The New Wave (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 New Wave
(70’s)

The Seventies came in and carried the deaths of Jim Morrison of The Doors, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix along with many others which had taken the momentum away from the new phenomenon. More calm ways to rock came about from Bob Dylan’s proposal along with others when they rediscovered country music. Country-rock was born and produced The Eagles.
During this time Hard Rock gave birth to Heavy Metal with Blue Oyster Cult, KISS, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rush, Journey, and Van Halen. But the Seventies were still more of quite time due to the intensity of the Sixties.
In Britain, musical decadence led to Decadence-rock as identified by David Bowie and Marc Bolan. The remainders of Progressive-rock, such as Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel, began avant-garde careers that led to an expanded notion of rock where as new musicians, Kate Bush and Mike Oldfield, helped liberate rock from the classification in genres and opened door to more abstract music. Brian Eno, who led Roxy Music to innovate Progressive-rock, had invented Ambient Music.
The looked over German-rock bands of the time were about twenty years ahead of British-rock. They had laid the foundations for popular electronic music, modern instrumental rock, and even for New Age Music and Disco.
The Seventies were a decade of consolidation rather than innovation where two phenomena erupted that made a large impact: Disco and Punk-Rock. Disco was the first to use electronic instruments for a mass-scale of music. This changed the beat of dance music forever where orchestration became as common as a guitar solo. But Punk-rock made a larger impact because it had the emancipation of the record industry from the major labels. Tons of independent record labels promoted underground artists when soon the music scene was dramatically spit between the Mainstream (descendants of Presley and The Beatles) and Alternative (descendants of Frank Zappa and The Grateful Dead). Punk-rock was the faster and louder son of Rock and Roll, but it quickly became the outlet for all angry music of the time.
The Ramones made Punk-rock into a more of a religion than a sound as The Sex Pistols led Britain’s punk scene. But the thing was, not all Punk was angry, anarchic, and suicidal. The Clash and The Fall brought a brain in with them. New York’s Punk-rockers were as intellectual as the folksingers before them as The New Wave took place. The New Wave was a fresh ripple of creativity that could be referenced back to Sixties where bands were competing to be more innovative. The Pere Ubu and Devo from Ohio, and The Resident and The Crome out of San Francisco paved the way for hundreds of bands that went past song formats and offered music as revolutionary as Zappa’s and Beefheart’s. Amazingly Tom Petty, from California, was one of the minute musicians that were not touched by the experimental craze.
Rock and Roll had been reborn as each year came out with more and more brilliant musicians that were rewriting the scheme of Rock. In Britain, first up was Industrial-Rock invented by The Throbbing Gristle that was a blend of Avant-garde and Rock, and then Dark-Punk followed with many bands.