Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a style of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became popular in the 1990s. In this instance, the word "alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream rock music; the term's original meaning was broader, referring to a generation of musicians unified by their collective debt to either the musical style or the independent, DIY ethos of punk rock, which in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for alternative music. At times, "alternative" has been used as a catch-all description for music from underground rock artists that receives mainstream recognition, or for any music, whether rock or not, seen to be descended from punk rock. Alternative rock broadly consists of music that differs in terms of its sound, social context and regional roots. By the end of the 1980s, magazines and zines, college radio airplay, word of mouth had increased the prominence and highlighted the diversity of alternative rock, helping to define a number of distinct styles such as noise pop, indie rock and shoegaze.
Most of these subgenres had achieved minor mainstream notice and a few bands representing them, such as Hüsker Dü and R. E. M. had signed to major labels. But most alternative bands' commercial success was limited in comparison to other genres of rock and pop music at the time, most acts remained signed to independent labels and received little attention from mainstream radio, television, or newspapers. With the breakthrough of Nirvana and the popularity of the grunge and Britpop movements in the 1990s, alternative rock entered the musical mainstream and many alternative bands became successful. In the past, popular music tastes were dictated by music executives within large entertainment corporations. Record companies signed contracts with those entertainers who were thought to become the most popular, therefore who could generate the most sales; these bands were able to record their songs in expensive studios, their works sold through record store chains that were owned by the entertainment corporations.
The record companies worked with radio and television companies to get the most exposure for their artists. The people making the decisions were business people dealing with music as a product, those bands who were not making the expected sales figures were excluded from this system. Before the term alternative rock came into common usage around 1990, the sort of music to which it refers was known by a variety of terms. In 1979, Terry Tolkin used the term Alternative Music to describe the groups. In 1979 Dallas radio station KZEW had a late night new wave show entitled "Rock and Roll Alternative". "College rock" was used in the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the college radio circuit and the tastes of college students. In the United Kingdom, dozens of small do it yourself record labels emerged as a result of the punk subculture. According to the founder of one of these labels, Cherry Red, NME and Sounds magazines published charts based on small record stores called "Alternative Charts".
The first national chart based on distribution called the Indie Chart was published in January 1980. At the time, the term indie was used to describe independently distributed records. By 1985, indie' had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, rather than distribution status; the use of the term alternative to describe rock music originated around the mid-1980s. Individuals who worked as DJs and promoters during the 1980s claim the term originates from American FM radio of the 1970s, which served as a progressive alternative to top 40 radio formats by featuring longer songs and giving DJs more freedom in song selection. According to one former DJ and promoter, "Somehow this term'alternative' got rediscovered and heisted by college radio people during the 80s who applied it to new post-punk, indie, or underground-whatever music". At first the term referred to intentionally non–mainstream rock acts that were not influenced by "heavy metal ballads, rarefied new wave" and "high-energy dance anthems".
Usage of the term would broaden to include new wave, punk rock, post-punk, "college"/"indie" rock, all found on the American "commercial alternative" radio stations of the time such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM. Journalist Jim Gerr wrote that Alternative encompassed variants such as "rap, trash and industrial". In December 1991, Spin magazine noted: "this year, for the first time, it became resoundingly clear that what has been considered alternative rock – a college-centered marketing group with lucrative, if limited, potential- has in fact moved into the mainstream"; the bill of the first Lollapalooza, an itinerant festival in North America conceived by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, reunited "disparate elements of the alternative rock community" including Henry Rollins, Butthole Surfers, Ice-T, Nine Inch Nails and the Banshees and Jane's Addiction. That same year, Farrell coined the term Alternative Nation. In the late 1990s, the definition again became more specific. In 1997, Neil Strauss of The New York Times defined alternative rock as "hard-edged rock distinguished by brittle,'70s-inspired guitar riffing and singers agonizing over their problems until they take on epic proportions".
Defining music as alt
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr.. Rooted in post-punk, U2's musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's effects-based guitar textures, their lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes. Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career; the band formed as teenagers while attending Mount Temple Comprehensive School, when they had limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they released their debut album, Boy. Subsequent work such as their first UK number-one album and the singles "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Pride" helped establish U2's reputation as a politically and conscious group. By the mid-1980s, they had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985.
