ROCK N ROLL

Rock-and-Roll

2008-07-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

Rock-and-Roll (räk'n roll') n. first so used (1951) by Alan Freed, Cleveland disc jockey, taken from the song "My Baby Rocks Me with a Steady Roll". The use of rock, roll, rock and roll, etc., with reference to sexual intercourse, is traditional in blues, a form of popular music that evolved in the 1950's from rhythm and blues, characterized by the use of electric guitars, a strong rhythm with an accent on the offbeat, and youth-oriented lyrics.

A form of popular music arising from and incorporating a variety of musical styles, especially rhythm and blues, country music, and gospel. Originating in the United States in the 1950s, it is characterized by electronically amplified instrumentation, a heavily accented beat, and relatively simple phrase structure

Rock 'n' Roll (John Lennon album)

Rock 'n' Roll is a 1975 album of late 1950s and early 1960s-era rock songs covered by John Lennon. The recording of the album spanned a year and its dramatic sessions have since entered into rock music folklore.

History

While still encumbered with the US government's attempts to have him deported, Lennon found himself threatened with a lawsuit, by Roulette Records chief Morris Levy. Lennon had admitted in an interview that his song "Come Together" both borrowed stylistically from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me", published by Levy, and re-used one line ("Here come old flat-top") from the song. Levy sued Lennon for infringement, but agreed to drop the suit if Lennon recorded at least three songs that Levy published, on his next album (after Mind Games). Browsing Levy's music publishing catalog, Lennon found so many of his old favourites that he decided to do a full album of cover songs, by Levy's artists and others.

After splitting with Yoko Ono in the fall of 1973, and arriving in Los Angeles with May Pang, Lennon teamed up with Phil Spector to record the album, working at both A&M Records Studios and Gold Star Recording Studios. Due to the boys-club nature of the sessions, the atmosphere quickly fell into disarray with alcohol, with Lennon in particularly aggressive form. After they were banned from the A&M lot, Spector disappeared with the session tapes and would not be heard from for several months. Spector made one cryptic call to Lennon, claiming to have the "John Dean tapes" from the recent Watergate scandal; Lennon deduced that Spector meant he had the album's master tapes. Lennon's return calls got him only double-talk from Spector or an assistant; when an auto accident on March 31, 1974 left Spector in a coma, the project went on indefinite hold.

In the meantime, having met up with singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson and former bandmate Ringo Starr in Los Angeles, Lennon produced Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, and contributed to Starr's album Goodnight Vienna, including its title song. The three rented a house together in Los Angeles, to keep one another out of trouble with alcohol, but this had limited success. As the months went by, Lennon began writing what became Walls and Bridges, and moved with May Pang back to New York during the spring of 1974.

Just prior to commencing the Walls and Bridges sessions in New York, Lennon received a package from Spector — the missing masters, rescued by Capitol Records then-president Al Coury at a cost of $90,000. Not wanting to break stride, Lennon shelved the tapes, completing his own album first, then returned to the year-old recordings. Finding his work with Spector less than spectacular (Lennon's alcohol consumption showed in his singing voice, while Spector's recording work was laden with technical problems such as leakage), Lennon recalled his band from Walls and Bridges, cutting nine new songs in just a few days, and touched up the vocals to some of the Spector tapes.

Lennon planned to use some of his childhood artwork for the cover of his next album. This had originally been the covers album, but when Lennon changed gears, the artwork was used instead for Walls and Bridges.^[1]^[2] During September 1974, May Pang attended the first Beatlefest convention at Lennon's behest, meeting Jurgen Vollmer, an old friend of the Beatles from Hamburg, Germany, who was selling his own photographs of the band from their Hamburg days. Reuniting with Vollmer in New York, Lennon chose one of his photos for the covers album.^[3]

The album's working title had been Oldies but Mouldies; no official title had been chosen until Lennon saw the neon sign prepared as cover art by John Uotomo, with Lennon's name and the words "ROCK 'N' ROLL" beneath. This struck Lennon in a positive way, and it became the album title.^[4]

[edit] Roots

With Walls and Bridges coming out first, Lennon made one nod on it toward his deal with Morris Levy; a quickie version of Lee Dorsey's "Ya Ya", dashed off in the studio with son Julian Lennon playing drums. While the album gave Lennon his second US #1 album and first #1 single with "Whatever Gets You thru the Night", Levy was not amused by the "Ya Ya" cover, and threatened to refile his lawsuit. Lennon explained to Levy what had happened, and that the covers album was indeed in the works, giving him a rough copy to review. Levy then offered to directly market the album via mail order, through his own Adam VIII record label, bypassing Capitol and EMI and giving both Lennon and Levy a larger share of the album's profits. Lennon gave his assent, considering appearing in a TV commercial to promote the album, but knew he would need the approval of EMI, Capitol and Apple Corps for the deal.

