Psychedelic film
228-569: XTC were an English rock band formed in Swindon in 1972. Fronted by songwriters Andy Partridge (vocals, guitars) and Colin Moulding (vocals, bass), the band gained popularity during the rise of punk and new wave in the 1970s, later playing in a variety of styles that ranged from angular guitar riffs to elaborately arranged pop . Partly because the group did not fit into contemporary trends, they achieved only sporadic commercial success in
456-499: A Day " on Late Night with David Letterman marked the first time the group played in front of a live audience in seven years. A similar acoustic tour was planned for Europe, but cancelled when Partridge discovered that the Paris date would be broadcast from a sold-out 5,000 seater venue. After an unsuccessful attempt was made to coax Partridge back into regular touring, they took a short break. Partridge produced And Love for All (1990),
684-482: A Moulding composition. By this time, Moulding "wanted to ditch [our] quirky nonsense and do more straight-ahead pop." He was surprised to learn that the label chose his song as a single over Partridge's. Upon release, it was the first charting single for the band, rising to number 54 on the UK Singles Chart . For a period, most of the group's singles were not placed on their albums. Moulding explained that this
912-490: A Moulding song originally demoed for Oranges & Lemons , was credited under the pseudonym Terry and the Lovemen. In 1998, Song Stories , an authorized overview of the band's catalog by journalist and longtime friend Neville Farmer was published. Partridge said the book was badly edited and "used the crappiest quotes". Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in
1140-516: A bass, with four strings, would be infinitely easier than playing a guitar, with six strings. That was a horrible misconception!" At the end of 1972, Moulding and drummer Terry Chambers joined Partridge's band, replacing Nervous Steve and Paul Wilson, and the group was renamed "Star Park (Mark II)". Other members would frequently join and leave the group. After Star Park opened for Thin Lizzy in May 1973,
1368-454: A bit more like The Police, with more international flavour, more basic appeal." Lascelles said that he had actually named Talking Heads , not the Police: "Andy likes to portray us as the strict, stern schoolmasters, but we never wanted him to compromise at anything we thought he was good at. Here were very talented songwriters – surely, surely, surely they can come up with that elusive thing that
1596-514: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
1824-547: A certain period . ... [Our music was] blatantly just pop music . We were a new pop group. That's all. —Andy Partridge elaborating on XTC's song " This Is Pop ", 2007 Ian Reid , owner of a Swindon club named The Affair, was their third manager and brokered deals for the group to perform at more popular venues such as the Red Cow in Hammersmith , The Nashville Rooms and Islington 's Hope and Anchor . By this time,
2052-434: A corrupt manager, life was a bit of a nightmare ... When I said we don't want to play live anymore, they [Virgin] completely stopped [promoting us] ... We ran on negative equity for 20 years. —Andy Partridge, 2000 The cancelled American tour saddled XTC with a £20,000 debt, and since it left them unable to record new material, they decided to reexamine their financial affairs. Confused as to where their earnings had gone,
2280-612: A crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by author Ken Kesey . Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the psychedelic subculture. Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles ' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on their 1966 album Revolver , especially with
2508-519: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
SECTION 10
#17327724172202736-481: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
2964-628: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
3192-420: A frozen deposit account." For the next decade, the entirety of the band's earnings would be invested in the continued litigation. The group supported themselves mostly through short-term loans from Virgin and royalty payments derived from airplay. At one point, Moulding and Gregory were working at a car rental service for additional income. Partridge was eventually left with "about £300 in the bank", he said, "which
3420-575: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
3648-573: A late 1960s group. When asked about the album in interviews, XTC initially denied having any involvement. In England, the six-track mini-album sold twice as many copies as The Big Express , even before the Dukes' identity was made public. The album also achieved considerable sales in the US. During a routine meeting in early 1986, Virgin executives threatened to drop the band from the label if their next album failed to sell more than 70,000 units. One reason why
3876-415: A living. We've had 'em all these years and we've got their catalogue and the copyright to their songs for evermore and we've stitched 'em up real good with a rotten deal so, erm, maybe we should let them go.' I like to think that it was a guilt thing." One of the group's first new recordings since the strike was released for the tribute album A Testimonial Dinner: The Songs of XTC (1995). "The Good Things",