The group's fifth album, The Joshua Tree, made them international superstars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. Topping music charts around the world, it produced their only number-one singles in the US to date: "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Facing creative stagnation and a backlash following their documentary/double album and Hum, U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s through a new musical direction and public image. Beginning with their acclaimed seventh album, Achtung Baby, the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, the band integrated influences from alternative rock, electronic dance music, industrial music into their sound, embraced a more ironic, flippant image; this experimentation continued through their ninth album and the PopMart Tour, which were mixed successes. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group.
Their U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 is the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour in history. The group most released the companion albums Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, the former of which received criticism for its pervasive, no-cost release through the iTunes Store. U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists in history, having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide, they have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and social justice causes, including Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, the ONE/DATA campaigns, Product Red, War Child, Music Rising. In 1976, Larry Mullen Jr. a 14-year-old student at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, posted a note on the school's notice board in search of musicians for a new band.
Six people met at Mullen's house on 25 September. Set up in the kitchen, Mullen was on drums, with: Paul Hewson on lead vocals. Mullen described it as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge." Martin, who had brought his guitar and amplifier to the first practice but could not play, did not remain with the group, McCormick was dropped after a few weeks. The remaining five members settled on the name "Feedback" for the group because it was one of the few technical terms they knew. Most of their initial material consisted of cover songs, which they admitted was not their forte; some of the earliest influences on the band were emerging punk rock acts, such as the Jam, the Clash and Sex Pistols. The popularity of punk rock convinced the group that musical proficiency was not a prerequisite to success. In April 1977, Feedback played their first gig for a paying audience at St. Fintan's High School. Shortly thereafter, the band changed their name to "The Hype".
Dik Evans, older and by this time at college, was becoming the odd man out. The rest of the band was leaning towards the idea of a four-piece ensemble. In March 1978, the group changed their name to "U2". Steve Averill, a punk rock musician and family friend of Clayton's, had suggested six potential names from which the band chose "U2" for its ambiguity and open-ended interpretations, because it was the name that they disliked the least; that same month, U2, as a four-piece, won a talent contest in Limerick sponsored by Harp Lager and the Evening Press. The prize consisted of £500 and studio time to record a demo which would be heard by CBS Ireland, a record label; the win was an important affirmation for the fledgling band. Within a few days, Dik Evans was phased out of the band with a farewell concert at the Presbyterian Church Hall in Howth. During the show, which featured the group playing cover songs as the Hype, Dik ceremonially walked offstage; the remaining four band members returned in the concert to play original material as U2.
Dik soon joined the Virgin Prunes, which comprised mutual friends of U2's.
British rock music
British rock describes a wide variety of forms of music made in the United Kingdom. Since around 1964, with the "British Invasion" of the United States spearheaded by the Beatles, British rock music has had a considerable impact on the development of American music and rock music across the world. Initial attempts to emulate American rock and roll took place in Britain in the mid-1950s, but the terms "rock music" and "rock" refer to the music derived from the blues-rock and other genres that emerged during the 1960s; the term is used in combination with other terms to describe a variety of hybrids or subgenres, is contrasted with pop music, with which it shares many structures and instrumentation. Rock music has tended to be more orientated toward the albums market, putting an emphasis on innovation, virtuosity and song writing by the performers. Although much too diverse to be a genre in itself, British rock has produced many of the most significant groups and performers in rock music internationally, has initiated or developed many of the most influential subgenres, including beat music, progressive rock, art rock, hard rock, heavy metal music, post-punk, New Romantic, indie rock.
In the 1950s, Britain was well placed to roll music and culture. It shared a common language, had been exposed to American culture through the stationing of troops in the country, shared many social developments, including the emergence of distinct youth sub-cultures, which in Britain included the Teddy Boys. Trad Jazz became popular, many of its musicians were influenced by related American styles, including Boogie Woogie and the Blues; the skiffle craze, led by Lonnie Donegan, utilised amateurish versions of American folk songs and encouraged many of the subsequent generation of rock and roll, folk, R&B and beat musicians to start performing. At the same time British audiences were beginning to encounter American rock and roll through films including Blackboard Jungle and Rock Around the Clock. Both films contained the Bill Haley & His Comets hit "Rock Around the Clock", which first entered the British charts in early 1955 - four months before it reached the US pop charts - topped the British charts that year and again in 1956, helped identify rock and roll with teenage delinquency.
