149-526: The The are an English rock band from London , formed in 1979 by singer-songwriter Matt Johnson . Johnson is the only constant, and often sole, band member. The The achieved critical acclaim and commercial success in the UK, with 15 chart singles, seven reaching the top 40. Their most successful studio album, Infected (1986), spent 30 weeks on the chart. They followed this with the top-ten studio albums Mind Bomb (1989) and Dusk (1993). The The operated as
298-520: A Portuguese dance music producer, and UK artist Kontour , releasing the album Scanners . These new artists were featured on the Some Bizzare Double Album compilation released in 2008. The album featured 32 new artists discovered on Myspace . Other acts included Risqué, who were a French/Welsh electronic group made up of Nathalie and Huw Williams. Their music consisted of robust driving rhythms and ethereal vocals. They record their music in
447-605: A band together once again. By 1988, the The was an actual band again, Johnson having recruited ex- Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr , ex- Nick Lowe bassist James Eller and ex- ABC drummer David Palmer as fully-fledged members. This line-up, plus guest singer Sinéad O'Connor , recorded their third studio album Mind Bomb , which debuted at No. 4 in the UK Albums Chart and featured the band's highest-charting single to that time, "The Beat(en) Generation", which peaked at No. 18 in
596-509: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
745-541: A chance encounter with Billy Bragg , who persuaded him to return to Britain and support Red Wedge , a coalition of like-minded musicians supporting the Labour Party in its general election campaign. Johnson agreed and enrolled longtime friend and collaborator Manyika to join him in performing shows in London featuring stripped-down versions of political the The songs such as "Heartland". This experience convinced Johnson to put
894-514: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
1043-477: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
1192-609: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
1341-612: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
1490-534: A live album recorded at the Royal Albert Hall gig in 2018. This album was released in a number of formats, including one release with an art book and a film of the performance. Rock music 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
1639-473: A live version of "Another Boy Drowning" from Burning Blue Soul . This and a later EP of remixes, 1993's Dis-infected , were compiled into a 1994 full-length album for the North American market called Solitude . In 1993, with Johnson, Marr, Collard, Eller and Palmer, Some Bizzare Records/Epic issued their fourth studio album Dusk , which debuted at No. 2 in the UK and spun off three top 40 singles in
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#17328835921591788-568: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
1937-572: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
2086-485: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
2235-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
2384-546: A maverick. He licensed The The's Soul Mining album to three different record labels: after delivering the album to Phonogram he then took it from them and sold it to Warner Bros. Records , then sold it on again to CBS . The one recording was sold to three companies, each time signed off for the best deal by the companies mentioned. Soul Mining was eventually released in 1983. The The released further albums with Some Bizzare, including Infected in 1986. Matt Johnson from The The also recorded with Some Bizzare act Marc and
2533-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,
2682-481: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
2831-570: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
2980-606: A new compilation album titled I'd Rather Shout at a Returning Echo Than Kid Someone's Listening . It included the Soft Cell track "God Shaped Hole", recorded by the newly reformed band. The compilation also saw the inclusion of two tracks recorded by Cabaret Voltaire 's Richard H. Kirk . Between 2001 and 2005, Some Bizzare's output was minimal. In 2006, Some Bizzare signed acts the Dark Poets , Monkey Farm Frankenstein, Meka and Mainstream Distortion. The compilation album Redefining
3129-456: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
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#17328835921593278-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
3427-499: A request from Johnson, it would be re-issued and credited to the The so all of his albums would be in the same rack together. Towards the end of 1981, Colin Lloyd-Tucker and Simon Fisher Turner joined the band for a series of stripped down the The acoustic concerts in London. Johnson spent the next few years collaborating with a diverse range of creative individuals, changing personnel from project to project. The The's next single
3576-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
3725-695: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced
3874-478: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
