendrix was inspired by American rock and roll and electric blues. He favored overdriven amplifiers with high volume and gain, and was instrumental in popularizing the previously undesirable sounds caused by guitar amplifier feedback. He was also one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock, such as fuzz distortion, Octavia, wah-wah, and Uni-Vibe. He was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings. Holly George-Warren of Rolling Stone commented: "Hendrix pioneered the use of the instrument as an electronic sound source. Players before him had experimented with feedback and distortion, but Hendrix turned those effects and others into a controlled, fluid vocabulary every bit as personal as the blues with which he began."

Hendrix was the recipient of several music awards during his lifetime and posthumously. In 1967, readers of Melody Maker voted him the Pop Musician of the Year and in 1968, Billboard named him the Artist of the Year and Rolling Stone declared him the Performer of the Year. Disc and Music Echo honored him with the World Top Musician of 1969 and in 1970, Guitar Player named him the Rock Guitarist of the Year. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Rolling Stone ranked the band's three studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967), and Electric Ladyland (1968), among the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and they ranked Hendrix as the greatest guitarist and the sixth-greatest artist of all time. Hendrix was named the greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023. (Full article...)

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No Jacket Required is the third solo studio album by English drummer and singer-songwriter Phil Collins. It was released on 18 February 1985 by Virgin Records in the UK and by Atlantic and WEA internationally.

After finishing touring commitments with Genesis and working with Eric Clapton in 1984, Collins resumed his solo career and started work on a new album. He made a conscious decision to write more uptempo and dance-oriented songs, as much of his previous material was influenced by matters surrounding his first divorce. The album features Helen Terry, Peter Gabriel, and Sting as guest backing vocalists. Some songs, like "Don't Lose My Number" and "Sussudio", were based around improvisation, and others, like "Long Long Way to Go", had a political message.

No Jacket Required was received favourably by the majority of critics and was a huge worldwide commercial success, reaching number one in the UK for five consecutive weeks and for seven non-consecutive weeks in the US. It was the second-best-selling album of 1985 in the UK, behind Dire Straits' Brothers in Arms. "One More Night", "Sussudio", "Don't Lose My Number" and "Take Me Home" were released as singles with corresponding music videos. All four were top ten hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with "Sussudio" and "One More Night" reaching number one. The three singles released in the UK all reached the top 20. Some tracks were featured on the television shows Miami Vice and Cold Case, and "The Man with the Horn" was re-written and re-recorded for the episode "Phil the Shill".

In 2001, No Jacket Required was certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling 12 million copies in the US and amassed worldwide sales of over 25 million copies, making it one of the best-selling albums of all time. It won three Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. The No Jacket Required World Tour saw Collins perform 85 concerts which culminated with a performance at both Live Aid shows in London and Philadelphia. Remixes of six songs from the album were released on the compilation 12"ers (1987). In 2010, it was among ten albums nominated for the best British album of the previous 30 years by the Brit Awards. It ranked No. 74 on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" list. A remastered deluxe edition with updated artwork and bonus tracks was released in 2016. (Full article...)

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"No One Knows" is a song by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age written by band members Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan. It was the first single and second track from their third album, Songs for the Deaf, and was released on November 26, 2002. "No One Knows" was a chart success, becoming the band's first single to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 and their only single to top the US Alternative charts. The song was also critically acclaimed, receiving a nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2003 Grammy Awards. (Full article...)

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Credit: Vassil

Enzifer, a guitarist for Urgehal, a black metal band from Norway, wearing corpse paint and performing in Belgium.

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• ... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?
• ... that Dutch radio and TV presenter Hanneke Kappen presented the second Dutch radio show dedicated to heavy metal music?
• ... 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?
• ... that Skálmöld & Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands documents a symphony orchestra playing heavy metal music?
• ... that the neofolk album The Lone Furrow features several guest vocalists from heavy metal bands, and critics thought it might appeal to fans of that genre?

Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal bands developed a thick, monumental sound characterized by distorted guitars, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats and loudness. (Full article...)

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Blues	Music	Pop music

• WikiProject Rock music (Main rock project)
• WikiProject Metal
• WikiProject Black Metal
• WikiProject Alternative music
• WikiProject Punk music
• WikiProject Progressive Rock
• WikiProject Music Directory

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