4104-437: A lot. But when he left I thought, Oh shit, that's the sound of the band gone, this space-cream over everything. And I did enjoy his brain power, the verbal and mental fencing." XTC went through a "silly half-hearted" process of auditioning another keyboardist. Although Thomas Dolby was rumoured as a replacement, Partridge said that Dolby was never actually considered. Rather than hiring a replacement keyboardist, Dave Gregory of
4332-573: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
4560-587: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
4788-495: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
SECTION 20
#17327724172205016-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
5244-510: A member, characterizing himself as "the archetypal pub-rocker in jeans and long hair. But the fans weren't bothered. Nobody was fashionable in XTC, ever." He grew more comfortable with the group after playing a few shows, he said, "and things got better and better". XTC were impressed by Steve Lillywhite 's work on Ultravox 's 1977 debut , and Siouxsie and the Banshees ' The Scream , and he
5472-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,
5700-486: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
5928-589: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
6156-421: A notable example of 1960s and early 1970s acid rock or heavy psychedelia, and the band would continue to experiment with distorted, "fuzzy", heavy psychedelia into the 1970s. Both Iron Butterfly's 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Blue Cheer's 1968 album Vincebus Eruptum have been described as influential in the transition of acid rock into heavy metal. Heavy metal's acid rock origins can further be seen in
6384-460: A penny of profits from either album sales or touring revenue. Reid, on the other hand, took out large loans from Virgin, borrowing against XTC's royalties, to the tune of millions of pounds by some estimates. Even after the band settled out of court with Reid, because of the terms of the contract, Virgin was able to hold XTC liable for the sum. Because of XTC's failure to tour, the likelihood of ever repaying Virgin dwindled further and further away. Over
6612-411: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
6840-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
7068-666: A radio station received a bomb threat, and in New York, a student forced their school to play the song over its public-address system by holding a faculty member at knife-point. Nonetheless, the commercial success of "Dear God" propelled Skylarking to sell more than 250,000 units, and it raised the band's profile among American college youth. In the US, the album spent 29 weeks on the Billboard 200 and reached its peak position of number 70 in June 1987. The music video for "Dear God" received
XTC - Misplaced Pages Continue
7296-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
7524-625: A rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In
7752-721: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced
7980-540: A share of profits from record sales (of which there were millions), nor from touring revenue, forcing them into debt throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, they went on strike against Virgin, citing an unfair recording contract , and soon extricated themselves from the label. Gregory left the band during the making of Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999), after which the XTC name was used by the duo of Partridge and Moulding. In 2006, Partridge announced that his creative partnership with Moulding had disintegrated, leaving XTC "in
8208-473: A short time, helped the band reach a legal settlement with Ian Reid in 1989. However, they were again left with a six-figure debt. Virgin Records advanced the group enough money to cover their debt in exchange for the promise of four additional albums. Having written more than two dozen songs by 1991, some difficulties prolonged the start of recording sessions for the next album. Initially, the band had issue with
8436-574: A side project with Take Away / The Lure of Salvage in early 1980; a one-off record that appeared without much notice, except in Japan, where it was hailed as a work of "electronic genius" and outsold all other XTC albums. Black Sea , released in September 1980, reunited the group with Lillywhite and Padgham and was well-received critically. Singles " Generals and Majors ", " Towers of London " and " Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me) " returned them to
8664-481: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
8892-515: A time when many British psychedelic bands played whimsical or surrealistic psychedelic rock, many 1960s American rock bands, especially those from the West Coast , developed a rawer or harder version of psychedelic rock containing garage rock energy. When contrasted with whimsical British psychedelia, this harder American West Coast variant of psychedelic rock has been referred to as acid rock. American psychedelic rock and garage bands such as
