What is "rock" music?

[Guest treble charged]

An Ottawa radio station that I usually listen to, The Bear, goes by the slogan, "Ottawa's Best Rock Mix", with a mix of older and newer songs.  My main problem with this is that, IMO, they play too much Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morrissette.  Those two singers, I feel, are not really "rock" musicians.  There are other bands, too, such as Train and Nine Days, which really belong more on easy listening stations than they do on Rock stations.  Anyway, what do you guys think?

[Guest razazteca]

The Eagle from Dallas, Texas plays a heavy rotation of ACDC, Ozzy, Tool, Metallica, along with 80s metal, and local bands like Drowning Pool.

 

97.1 KEGL The Eagle

 

99.5 KISS FM from San Antiono is another good station

 

Sounds like your station is more of the top 40 pop friendly rock.

[Guest El Satanico]

I think as long as they have a "rock" guitar(i can't explain it but you can usually tell when it's a rock guitar when you hear it) someone can be considered "rock".

 

Train while i don't like them at all is still a "rock band". They are close but you can tell the diffrence between them and easy listening crap.

[Guest Kinetic]

For the record, rock radio is sad.  The station here in Abilene--which I believe to be more or less indicative of what stations are like in Smalltown, USA everywhere--has just the worst, most limited format imaginable.  They play all of this sound-a-like nonsense with deep-voiced lead singers like Creed, Nickelback, etc.  They play Godsmack and Drowning Pool a lot.  This all seems reasonable enough; clearly this is what the braindead hicks in West Texas want to hear.  I can live with that.  But they also play the same four Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, and ZZ Top songs every day without fail.  As if those bands never recorded anything beyond that, and as if no other bands existed prior to 1992 that are available to play.  They won't play Weezer, the White Stripes, the Strokes, or anything like that.  They will, however, play Train and Lifehouse, even though the bands I named previously are a lot closer to fitting the format than that Top 40 stuff.  It gives me fits just to listen to it.

 

Rock music is basically anything with an electric guitar as a prominent instrument, so far as I can tell.  If a band is acknowledged as a rock band but have a song where the lead instrument is an acoustic guitar or a keyboard, for instance, then it's still rock music.

[Guest HellSpawn]

Rock music.   IMDO is based on Guitar, bass, drums and singer.  Sorry, NO SAMPLERS, at least not MUSIC samplers.   Keyboards are almost banned.

 

Look at the bands you guys listed, old bands like ACDC, ozzy, Zepp, Metallica new bands like Pool or Weezer (Im sorry, my late 90s -present knowledge is F***ed, i dont like this kind of "rock").

[Guest redbaron51]

My radio station 97.7 Hitz FM is a awesome station. Its a radio station out of St. Catherines (Canada)

 

It has

 

Slayer Sundays

Metallica Mondays

Tragically Hip Tuesdays

Pink Floyd fridays.

Midnight Metal

12 O'Clock Hair bands.

 

Most of the stuff they play are: Slayer, Metallica, Pantera, Megadeth, Tool, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Who, Doors, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest. And even some great canadian bands like Tea Party and Tragically Hip. The occasional time you will hear Nickelback or Sum 41. Oh ya, this radio station despises Creed. They only time they play creed, or mention creed if its a parody or something bad happen to them.

[Guest CoreyLazarus416]

Rock, to me, should be about rebellion. That's how rock n' roll started. It was about the teenagers wanting their own music to identify with, not the same Pat Boone songs their mothers listened to, or the swing songs their dads listened to. They wanted something they could call their own. Rock n' roll then turned into Rock, and I sincerely consider Rock music, especially Hard Rock, to be all about rebellion at its roots. That's why when such bands as Creed or Nickelback come out and are obviously just there to become popular, they are no longer Rock at the roots, but Pop.

 

It is really hard to explain. But most Rock bands use overdrive and distortion on their guitars.

[Guest Big McLargeHuge]

Gotta agree with Lazarus here.

 

Rock and roll is really not about musicianship. It helps, but it's not everything. Rebllious music just seems to be more passionate and exciting.

[Guest evenflowDDT]

To CoreyLazarus416, just wanted to note that although you're right about rock originally being about rebellion, even so called angry rebellious bands that are around now are, at heart, still in it for the money to some degree.  Also, don't forget that some of the most rebellious music of all time was '60s rock, and many of those artists, like Bob Dylan, contributed mainly acoustic material (remember the "Judas!" chants when Dylan went electric for the first time?).

 

As for what defines "rock"? Christ, that's a hard question.  Although I'd say its a genre that prominently uses guitar and live band like others on the board, the same can be said about blues and country as well.  Trying to over-analyze as little as possible and give it as little thought as possible, I'd define rock as a live band, usually made up of guitar, bass, drums and vocals, which can play anywhere from slow and moody to up-tempo music, but usually focuses on mid-tempo notes and relatively fast beat.  But it's such a broad term to try to define!

[Guest El Satanico]

Well i'd consider Blues as rock too. I mean Blues was a major influence on rock n' roll. Hell rock n roll is such a deverse genre it's hard to say what is and what isn't "rock".

[Guest evenflowDDT]

This is true, but I'd argue that blues has more feeling and soul to it than rock will ever have.  Not everyone can relate to rock, but everyone's got the blues.

 

Also, I wouldn't consider blues as rock, because of the differences in tempo and such.  There just aren't that many shuffles or "call and response" guitar mini-solos (for lack of better terminology) in rock.

[Guest El Satanico]

Well yeah of course rock n' roll is a watered down version of the blues. And yes i know that no one thinks about the blues when they hear rock n' roll mentioned. I think the point i was trying to make was that the blues is in the same family tree as rock n roll.

 

But it all goes back to the point that "rock music" is too diverse to define it.