4023-852: A solo demo album ( See Without Being Seen ) which he sold at various underground gigs on cassettes. In 1979, working with Colin Lloyd-Tucker (a friend and colleague at De Wolfe Music , the Soho music publisher/recording studio) Johnson recorded his first album proper, Spirits . This album remains unreleased, although the track "What Stanley Saw" was later licensed to Cherry Red Records for their Perspectives and Distortion compilation album , which also featured Virgin Prunes , Lemon Kittens , Thomas Leer , Kevin Coyne and Mark Perry . In November 1977, Johnson had placed an advertisement in NME seeking "bass/lead guitarist" who liked
4172-450: A solo project from 1982 to 1987, though their albums featured contributions from musicians such as Jools Holland , JG Thirlwell and Neneh Cherry . It became a full band from 1988 to 2002, notably featuring former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr until 1994. The The went on hiatus from 2002 to 2017, and released their first studio album in 24 years, Ensoulment , in 2024. While trying to get his band going, in 1978 Matt Johnson had recorded
4321-526: A studio based in Barcelona. Huw Williams is a well established producer working with bands like "Rubikon" and "Rookie". The album Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down was released by Some Bizzare in August 2009. The band Einstürzende Neubauten actively discourages purchasing any of their releases from Some Bizzare or their American licensee, Thirsty Ear, as they have been and continue to be sold without paying any royalties to
4470-460: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
4619-522: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
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4768-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
4917-536: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
5066-464: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
5215-544: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
5364-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
5513-453: Is song-based music with a 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
5662-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
5811-405: Is the Band." Some Bizzare Records Some Bizzare [ sic ] Records was a British independent record label owned by Stevo Pearce . The label was founded in 1981, with the release of Some Bizzare Album , a compilation of unsigned bands including Depeche Mode , Soft Cell , The The , Neu Electrikk and Blancmange . One of the first bands that Some Bizzare worked with
5960-528: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
6109-519: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
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6258-661: The Birds Eye View Film festival at London's ICA 2007), The Track (2007), Going Live (2008), The Island Amid the Worlds (2010) and Bilder av Dina (2010). The latest collaboration between Johnson and St Michaels, Penthouse North, premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2014. In June 2009, it was announced that the The had created an original soundtrack to
6407-505: The Naked Tour , which lasted 14 months. This same line-up also recorded two new tracks, "Deep Down Truth", featuring Angela McCluskey on vocals and "Pillar Box Red". Both songs were produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley for the 2002 compilation album 45 RPM: The Singles of the The . In June 2002, the The made a sole live appearance at Meltdown festival at London's Royal Festival Hall as guests of David Bowie . At this point,
6556-548: The UK singles chart . Keyboardist D.C. Collard was added to the official line-up in 1989 after the band's former session player Steve Hogarth , who had played on Infected , opted to become the new lead vocalist of Marillion instead. The band embarked on a lengthy world tour in 1989–90 called the The Versus the World . The live film of the same name, directed by Tim Pope , was filmed during
6705-422: 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. Rock has also embodied and served as
6854-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
7003-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
7152-461: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
7301-531: The 7" single "Cold Spell Ahead". By this stage Matt Johnson had begun playing all the instruments himself so Laws left to pursue his studies, leaving Johnson as a solo artist using a group moniker. Johnson was signed up later in 1981 to 4AD Records by Ivo Watts-Russell to record a solo studio album, Burning Blue Soul . Although all of the instruments and vocals were performed by Johnson, the album featured various producers including Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, Ivo and Johnson himself. Years later, owing to
7450-472: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
7599-609: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including
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#17328835921597748-596: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
7897-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