9120-513: A total of 10 albums and 6 singles that reached the UK top 40, including " Sgt. Rock (Is Going to Help Me) " (1980) and " Senses Working Overtime " (1982). After 1982's English Settlement , the band stopped concert touring and became a studio-based project centred on Partridge, Moulding and guitarist Dave Gregory . A spin-off group, the Dukes of Stratosphear , was invented as a one-off excursion into 1960s-style psychedelia , but as XTC's music evolved,
9348-464: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
XTC - Misplaced Pages Continue
9576-529: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
9804-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
10032-497: A youth movement based on love and peace, as an alternative to workaholic capitalist society. David P. Szatmary states, "a legion of rock bands, playing what became known as 'acid rock,' stood in the vanguard of the movement for cultural change." Szatmary also quotes from the San Francisco Oracle , an underground newspaper published between 1966 and 1968, to explain how rock music was perceived at that time and how
10260-403: A £10,000 budget was supplied, while John Leckie returned as producer. Once again, the Dukes' record outsold XTC's previous album in the UK ( Skylarking in this case). Partridge felt it was "a bit upsetting to think that people preferred these pretend personalities to our own personalities ... But I don't mind because we have turned into the Dukes slowly over the years." Likewise, Moulding felt that
10488-571: Is Indian classical music and some Tibetan music "designed to expand consciousness". Psychedelia was sometimes referred to as "acid rock". The latter label was applied to a pounding, hard rock variant that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage-punk movement ... When rock began turning back to softer, roots-oriented sounds in late 1968, acid-rock bands mutated into heavy metal acts. —Frank Hoffman, Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound (2004) The term has often been deployed interchangeably with "psychedelic rock" or "psychedelia", particularly during
10716-484: Is a hit single. That was our psyche." After some remixing and additional songs at Virgin's behest, Mummer , the first product of the studio-bound XTC, appeared in August 1983. Virgin did little to promote the album and delayed its release by several months. At number 58, it was their lowest-charting album to date. The one single that did chart, " Love on a Farmboy's Wages ", did find significant airplay on BBC Radio 1. It
10944-423: Is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock
11172-540: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
11400-472: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
11628-739: Is generally the more extreme end of [the psychedelic rock genre]". This would mean psychedelic rock that is heavier, louder, or harder. When defined specifically as a hard rock variant of psychedelia, acid rock is distinguished as having evolved from the 1960s garage punk movement, with many of its bands eventually transforming into heavy metal acts. Percussionist John Beck defines "acid rock" as synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal . The term eventually encompassed heavy, blues -based hard rock bands. Musicologist Steve Waksman wrote that "the distinction between acid rock, hard rock, and heavy metal can at some point never be more than tenuous". Many bands associated with acid rock aimed to create
SECTION 50
#173277241722011856-618: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
12084-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
12312-554: Is really heavy when you've got a family and everyone thinks you're 'Mr Rich and Famous'." A court-enforced gag order restricts the band from speaking publicly on the alleged improprieties. According to Partridge, Reid was "very naughty" and left the band with roughly £300,000 in unpaid VAT. Music journalist Patrick Schabe elaborates: ... what is known is that [Reid] inked a deal with Virgin that wound up working out primarily for Reid, secondarily for Virgin, and not at all for XTC. Throughout their first five years of existence, XTC never saw
12540-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
12768-449: Is the Band." Acid rock Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture . While the term has sometimes been used interchangeably with " psychedelic rock ", acid rock also specifically refers to a more musically intense, rawer, or heavier subgenre or sibling of psychedelic rock. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD),
12996-535: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
13224-524: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
13452-513: The Jimi Hendrix Experience , Deep Purple , and Cream was classified as acid rock. Other acid rock groups such as Blue Cheer , Iron Butterfly , and Vanilla Fudge served as examples of early heavy metal, or proto-metal , creating stripped-downed, loud, intense, and " fuzzy " acid rock or hard rock. Bands such as Blue Cheer, Cream, and the hard rock group The Amboy Dukes have all been described as "leading practitioners" of
13680-463: The UK Albums Chart . Although the album was well received by the press ( Melody Maker , NME , Sounds , and Record Mirror all gave positive reviews), none of its singles managed to chart. They rerecorded " This Is Pop " as a lead single. Its follow-up, " Statue of Liberty ", was banned on BBC Radio due to the lyric "I sail beneath her skirt". With each member placed on a £25 weekly salary,