American rock and roll acts such as Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Buddy Holly thereafter became major forces in the British charts. The initial response of the British music industry was to attempt to produce copies of American records, recorded with session musicians and fronted by teen idols. British rock and rollers soon began to appear, including Tommy Steele; the bland or wholly imitative form of much British rock and roll in this period meant that the American product remained dominant. However, in 1958 Britain produced its first "authentic" rock and roll song and star, when Cliff Richard reached number 2 in the charts with "Move It". British impresario Larry Parnes fashioned young singers to the new trend, giving them corny names such as Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Vince Eager. At the same time, TV shows such as Six-Five Special and Oh Boy!, both produced by Jack Good, promoted the careers of British rock and rollers like Marty Wilde and Adam Faith. Cliff Richard and his backing band The Drifters, who changed their name to The Shadows, were the most successful home grown rock and roll based acts of the era.
Other leading acts included Joe Brown, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, whose 1960 hit song "Shakin' All Over" became a rock and roll standard. The first American rock and roll artist to hit British stages and appear on television was Charlie Gracie followed by Gene Vincent in December 1959, soon joined on tour by his friend Eddie Cochran; the producer Joe Meek was the first to produce sizeable rock hits in England, culminating with The Tornados' instrumental "Telstar", which went to number one in both the UK and USA. In late 1950s Britain a flourishing culture of groups began to emerge out of the declining skiffle scene, in major urban centres in the UK like Liverpool, Manchester and London; this was true in Liverpool, where it has been estimated that there were around 350 different bands active playing ballrooms, concert halls and clubs. These beat bands were influenced by American groups of the era, such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets, as well as earlier British groups such as The Shadows. After the national success of the Beatles in Britain from 1962, a number of Liverpool performers were able to follow them into the charts, including Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Searchers, Cilla Black.
Among the most successful beat acts from Birmingham were The Spencer Davis Group and The Moody Blues. From London, the term Tottenham Sound was based around The Dave Clark Five, but other London bands that benefited from the beat boom of this era included the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Yardbirds; the first non-Liverpool, non-Brian Epstein-managed band to break through in the UK were Freddie and the Dreamers, who were based in Manchester, as were Herman's Hermits and The Hollies. The beat movement provided most of the bands responsible for the British invasion of the American pop charts in the period after 1964, furnished the model for many important developments in pop and rock music through their small group format - lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, drums, sometimes replacing the rhythm guitar with keyboards, either with a lead singer or with one of the musicians taking lead vocals and the
Soulfly
Soulfly is an American metal band formed in Phoenix, Arizona in 1997. The original lyrical content revolved around spirituality and religious themes, with albums encompassing other themes including war, aggression, slavery and anger. Soulfly is led by former Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera, who formed the band after he left the Brazilian group in 1996. To date the band has released eleven studio albums, one tour EP, twenty-three singles, one video album, twelve music videos, their debut album, was released on April 21, 1998, while their most recent album, was released on October 19, 2018. Soulfly incorporates many styles of metal with Brazilian world music. All of their first six studio albums debuted on the United States Billboard 200, with a peak position at number 32 for their second album, Primitive. Soulfly has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America; the band has gone with Cavalera being the only constant member. In an interview with Max in 2015, it is revealed that the band's name was taken from the song "Headup" by Deftones, a song that Max collaborated on.
Cavalera was troubled during the recording of Soulfly's self-titled album, on the band's website he said that he founded the band "with the idea of combined sounds and spiritual beliefs". As well as leaving Sepultura, one of the world's most renowned thrash/groove metal bands, he had to deal with the death of his stepson and best friend Dana Wells; the self-titled debut album was released in April 1998, reached number 79 on the Billboard 200. In addition to the core band, which at the time consisted of Lúcio Maia on guitar, Cello Dias on bass, Roy Mayorga on drums, Soulfly featured Burton C. Bell, Dino Cazares and Christian Olde Wolbers from Fear Factory, Fred Durst and DJ Lethal from Limp Bizkit, Chino Moreno from Deftones, Benji Webbe of Welsh band Dub War and now a member of Skindred, Eric Bobo from Cypress Hill, Jorge do Peixe and Gilmar Bola Oito from Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, Mario C.. The album was recorded at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu and was overseen by producer Ross Robinson.