With so much money and time invested in Rock 'n' Roll, neither Capitol, EMI nor Apple wanted to give it up, insisting Lennon release it according to his recording contract, and turn Levy's proposal down. Feeling betrayed, Levy pressed an album titled Roots, from the rough-mix tape Lennon had provided, using a 1968 stock photo of Lennon for the cover and marketing the record otherwise as planned, and proceeded to sue Lennon, EMI and Capitol for $42 million, for breach of contract. Lennon finished work on his version of the album, leaving several songs out of the final selection. As 1975 began, Capitol Records prepared a rush-release, and Lennon reconciled with Yoko Ono.

With only 3000 copies of Roots reportedly pressed, original copies are rare and sought-after collector's items. Copies in mint condition have sold for US$2000

Rock 'n' Roll

Rock 'n' Roll became another hit for John Lennon, reaching #6 in both the UK and US, where it soon went gold. "Stand by Me" also proved a US Top 20 hit that spring. A companion songbook was issued, with original sheet music versions for all the tunes, bios of the songwriters, and Lennon's own notes and recollections. Unfortunately, the delay in completing the album took much of the novelty away; several other artists had by this time done their own oldies projects, cutting into potential sales for Lennon.

Not long after the album appeared, Yoko Ono discovered she was pregnant. Determined not to lose another baby after three consecutive miscarriages, Lennon decided to halt his musical career for his family. Sean Lennon would be born that October (on his father's 35th birthday); following the release of Shaved Fish (a compilation album culled from Lennon's solo output between 1969-1975), Lennon would not return with a new release until 1980.

Going to court, Lennon, EMI and Capitol prevailed, with Levy having to accept a token payment for the infringement on "You Can't Catch Me", then having to pay a judgment of his own, including $42,000 to Lennon for "damages to his reputation", as termed by the court. Distribution of Roots was halted, with Lennon disappointed at how poorly the mail order setup had actually worked, having ordered his own copy as follow-up and waiting almost a month to receive it.

The album was briefly reissued in the UK by the budget label Music for Pleasure with an alternate cover. In the US, it was reissued in October 1980 to coincide with Lennon's 40th birthday.

In 2004, Yoko Ono supervised the remixing of Rock 'n' Roll for its reissue, including four bonus tracks from the ill-fated late-1973 Spector sessions. Other leftovers from the sessions had already appeared, as part of Menlove Avenue (a 1986 collection of Lennon outtakes and demos) or the John Lennon Anthology box set.

Get This Widget

Rock and roll

2008-07-20T02:50:00.001-07:00

Rock and roll (sering ditulis sebagai rock 'n' roll) adalah genre musik yang berkembang di Amerika Serikat di akhir tahun 1940-an, dan mencapai puncak kepopuleran di awal tahun 1950-an. Dari Amerika Serikat, genre musik ini tersebar ke seluruh dunia. Rock and roll melahirkan berbagai macam subgenre yang secara keseluruhan dikenal sebagai musik rock.

Ciri khas rock and roll adalah pada ketukan (beat) yang biasanya dipadu dengan lirik. Rock and roll menggunakan beat yang didasarkan salah satu ritme musik blues yang disebut boogie woogie ditambah aksen backbeat yang hampir selalu diisi pukulan snare drum. Versi klasik dari rock and roll dimainkan dengan satu atau dua gitar listrik, gitar bas listrik, dan drum set. Perangkat kibor sering dimainkan sebagai alat musik tambahan. Bila dimainkan dengan dua gitar listrik, gitar listrik yang dimainkan untuk memberi melodi disebut guitar lead, sedangkan gitar untuk memberi ritme dan harmoni disebut gitar ritme. Saksofon sering dijadikan instrumen melodi pada gaya rock and roll awal tahun 1950-an, tapi digantikan perannya oleh gitar elektrik di pertengahan tahun 1950-an. Di akhir tahun 1940-an, bentuk awal rock and roll bahkan memakai piano sebagai instrumen melodi. Salah satu cikal bakal rock and roll adalah musik boogie woogie dengan piano sebagai melodi, seperti permainan musik berbagai kelompok big band yang mendominasi dunia musik Amerika dekade 1940-an. Kepopuleran rock and roll secara massal dan mendunia ternyata menimbulkan dampak sosial yang tidak terduga. Rock and roll bukan saja mempengaruhi gaya bermusik, tapi sekaligus gaya hidup, gaya berpakaian, dan bahasa. Selain sukses di dunia musik, bintang-bintang di periode awal rock and roll juga sukses di dunia film dan televisi. Elvis Presley, misalnya merupakan bintang rock and roll yang sukses sebagai bintang film dan televisi.

