Representations of Rock

The term rock was mainly conjoined in the 1960's with bands such as Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Yardbirds, although the genre has its feet firmly in the roots of 1950's swing and blues and country acts such as Elvis Presley

From then many sub genres of rock have been introduced, some of these include

• Hard Rock-> System Of A Down
• Psych Rock-> Jimi Hendrix
• Progressive (Prog) Rock- Pink Floyd
• Nu-Metal/Rock-Limp Bizkit

Of course all of these types of rock music had a social impact on those days youth. Fashion and sub cultures were affected and not always for the best. Often people found image elevated way above the music itself and with festivals such as Woodstock drugs and alcohol often found their way into the lifestyles of musicians and their lyrics.

From the times of youth rebellion and going against the "norm", Grunge and Punk was formed. Iconic Punk bands include:

• The Clash
• The Sex Pistols
• The Buzzcocks

In the 80's we see the emerge on New Wave and Indie music. The music drew much influences from Punk but the lyrics change and drastically so does the image. It becomes clean cut. The lyrics are often to do with emotions. The king of being cynical being Morrissey from The Smiths.

"I was looking for a job and I found a job, heaven knows I'm miserable now" from Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The Smiths. The image was now based around gelling up your hair into quiffs and not Mohawks and your jeans being tight without holes in. Some say this was the golden era of music because of the impact it had on the youth, no lewd behaviour, no bad mouthing, no long hair swinging in front of your face (except for the birth of Hair/Glamour Rock that was born in America e.g Whitesnake, Def Leppard).

In the 90's we see the emerge of rap and house music, the use of electric music taking place of live musicians. Sometimes there were no lyrics used in the songs, just repetitive phrases of "riffs" or "licks". The image changed as this style of music appealed more to the black audience. The lyrics changed becoming more egotistical and about fame and sex, the use of swearing became more apparent so influenced the way that the youth of that generation spoke especially with the use of the "N" word, some say today that it has influenced the violence that has happened today. We also see the use of rap music coming in with heavy metal, where the lyrical and vocal style is still the same as rap but the electronic samples is replaced with live musicians and has the characteristics of heavy metal. The singer's ethnicity often changed to white so sometimes it lost respect of the black audience but it was able to make the crossover into the white audience so the fashion was made the hype, with baseball caps, baggy jeans and XL tshirts.

In the 00's/10's of today we see all this music and this is still apparent in today's youth with the social groups of:

• Chavs
• Emos
• Preppies (Indie Kids)
• Scene Kids
• Rockabilly/Nautical
• Punk