In addition to fronting Soulfly, Cavalera branched out into other areas not associated with heavy metal musicians. He became a speaker at music conventions, appearing at CMJ's New Music Marathon in New York and Holland's Crossing Border Festival, both in late 1997, sang a TV commercial for Sprite in Brazil. After recording the first album, Jackson Bandeira returned to Brazil with Nação Zumbi and was replaced by Logan Mader of Machine Head for the live tour that followed. Soulfly played on the 1998 Ozzfest mainstage alongside Ozzy Osbourne and Tool, played small club tours around the world with bands such as System of a Down and Snot. After the world tour in support of Soulfly, Logan Mader was replaced by Mikey Doling who had just been displaced by the breakup of Snot. A variety of influences, including nu metal, appeared on 2000s Primitive, it was the most successful album by the band in the U. S. reaching number 32 on the Billboard 200 and number 11 on the independent charts. Joe Nunez, from Chicago, replaced Roy Mayorga on drums for Primitive.
The album featured a number of guest appearances as well, including Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Stone Sour, Sean Lennon, Chino Moreno of Deftones, Tom Araya of Slayer, Grady Avenell of Will Haven, Cutthroat Logic and Asha Rabouin and was produced by Toby Wright. In addition, artwork was created by longtime Bob Marley artist Neville Garrick; the release of the album was followed by world tours with the likes of Pantera, Morbid Angel and Ozzfest. In late 2001, Joe Nunez left Soulfly to join Stripping the Pistol, saying that it was "time for to move on". Roy Mayorga departed from his band Medication to rejoin Soulfly for the recording of their third album. 3 was the first Soulfly album, produced by Max Cavalera. Other musicians performing on 3 included Cristian Machado of Ill Niño, guitarist Wiley Arnet and drummer Greg Hall, Max's stepson Richie Cavalera; the album reached number 46 on the Billboard 200 in that year. After the release of 3 on June 25, 2002, Soulfly toured throughout Europe and North America with bands such as Slayer, In Flames, God Forbid, Will Haven.
In September 2003, after the world tour for 3, Marcelo Dias was fired from the band, Mikey Doling and Roy Mayorga both left the band in protest, leaving Cavalera as the sole remaining member for a period of three weeks. Cavalera recruited a new lineup in October 2003 for the recording of Soulfly's Prophecy album. Joe Nunez returned on drums with New Jersey native Marc Rizzo of Ill Niño, on guitar and Kentucky native Bobby Burns of Primer 55, on bass. David Ellefson of Megadeth at the time played bass on several of the album's songs. Max Cavalera explained on the band's website that he wanted to use different musicians as part of the group for each album. "This is an approach. I never wanted Soulfly to be a band like Metallica, with the same four guys. On every Soulfly album, we've changed the line up and it will continue that way. In order to do that, I had to start from the inside out and bring in people who caught my attention, that I had never played with before, create this." While a member of Sepultura, Cavalera had shown an interest in world music as shown in Roots, featuring elements of the music of Brazil's indigenous peoples.
This approach continued on the Prophecy album, with Cavalera traveling to Serbia to record with traditional musicians. On the song "Moses", he worked with Serbian band Eyesburn, which features reggae influences from one of his heroes, Bob Marley. Other tr
Band (rock and pop)
A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble which performs rock music, pop music or a related genre. The four-piece band is the most common configuration in pop music. Before the development of the electronic keyboard, the configuration was two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer. Another common formation is a vocalist who does not play an instrument, electric guitarist, bass guitarist, a drummer. Instrumentally, these bands can be considered as trios; the smallest ensemble, used in rock music is the trio format. Two-member rock and pop bands are rare, because of the difficulty in providing all of the musical elements which are part of the rock or pop sound. In a hard rock or blues-rock band, or heavy metal rock group, a "power trio" format is used, which consists of an electric guitar player, an electric bass guitar player and a drummer, one or more of these musicians sing; some well-known power trios with the guitarist on lead vocals are the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, the Jam, ZZ Top, Green Day, while power trios with the bass guitarist on lead vocals include Cream, The Police and Motörhead.
Two-member rock and pop bands are rare, because of the difficulty in providing all of the musical elements which are part of the rock or pop sound. Two-member rock and pop bands omit one of these musical elements. In many cases, two-member bands will omit a drummer, since guitars, bass guitars, keyboards can all be used to provide a rhythmic pulse. Examples of two-member bands are The White Stripes, Pet Shop Boys, Flight of the Conchords, the Ting Tings, Hall & Oates, Twenty One Pilots and T. Rex; when electronic sequencers became available in the 1980s, this made it easier for two-member bands to add in musical elements that the two band members were not able to perform. Sequencers allowed bands to pre-program some elements of their performance, such as an electronic drum part and a synth bass line. Two-member pop music bands such as Soft Cell and Yazoo used pre-programmed sequencers. Other pop bands from the 1980s which were ostensibly fronted by two performers, such as Wham!, Eurythmics and Tears for Fears, were not two-piece ensembles, because other instrumental musicians were used "behind the scenes" to fill out the sound.