Istilah slang "rock and roll" sering dipakai orang berkulit hitam untuk menyebut "hubungan seks". Penyanyi wanita Trixie Smith pertama kali menggunakan istilah "rock and roll" dalam lagu "My Baby Rocks Me With One Steady Roll" yang diedarkan tahun 1922.

Rock ’n’ Roll History

2008-07-20T02:43:00.000-07:00

A rollicking chronicle of U.S. foreign policy traces our obsession with freedom

by Jonathan Liu | July 1, 2008

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Ted Widmer has carved out the kind of heroically peripatetic career in entertainment, politics and scholarship that gives young men hope and older men heartburn. Widmer? If the name doesn’t yet ring a bell, that could be because he’s had more than the average 44-year-old’s share of names.

Connoisseurs of high-concept mid-’90s glam metal know him as Lord Rockingham, dandy guitarist of the Upper Crust, a Boston band known for performing AC/DC-style anthems in powdered wigs and associated ancien régime regalia. (Their tongue-in-jowl celebrations of aristocracy include "Let them Eat Rock" and "Friend of a Friend of the Working Class.")

In 1997, he exchanged one crowd-pleasing novelty act for another, leaving the Upper Crust—and a day job teaching at Harvard, his alma mater—to become a speechwriter for President Clinton. Two years after that, redubbed Edward L. Widmer, he published Young America, a well-received scholarly study of print culture in 1840s New York.

With the Bush Restoration, he returned to academia full time, and currently heads the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. (Full disclosure that rather proves the point: A prolific essayist and critic, he’s appeared often in these pages over the past decade.)

Now, with Ark of the Liberties: America and the World, a buoyant sweep over 300 years of American foreign policy, Mr. Widmer—he’s Ted again—auditions for a role even more problematical than rock star or Clinton counselor: certified public intellectual.

PHYSICISTS AND ECONOMISTS HAVE it easy these days: We’ll take them on faith (or Ph.D. credentials)—no one really wants to see the mathematical drudgery behind The Elegant Universe or Freakonomics. Anyone in the "softer" disciplines (and who among us doesn’t fancy himself an incipient sociologist, or at least the next Malcolm Gladwell?) faces a rather more treacherous descent to the hoi polloi. Popularize too much, and we feel infantilized by unfalsifiable generalities; too little, and we cry "boring," or worse, "pointy-head obscurantism"! Unfair, perhaps, but down here, the customer’s always right.

If Widmer the journalist, policy wonk and hard-rock nobleman has gifted anything to Widmer the intellectual with public aspirations, it’s an intuitive sense of what thoughtful civilians need in their popular history. From his opening ruminations on Herman Melville (who used "ark of the liberties" in a pre-Moby Dick sea yarn) to his supple portrait of F.D.R. as "nothing less than the philosopher-king of the new world coming into existence," Mr. Widmer disguises any seam between the entertaining and the edifying. In Ark of the Liberties, he’s jettisoned the trappings of academic historiography that had decorated Young America: Gone are the dry declarations of theses and methods, the minute textual dissections of period documents, and, most noticeably, the extended slogs through thickets of secondary sources. (One thing Dad does not want in his July 4 reading is "literature review.")

But Ark of the Liberties never reads like a gloss on some more serious work; delightfully, it is that work.

In substance as well as style, it yokes adroit provocation to apparent populism. United States foreign policy, Mr. Widmer argues, cannot be reduced to realist considerations of territory, markets or the global balance of power; central to its history is America’s singular imaginative power, as New World and City on the Hill—the "pitch and heave" of an "ark of the liberties" entrusted with mankind’s deliverance. "We have nothing less than a mission to redeem the world," insists the preface, "1776 genuinely signaled the beginning of a new time in human history." Such language suggests a hoary chauvinism, but don’t be fooled. Descriptive and normative perform an intricate pas de deux in Ark of the Liberties: The American exceptionalism, in Mr. Widmer’s view, is less about proving the moral supremacy of a country than demonstrating the tenacity of an idea—precisely the idea of America as exception.

This isn’t as circular as it sounds. The linchpin of Mr. Widmer’s project is that, chronologically and metaphysically, "notions of America" precede the nation itself. "No matter when you think American history begins, chances are you are beginning too late." He has in mind more than the surprising speed of early settlement. From Plato’s Atlantis on, "nearly every European tradition has a story that describes the inclination to sail toward the sunset and what lay beyond it." These stories, in fact, bled right into the real thing. After the Moorish invasion, a band of Spanish bishops were rumored to have fled to "the Island of Seven Cities"; the Muslims themselves had tales of a mariner settling Atlantic islands in the 12th century. Columbus, of course, set sail in 1492, the year the Reconquista was won.

