The Impact (60's - 70's)

What is rock? Well that is one difficult question to answer if you go and look at the rock today and the rock from the past. That is why I have decided to take a look into where this genre originated and see how it has developed into what it is today.

The Impact
(60’s – 70’s)

Britain’s electricity on the American music scene was like an eruption. Kids all over the States took their electric guitars in their garages and started to play the blues loud and with a vengeance.
Over on the East Coast, Bob Dylan led another charge with his electric performances that were met with disappointment by his fans. But in that he helped birth Folk-rock along with the hits by The Byrds and Simon And Garfunkel.
The Psychedelic movement was growing across the country as well. It merged with the first wave of electric rockers and the protest movement. Merger took place in both New York and San Francisco, where The Velvet Underground and The Fugs turned rock for a more technical side.
On the West Coast both San Francisco and Los Angeles reacted to rock’s revival in the usually outrageous way. San Francisco was the growing base for the hippies and birthed Acid-rock. Their scene was headed up by Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. They built complex harmony and improvised jams that pushed rock music into the intellectual excesses of Jazz. Los Angeles was the center of countless literary and cinematic misfits that homed Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, two of the most influential musicians of the century. Beefheart and Zappa recorded some of the most experimental records of the time and turned rock into a serious art.
Psychedelic rock had spread across the country and spilled over into Britain. Soon America had The Doors and England had Pick Floyd who’s eerie and powerful vocals and effects drowned guitars made them into two influence bands.
There were a few genre scenes that went unnoticed but still made an impact. The Texas Psychedelia had bands that were way ahead of their time, where Detroit had bands that took rock up a notch in the ladder of noise.
With all of the noise being made with rock, The U.S.’s blues was resurrected. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin became stars while musicians drowned the clubs of Chicago and San Francisco. In the south the revival movement fused with aspects of country to produce Southern-rock with the likes of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Back over in Britain rock was taking a more of a European feel that was growing from the underground movement that was born out of the psychedelic clubs. Canterbury became the center of experimentation with The Soft Machine who was one of the most important bands of the period providing rock with a jazz flavor that would inspire Progressive-rock.
Progressive took rock’s energy and put it into a brain. Traffic, Jethro Tull, Family, and Roxy Music developed a blend of Soul-rock that had little to do with the two genres separately. They had long intricate jams, jazz accents, and baroque arrangements reset the song format. King Crimson, Colosseum, Van Der Graaf Generator, early Genesis, as Yes all started playing even more complex, theatrical, and hermetic pieces. Arrangements became more complex and instrumentalists became more skilled as electronic instruments were used more frequently. Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Third Ear Band, and Hawkwind were creating new styles of music so fast that they weren’t able to give them names until later, such as Decadent Cabaret, World-music and Psychedelic Hard Rock.