13908-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as
SECTION 60
#173277241722014136-527: The progressive rock movement. In the 1970s, elements of psychedelic music split into two notable directions, evolving into the hard rock and heavy metal of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin on one side and into the progressive rock of bands such Pink Floyd and Yes on the other. Bands such as Yes, Pink Floyd, King Crimson , and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer kept the psychedelic musical movement alive for some time, but eventually moved away from drug-themed music towards experiments in electronic music and
14364-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
14592-603: The punk rock movement had emerged, which opened an avenue for the group in terms of record label appeal, even though the band did not necessarily fit in the punk dogma . Partridge remembered hearing the Sex Pistols ' " Anarchy in the U.K. " (1976) and feeling underwhelmed by its similarity to the Monkees or the Ramones: "That sort of spurred me on – watching this stuff that I thought was rather average." Soon, John Peel saw
14820-516: The "psychedelic element was being more ingratiated into the pie" since 25 O'Clock . When issued on CD, Psonic Psunspot was combined with 25 O'Clock and given the title Chips from the Chocolate Fireball (1987). For their next album Oranges & Lemons , XTC traveled to Los Angeles to make use of a cheap studio rate arranged by Paul Fox , who was recruited by the band for his first production gig. Another reason for recording in
15048-539: The 13th Floor Elevators , featuring the garage rock hit " You're Gonna Miss Me ", was among the earliest psychedelic rock albums. By 1966, the New York City garage band the Blues Magoos were referring to their wailing blues rock as "psychedelic music", and their hard variant of psychedelic rock, with its roots in the garage movement, would be increasingly labeled "acid rock". Acid rock often encompasses
15276-436: The 13th Floor Elevators epitomized the frenetic, darker and more psychotic sound of American acid rock, a sound characterized by droning guitar riffs, amplified feedback, and guitar distortion. Hoffman writes that acid rock lacked the recording studio "gimmickry" that typified the more Beatles-influenced strain of psychedelic rock, though acid rock experimented in other ways with electrified guitar effects. Tonal distortion
15504-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
15732-453: The 1980s, and traces of psychedelic rock can be seen in the musical excesses of later metal bands. In the 1990s, the stoner metal genre combined acid rock with other hard rock genres such as grunge , updating the heavy riffs and long jams found in the acid rock and psychedelic-influenced metal of bands such as Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind , and Blue Öyster Cult . In addition to hard rock and heavy metal, acid rock also gave rise to
15960-463: The 1983 holiday single " Thanks for Christmas " under the pseudonym Three Wise Men. It was produced by David Lord , owner of Crescent Studios in Bath, and they subsequently negotiated a deal that allowed them to work as much as they wanted on their next album at his studio. Some of the album was recorded using a Linn LM-1 Drum Computer , and extensive time was spent on its programming. Partridge envisioned
16188-473: The 1987 Billboard Best Video award and was also nominated for three categories at the MTV Video Music Awards . Skylarking ultimately became XTC's best-known album and is generally regarded as their finest work. Partridge was reluctant to make another Dukes album, but to appease requests from his bandmates and Virgin Records, Psonic Psunspot (1987) was recorded. This time, 10 songs and
16416-465: The 1990s, the stoner metal genre combined acid rock with other hard rock styles such as grunge and doom metal , updating the heavy riffs and long jams found in acid rock and psychedelic-influenced metal. "Acid rock" as a term was initially (and often still is) loosely defined. In 1969, as the genre was still solidifying, rock journalist Nik Cohn called it a "fairly meaningless phrase that got applied to any group, no matter what its style". The term
16644-467: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
16872-421: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
17100-399: The Beatles , but was intimidated by the process of learning guitar. When the Monkees grew popular, he became interested in joining a music group. He recalled watching local guitarist Dave Gregory performing Jimi Hendrix -style songs at churches and youth clubs: "Sort of acid - skiffle . I thought, 'Ah, one day I'll play guitar!' But I didn't think I would be in the same band as this kid on
17328-572: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including
17556-648: The Bon Marche record shop in Swindon. Gregory was playing the Mahavishnu Orchestra 's album The Inner Mounting Flame (1971), which he later called "one of the watershed moments in my musical education." Partridge met Colin Moulding at the Stage Bar on Swindon's Old Town's Union Row, later known as Long's. Moulding had been playing bass since 1970 "because I liked music [and] I thought that playing