Mr. Widmer’s broad claim is that "we still live in a terraqueous world in which myths about the New World complete with hard-won facts"; however profane its effects—that is, however unexceptional its motives may seem—the national self-discourse of the United States is directly descended from the notion of a sacred terrain free from Old World iniquities. Consider the run-up to the Mexican-American War—our first (and hardly last) war of choice: "On the surface, of course, all Americans were in favor of liberty—anything less was heresy. But the pressures on the country inevitably became pressures on the word itself. Liberty was, in fact, one of the main reasons cited for the need to expand—because to expand America was, in effect, to expand liberty." And so the ark seized territory from its "sister republic" to the south—territory promptly turned into slave states.

PRESSURE ON THE WORD itself. For Mr. Widmer, the apparent slipperiness of "liberty"—in 1776, a shibboleth of Enlightenment; in 1846, a euphemism for human bondage—is no reason to reject it as serious object of historical study. Quite the contrary. In Ark of the Liberties, the word’s the thing: Particular phrases and rhetorical tropes—metonyms, ultimately, for ways of thinking—recur and resonate over the centuries; as an omnibus volume on "America and the World," it provides a counter-history at once deeply conservative and slyly irreverent.

The insights can be deliciously unexpected. Among the most prominent touchstones—second perhaps only to "liberty" and its ark—is millennialism. From the Great Awakening to Manifest Destiny, Wilson’s Fourteen Points to the cold war, the impending 1,000-year reign of Christ—or some secularized equivalent thereof—oddly pervades Mr. Widmer’s account. In 17th-century New England, "millennialists paid close attention to the world situation as they worked themselves into a fever of expectation. … One can see a real foreign policy emerging alongside the imagined contest with Antichrist." Two hundred pages and 300 years later, Mr. Widmer points, with some glee, to F.D.R.’s assurance in his "Four Freedoms" speech that his "is no vision of some distant millennium." Once again, deliverance is right around the corner.

When Mr. Widmer’s on his game, the narrative is both synthetic and strangely synesthetic, as crackling free-form facts and pungent turns of phrase congeal into surprisingly persuasive arguments. Colors turn into theologies turn into geopolitical orientations: "New Englanders lavished attention on obscure bits of Scripture that seemed to favor the wilderness, the West. … They understood acutely the importance of tactical gains and losses in the global structure against Rome, a ‘red’ enemy as frightening and diffuse as the Soviet Union in the Cold War." In 1941, Churchill and F.D.R. met in Newfoundland to sign the Atlantic Charter, which generalized America’s once novel democratic principles into human birthrights. The first English settlement in this hemisphere? "New-found-land," claimed by John Cabot in 1497.

In Ark of the Liberties, as in history, words are hyperlinks, wormholes and sometimes worse. As Mr. Widmer plows linearly through the generations, he spots again and again a strange fixation, rhetorical and otherwise, on "Babylon," that oriental nexus of a most un-American decadence. Not until the epilogue is the biblical city’s foreign-policy payoff clear: We’ve been occupying its ruins since 2003. ("The Puritans may have been right to spend so much energy warning their children against the place.")

THIS IS ALL GREAT fun. Call it American history as the persistence of signifiers, a close reading of our "terraqueous" world. Ark of the Liberties is only bland when Mr. Widmer strays from the giddy free association of Babylon and Atlantis. His postwar chapters settle too comfortably into dry presidential history; they shade into conventional wisdom and benign idolatry. ("As a minor participant in the Clinton administration, I realize that my perspective is hardly objective.")

He ends his gloomy Iraqi epilogue on a hopeful note: "The ark of the liberties has shown a consistent ability to right its course, and we have every reason to expect it will do so again." I was jarred by that sentence. Does Ted Widmer actually believe that our geopolitics can be directly explained—predicted—by the stories we tell ourselves? I don’t think so. But if not exceptionalist destiny, what is the true relationship between the notion and the nation—between the words we repeat and discrete events that are always new?

Ark of the Liberties doesn’t quite unpack this tangled mass of causal links and feedback loops, a historiographical challenge that may well require footnotes and theory and secondary sources. What it does do, brilliantly, is perform the problem, looping and linking in inspired arpeggios. And that’s an essential talent of the rare public intellectual who deserves the title: The riff, done right, can be virtuoso.

Just ask Lord Rockingham.