8046-627: The Day with various songs from the The's catalogue being performed by some of Johnson's favourite artists including Elysian Fields , JG Thirlwell , Thomas Leer , Elbow , Rob Ellis , John Parish , Anna Domino , Meja , Angela McCluskey , Ergo Phizmiz, and Rustin Man (a.k.a. Paul Webb ), among others. The album was eventually released in October 2017 in the Radio Cineola - The Trilogy box set . Since 2009, "This Is
8195-504: The Day" has been extensively used in high-profile advertising campaigns for Levi's Dockers, M&M's and Amazon . It was used as the opening song for the film I Feel Pretty (2018). The The's music continued to appear on British radio and television such as in Shane Meadows ' 2010 Channel 4 miniseries This Is England '86 and in 2013 in the award-winning British comedy-drama television series Fresh Meat . In 2011, "This Is
8344-567: The Day" was covered by Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers . Matt Johnson has created several new arms of the The: During this period, Johnson's political activity has been limited to conservation issues in his native east London. He was a founder member of the Save Shoreditch committee and directed and narrated a short film for its cause. Along with fellow artists such as Brad Lochore, Tracey Emin and Lucinda Rogers he has been fighting
8493-578: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
8642-499: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
8791-510: The Gerard Johnson debut feature film Tony , released February 2010 on the The's Cineola imprint in March 2010, as the first volume of several forthcoming soundtrack and instrumental albums. In May 2014, the The completed an original soundtrack for Gerard Johnson's subsequent film, Hyena, s tarring Peter Ferdinando , Stephen Graham , and Neil Maskell . The album was released on 6 March 2015 as
8940-464: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
9089-498: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
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#17328835921599238-618: The Light" hit No. 31 UK, released by Some Bizzare Label / Epic. An experimental album Gun Sluts was recorded in 1997, but it was left unreleased by the band after it was rejected for being too uncommercial by their label. The The severed their 18-year relationship with Sony and moved to Interscope , on Trent Reznor 's Nothing Records imprint. In 2000, the The, at this time consisting of Johnson, Schermerhorn, Nashville bassist Spencer Campbell and New Jersey drummer Earl Harvin, released NakedSelf and embarked on another lengthy world tour,
9387-499: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
9536-501: The Mambas . Later acts on the record label's roster included Cabaret Voltaire , Psychic TV , Test Department , Einstürzende Neubauten , Coil , Swans , and Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel . Many of these bands were included on the label's 1985 compilation album If You Can't Please Yourself, You Can't Please Your Soul . Some Bizzare built a reputation for madcap behavior. For example, during
9685-570: The Prologue was released in October 2006 to mark the label's 25th anniversary and provides an overview of the label's output. This album coincided with a Some Bizzare exhibition at the Horse Hospital arts venue in Bloomsbury , London . The exhibition included original artwork from bands like The The and Marc and the Mambas . 2007 saw Some Bizzare Records sign some new acts, including Pedro INF ,
9834-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
9983-573: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
10132-650: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
10281-419: The The and returned to their respective day jobs. As a duo (Johnson and Laws), the The began performing concerts with Wire, Cabaret Voltaire , DAF , This Heat , the Birthday Party and Scritti Politti. In early 1981 the The also contributed the composition "Untitled" to the Some Bizzare Album . In September of that year Johnson and Laws signed a recording contract with Some Bizzare Records and released
10430-511: The The at this point and later to become a cartoonist for the Evening Standard , Daily Mirror and The Sun newspapers) was added on bass. Although both Ashworth and Johnston were credited with appearing on the The's debut single ("Controversial Subject"/"Black and White") on 4AD Records , neither actually played on the recordings , which were produced by Wire members Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis . All instruments were played by Johnson and Laws. Johnston and Ashworth soon dropped out of
10579-526: The The'. These concerts were weekly for four weeks and featured Marc Almond on guitar and vocals. The The released their official studio album debut, the synth-noir classic Soul Mining , in 1983. It featured the minor UK No. 71 hit " This Is the Day ", as well as a new recording of the The performing "Uncertain Smile". Produced by Johnson and Paul Hardiman , it featured guest appearances from Orange Juice 's drummer Zeke Manyika , Jools Holland, Thomas Leer and JG Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus ). During