Modern bands that use this format include Ninja Sex Death Grips. Two-piece bands in rock music are quite rare. However, starting in the 2000s, blues-influenced rock bands such as the White Stripes and the Black Keys utilized a guitar-and-drums scheme. Death from Above 1979 featured a bass guitarist. Tenacious D is a two-guitar band. Ratatat are a two-guitar band. W. A. S. P. Guitarist Doug Blair is known for his work in the two-piece progressive rock band signal2noise, where he acts as the lead guitarist and bassist at the same time, thanks to a special custom instrument he invented. Heisenflei of Los Angeles duo the Pity Party plays drums and sings simultaneously. Royal Blood is a two-piece band that drums along with electronic effects; the smallest ensemble, used in rock music is the trio format. In a hard rock or blues-rock band, or heavy metal rock group, a "power trio" format is used, which consists of an electric guitar player, an electric bass guitar player and a drummer, one or more of these musicians sing.
Some well-known power trios with the guitarist on lead vocals are Campsite 85, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble and Muse. A handful of others with the bassist on vocals include Thin Lizzy, Rush, Motörhead, the Police and Cream; some power trios feature two lead vocalists. For example, in the band Blink-182 vocals are split between bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Matt Skiba, or in the band Dinosaur Jr. guitarist J. Mascis is the primary songwriter and vocalist, but bassist Lou Barlow writes some songs and sings as well. An alternative to the power trio are organ trios formed with an electric guitarist, a drummer and a keyboardist. Although organ trios are most associated with 1950s and 1960s jazz organ trio groups such as those led by organist Jimmy Smith, there are organ trios in rock-oriented styles, such as jazz-rock fusion and Grateful Dead-influenced jam bands, for instance Medeski Martin & Wood. In organ trios, the keyboard player plays a Hammond organ or similar instrument, which permits the keyboard player to perform bass lines and lead lines.
A variant of the organ trio are trios formed with an electric bassist, a drummer and an electronic keyboardist such as the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer. A power trio with the guitarist on lead vocals is a popular record company lineup, as the guitarist and singer will be the songwriter. Therefore, the label only has to present one "face" to the public; the backing band may or may not be featured in publici
Folklore
Folklore is the expressive body of culture shared by a particular group of people. These include oral traditions such as tales and jokes, they include material culture, ranging from traditional building styles to handmade toys common to the group. Folklore includes customary lore, the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas and weddings, folk dances and initiation rites; each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact. Just as essential as the form, folklore encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration; the academic study of folklore is called Folklore studies, it can be explored at undergraduate, graduate and Ph. D. levels. To understand folklore, it is helpful to clarify its component parts: the terms folk and lore.
It is well-documented. He fabricated it to replace the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature"; the second half of the compound word, proves easier to define as its meaning has stayed stable over the last two centuries. Coming from Old English lār'instruction,' and with German and Dutch cognates, it is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group passed along by word of mouth; the concept of folk proves somewhat more elusive. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural poor and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family." This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e. the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts. These now include all "things people make with words, things they make with their hands, things they make with their actions".
Folklore is no longer circumscribed as being chronologically obsolete. The folklorist studies the traditional artifacts of a social group. Transmission is a vital part of the folklore process. Without communicating these beliefs and customs within the group over space and time, they would become cultural shards relegated to cultural archaeologists. For folklore is a verb; these folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic, it nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, computer programmers". In direct contrast to high culture, where any single work of a named artist is protected by copyright law, folklore is a function of shared identity within the social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs and objects for the group. For these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group.
That meaning can however morph. So Halloween of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages, gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were good public health in a land with little water. Compare this to brushing your teeth transmitted within a group, which remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. For tradition is remembered behavior. Once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action; this meaning is at the core of the study of folklore. With an theoretical sophistication of the social sciences, it has become evident that folklore is a occurring and necessary component of any social group, it is indeed all around us, it does not have to be antiquated. It continues to be created, transmitted and in any group is used to differentiate between "us" and "them".
Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during the period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France, Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building; this process was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations like Finland and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbours. Folklore as a field of study further developed among 19th century European scholars who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity, its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residue and survivals of the past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" of the Brothers Grimm is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of th