Jonathan Liu, a writer living in Queens, reviews books regularly for The Observer. He can be reached at jliu@observer.com.

Rock 'n Roll Music

2008-07-20T02:40:00.000-07:00

This project for Rock 'n Roll Music includes a collection of links to biographies of rock 'n roll musicians, bands, and other important figures in the history of rock 'n roll. So many good biography links were found that they have been organized and indexed on a separate Rock 'n Roll Biographies webpage. Visit it and find out more about the persons who made the 1950's and 1960's the golden age of rock 'n roll.

Rock 'n' roll birthplace saluted

2008-07-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

Sir Cliff Richard has unveiled a plaque to mark a tiny basement said to be the birthplace of British rock and roll.

Fifty years after the "2 i's" coffee bar opened its doors in London's Old Compton Street, some performers and fans returned to see it honoured.

Tommy Steele, the Shadows and Adam Faith were among stars who started out as acts at the 2 i's.

Sir Cliff said it was a great idea to have the plaque "because it's too easy to forget how we got where we are now."

"When I look at the old photographs, I wonder how I ever got started - I was a greasy slob who couldn't sing," he said.

"I wish this restaurant well and I hope people who come and eat here will have a ghostly vibe about what used to go on down below."

Sir Cliff - 'a greasy slob who couldn't sing' - was among stars at the 2 i's

The 2 i's is now the Boulevard Bar and Dining Room and its basement is just a lobby area for the toilets.

But in 1956, audiences crammed into the tiny room to watch acts like Sir Cliff perform.

"You'd never get away with it now, with today's health and safety rules," said Clem Cattini, drummer with The Tornados.

"But it was incredible, fantastic."

The building was awarded a green plaque by Westminster Council.

Councillor Robert Davis said: "In the early days of rock 'n' roll in this country, before The Beatles had even formed, pretty much every act that made it big cut their teeth at the 2 i's.

"It is only fitting that, half a century since it opened its doors, it is commemorated with a plaque so that the thousands of people who walk along Old Compton Street every day know they are passing the place where British rock 'n' roll was born."

"Tarix Jabrix" Jadi Ajang Promosi Album The Changcuters

2008-04-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Selain pembuatan video klip lagu andalan "I Love U Bibeh", album terbaru The Changcuters berjudul "Mencoba Sukses Kembali" dipromosikan lewat film "Tarix Jabrix". Film komedi yang mulai beredar di bioskop nasional mulai 17 April 2008 itu memasukkan 10 dari 11 lagu dari album band asal Bandung tersebut. "Strategi promosi dengan strategi kerjasama seperti ini bukan hal baru," kata Jan Juhana dari Sony-BMG kepada wartawan di Jakarta, Kamis. Dibesut oleh sutradara Iqbal Rais, "Tarix Jabrix" boleh dibilang mengangkat The Changcuters sebagai bintang film. Tria (vokal), Qibil dan Alda (gitar), Dipa (bas), Erick (dram) beradu akting dengan bintang-bintang seperti Carissa Putri, Francine Roosendra, Edi Brokoli dan Sam Bimbo, dalam kisah perseteruan antar geng motor di kota Bandung. Selain "I Love U, Bibeh", lagu-lagu The Changcuters yang dijadikan "theme song" film di antaranya "Pria Idaman Wanita", "Gila-Gilaan", "Stokelan Blues" dan "Racun Dunia". Terbentuk tanggal 19 September 2004, Tria dan kawan-kawan menyebut musik yang mereka mainkan sebagai "Ala Kita Garasi Rock `N` Roll" dan banyak terinspirasi band legendaris Rolling Stones. (*)

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PENGERTIAN MUSIK ROCK N ROLL

2008-04-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

ROCK N ROLL ADALAH
Sebuah musik yang keras dan beraturan dan dapat di nikmati melodi-melodi yang khas dan dapat di resapi tapi sebagian orang ada juga yang tidak dapat mengerti,mungkin itu disebabkan karena pengetahuan tentang musik mereka kurang oleh sebab itu saya akan menjelaskan tentang arti rock n roll sebenarnya nada-nada rock nroll sebagian juga ada unsur musik blus bila kita dengarkan sepintas sulit untuk di resapi supaya lebih jelasnya dengarkan band dari luar negeri seperti The Roling Stone,The Ramones,AC/DC,JET.kalau dalam negeri The Changchuter ,The Brandal,The S.I.G.I.T,And MORE...........
dengarkan dulu lagu-lagu mereka maka anda dapat membedakan jenis musik rock n roll atau yang bukan jenis musik rock n roll........

SELAMAT MENDENGARKAN......



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