10728-461: The The's more prolific period of releases, from Soul Mining (1983) to Dusk (1992), most artwork used on the albums and single releases was produced by Johnson's brother Andrew Johnson , using the pseudonym Andy Dog. The artwork has a distinctive style, and sometimes courted controversy, most notably the initial release of the 1986 single "Infected", which featured a masturbating devil and was withdrawn from sale and re-issued with an edited version of
10877-403: The The's next project was 1995's Hanky Panky , an album that consisted entirely of Hank Williams cover versions. Hanky Panky was recorded by a new group consisting of Johnson, Collard, Fitting, ex- Iggy Pop guitarist Eric Schermerhorn , former bassist for David Bowie Gail Ann Dorsey (billed as "Hollywood" Dorsey), and drummer the "Reverend" Brian MacLeod . Their cover version of "I Saw
11026-649: The The, authored by Neil Fraser. For 2017's Record Store Day , after premiering the song on a Radio Cineola broadcast, the The released a new 7" record called "We Can't Stop What's Coming," collaborating once again with Johnny Marr. On 10 September, it was announced that Johnson would be touring as the The again for the first time in 17 years. Two dates were announced, in Denmark on 1 June 2018 and at Royal Albert Hall on 5 June 2018. The Royal Albert Hall tickets sold out, with two extra performances added at O2 's Brixton Academy and Troxy , both in London. Several more shows around
11175-509: The UK and Europe were subsequently added, as well as eight shows in the US. The The also played on 2 and 3 October 2018 in the Sydney Opera House . The touring announcement came subsequent to the The announcing a new triple-vinyl limited-edition box set, Radio Cineola: Trilogy , to be released when they kick off their first gigs since 2002. Featuring three albums – The End of the Day , The Inertia Variations , and Midnight to Midnight –
11324-522: The UK, led by "Dogs of Lust". Another world tour followed, the Lonely Planet tour, at which point the band's line-up was reshuffled; Marr and Eller left, and were replaced by Atlanta -based guitarist Keith Joyner and New York bassist Jared Michael Nickerson after Johnson relocated the band to the US. Also added was Boston harmonica player Jim Fitting (formerly of Treat Her Right ), who auditioned in New York in early 1993. Palmer bowed out partway through
11473-456: The UK, notably "Heartland", which made the UK top 30. It was also unusual for having a full-length accompanying film. Costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, Infected: The Movie was shot on locations in Bolivia, Peru and New York. Different songs were directed by different directors, mainly Tim Pope and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson (of Throbbing Gristle ). Throughout 1986–1987 Johnson toured
11622-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
11771-604: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
11920-541: The United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and 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 is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock
12069-700: The Velvet Underground and Syd Barrett . In 1979 he placed a second advertisement in the NME , stating his new influences as the Residents and Throbbing Gristle . The The made their debut at London's Africa Centre on 11 May 1979, third on the bill to Scritti Politti and PragVEC , using backing tape tracks that Johnson created at his day job at De Wolfe studios for the drums and bass. The band at this point consisted of Johnson on vocal, electric piano, guitar and tapes and Keith Laws on synthesiser and tapes. Laws suggested
12218-722: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
12367-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
12516-798: The band consisted solely of Johnson, longtime friend and collaborator JG Thirlwell on tapes and loops, and young film director Benn Northover on film and video. Since 2003, the reclusive Johnson has generally kept away from the public eye and has concentrated primarily on soundtrack work, scoring numerous documentaries, films, and art installations. The The's music has featured in a diverse range of cinema over many years, from cult classics such as Jürgen Muschalek's ( Muscha ) Decoder ("Three Orange Kisses from Kazan") and Gregg Araki 's Nowhere ("Love Is Stronger Than Death") to big-budget epics such as Sylvester Stallone 's Judge Dredd ("Darkness Falls"), prompting Johnson's move into film score composition. For English director Nichola Bruce , it has included
12665-493: The band. The label is now effectively defunct. The website has been offline for several years and there have been no releases. Pearce's whereabouts are currently unknown. The label's catalogue is now sold through One Little Indian . Stevo has since resurfaced alongside the new Some Bizzare Book "Conform to Deform", written by Wesley Doyle which released in February 2023. It has been said multiple times in recent times by Stevo that
12814-575: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
12963-456: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
13112-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
13261-443: 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
13410-792: The documentary One Man Show: Dramatic Art of Steven Berkoff (1995) and a documentary feature film about the Apollo Moon landings , Moonbug , which was completed in autumn 2010 and won the Special Jury Remi Award for Theatrical Feature Documentary at the 2011 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival . The soundtrack was released in 2012 as volume 2 in the series of original soundtrack albums produced through Johnson's Cineola imprint. For Swedish filmmaker Johanna St Michaels, this has included Best Wishes Bernhard (prize winning film of Dokumentär Films Premien Nordic Panorama 2003), Snapshots from Reality (Nominated for Best International Short at
13559-451: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
13708-455: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
13857-457: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
14006-719: The eastwards expansion of the City of London into Shoreditch and the probable demolition of much of this East London neighbourhood. The day after the London Olympics finished in August 2012 Johnson made a rare public appearance on the BBC's Newsnight current affairs programme, in order to debate with Robin Wales , the Mayor of Newham , about the impact and legacy of the Olympic Games upon Stratford ,
14155-434: The electronic score from The Inertia Variations documentary," said a spokesperson for the band speaking to The Quietus . In January 2021, the soundtrack to the 2019 film Muscle , directed by Gerard Johnson, was released. The first track on this EP was "I Want 2 B U," a new song that was released as a 7" single for Record Store Day 2020. On 29 October 2021, the The released The Comeback Special on Cinéola and earMUSIC,
14304-510: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
14453-568: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
14602-491: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
14751-451: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
14900-503: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
15049-453: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
15198-460: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
15347-511: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
15496-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
15645-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
15794-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
15943-669: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
16092-603: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
16241-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
16390-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
16539-580: 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
16688-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
16837-507: The name 'the The' to Matt Johnson. As the The was now getting underway, Johnson was simultaneously working with experimental synth-pop combo the Gadgets, a studio group he formed with Colin Lloyd Tucker, his colleague at De Wolfe recording studios. Peter Ashworth , then known as 'Triash' and later to become a noted photographer, became the The's drummer in 1980, and Tom Johnston (also managing
16986-461: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
17135-591: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
17284-504: The nineties Stevo Pearce's offices, based in Mayfair, included a private chapel and confession box for would-be-signings to go through the solemn hand-over of demo tapes. Stevo was also partial to aggressively insulting young record shop employees at this time, should they be unfortunate enough to be working in a shop that sold Coil's recordings (the recordings that they made money from at that period in time). 2001 saw Stevo Pearce compile
17433-404: The part of London Johnson grew up in. In the spring of 2014, Sony Music Entertainment announced plans to release a Soul Mining 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Boxset in the summer of 2014. The reissue was remastered by Matt Johnson at Abbey Road Studios . HarperCollins imprint The Friday Project announced in the spring of 2014 that they would be publishing the first official biography of
17582-617: The previously mentioned cuts, along with the tracks "The Nature of Virtue" and "Fruit of the Heart" (which were similarly recorded around the same time), appeared as bonus selections on a cassette-only issue of the band's eventual debut album, but The Pornography of Despair album as a whole remains unissued. Around 1982 the The played a series of four concerts at the Marquee Club in Wardour Street , Soho , entitled 'An evening of Rock n Roll with
17731-465: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
17880-628: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
18029-400: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
18178-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
18327-453: The same drawing. In 1985, the none-album track "Flesh and Bones" was released on the compilation album If You Can't Please Yourself You Can't, Please Your Soul by EMI . For their second studio album Infected (1986), the The still consisted only of Johnson, but was augmented by session musicians and featured friends such as Manyika and Rip Rig + Panic singer Neneh Cherry and Anna Domino . This album spawned four charting singles in
18476-517: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
18625-543: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
18774-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
18923-530: The third part in the Cineola series. In May 2007, the The released a new download-only single on their web site. Entitled "Mrs. Mac," the track is an autobiographical song about Johnson's first day at school as a child in Stratford , East London . All instruments and vocals on the track were performed by Johnson. A press release was issued along with this track, announcing a forthcoming the The album called The End of
19072-486: The three nights the The performed at London's Royal Albert Hall at the end of the tour. Vocalist Melanie Redmond, who had just completed a world tour with Duran Duran , joined the tour during the European leg as a session musician. The studio EP Shades of Blue was released in 1990. This included cover versions of Fred Neil 's "Dolphins" and Duke Ellington 's "Solitude" as well as a new original song "Jealous of Youth" and
19221-610: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
19370-744: The tour and was replaced by ex- Stabbing Westward drummer Andy Kubiszewski . The band headlined the main stage at the 1993 Reading Festival . Another full-length film, directed by longtime collaborator Tim Pope, was made for this album. From Dusk Til Dawn was shot in New Orleans and New York. Along with Johnson and Johnny Marr, it also features various characters from the New York underground scene such as sexologist Annie Sprinkle , writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp , Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa , and pornographic film actor Rick Savage amongst many carnival characters. Now permanently relocated to New York,
19519-560: The triple box set package, available for pre-order from 6 October 2017, also came with 48-page bound book which included album lyrics and exclusive photos. The End of the Day contains interpretations of a selection of The songs from singers across the globe and includes the The's recent single "We Can't Stop What's Coming". The Inertia Variations features Johnson narrating John Tottenham's epic poetic cycle. " Midnight to Midnight includes interviews and soundscapes taken from Johnson's 12-hour UK Election Day Radio Cineola shortwave broadcast plus
19668-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
19817-524: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
19966-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration
20115-557: The world extensively with Infected: The Movie , showing the film in cinemas in place of performing live concerts. The film was also shown twice in its entirety on Channel 4 in the UK, on MTV 's 120 Minutes in the US , and on MuchMusic 's City Limits in Canada. In 1987, Johnson also took some tentative steps back into live performance. Whilst promoting Infected: The Movie in Australia he had
20264-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to
20413-453: Was B-Movie . After working with B-Movie the label achieved notable success with Soft Cell, an electronic duo whose Mutant Moments EP Stevo Pearce had championed in Sounds . After Soft Cell signed to Some Bizzare, he went on to manage them, under a deal with Phonogram Inc. Their cover of " Tainted Love " topped the charts. In the early eighties, Stevo Pearce gained a reputation for being
20562-570: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
20711-676: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " (1960) and " Kon-Tiki " (1961), while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
20860-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
21009-573: Was a retooling of "Cold Spell Ahead", now entitled " Uncertain Smile ". Produced in New York by Mike Thorne , it reached No. 68 UK. This version is different from the more familiar album version, and featured saxophone and flute by session musician Crispin Cioe rather than (as on the album version) the piano of Squeeze 's Jools Holland . In 1982, the intended debut album by the The ( The Pornography of Despair )
21158-430: 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
21307-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
21456-561: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
21605-523: Was recorded, but was never officially mixed nor released. Johnson apparently ran off some cassette copies for friends, and several tracks ("Mental Healing Process", "Leap into the Wind", "Absolute Liberation") were subsequently issued as additional tracks on the "This Is the Day" single. "Three Orange Kisses from Kazan" and "Waitin' for the Upturn" (featuring Steve James Sherlock playing flute and saxophone) also date from this era, and appeared as B-sides . Some of
21754-515: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
21903-606: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
22052-493: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
22201-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
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