17784-617: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
18012-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
18240-473: The Doctor". Partridge recalled playing some demos for Virgin agents, and compared their reaction to the " Springtime for Hitler " scene from the 1967 film The Producers . The label rejected his idea. Virgin denied Partridge's requests to renegotiate or revoke XTC's contract. Paul Kinder believed that the label and the group were "poles apart" and that "the contract was so old it got to the point where Andy wanted
18468-594: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
18696-415: The Dukes, Partridge looked back on the project as the "most fun we ever had in the studio ... We never knew if it would sell ... We could never [subvert everybody's expectations] with XTC, as there was too much money involved and we were expected to be mentally honest and 'real.' Too much financial pressure." Released on April Fools' Day 1985, the album was presented as a long-lost collection of recordings by
18924-540: The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968 , which prominently featured both acid rock and garage rock. Musicologist Simon Frith cites Nuggets as a showcase for the garage psychedelia of the 1960s and the transition between early 1960s garage rock and the more elaborate acid rock of the late 1960s. This acid rock present in the Nuggets anthology has been described as an offshoot of 1960s "punk rock" . At
19152-507: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
19380-541: The Glitter Band , was quickly hired as a session musician to continue the recording sessions—XTC would never again employ a permanent drummer after Chambers' departure. In the meantime, Virgin released a greatest hits compilation, Waxworks: Some Singles 1977–1982 , to underwhelming sales. The group's new material was rejected by Virgin executive Jeremy Lascelles, who suggested that they write something more commercial. Partridge remembered, "He asked me to write something
19608-471: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
19836-506: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
20064-503: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
20292-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
20520-578: The Rolling Stones ' " Satisfaction ". The song became a number 17 hit and helped propel the album to number 37 in the UK. Before "Nigel", XTC had struggled to fill more than half the seats of the small club circuits they played. Afterward, the single was playlisted at the BBC, which helped the band secure two appearances on Top of the Pops . When touring resumed in November, every date was sold out. In later years,
20748-588: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
20976-672: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
21204-476: The Teardrop Explodes said], 'Quite frankly, Andy, this is shit. ' " Other complications arose; he developed some health issues, and his wife divorced him. In 1997 (also reported as in late 1994), XTC found themselves freed from financial debt and from Virgin after "making some heavy concessions". Partridge fantasised that people from the label "met in the dark and thought, 'These blokes are not making
21432-407: The UK and US, but attracted a considerable cult following . They have since been recognised for their influence on post-punk , Britpop and later power pop acts. Partridge and Moulding first met in the early 1970s and subsequently formed a glam outfit with drummer Terry Chambers . The band's name and line-up changed frequently, and it was not until 1975 that the band was known as XTC. In 1977,
21660-454: The UK and was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award . Its follow-up " The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead " reached number 71. " Wrapped in Grey " was intended as the third single, and about 5,000 copies were pressed before being withdrawn from sale. Partridge remembered thinking, "that's it, they've suffocated one of our kids in the cot, they've murdered the album, basically through ignorance." In 1993,
21888-559: The US in support of Black Sea as the opening act for the Police . At this point, they were playing in arena stadiums while Partridge's mental state was beginning to deteriorate, and he requested to cease touring, but was opposed by Virgin, his bandmates, and the band's management. He would occasionally experience moments of memory lapse to the extent that he would forget who he was. His then-wife Marianne blamed his illness on his longtime dependency on Valium , which he had been prescribed since
22116-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
22344-465: The US with an American producer, said Gregory, was that "America was our biggest market". Mr. Mister (and later longtime King Crimson ) member Pat Mastelotto was the drummer for the entire album. The album was released in February 1989 with music that was in a similar psychedelic vein as the Dukes. In a retrospective review, The Quietus ' Nick Reed notes: "Nearly every instrument is mixed to
22572-431: The US. Additionally, it combined with Skylarking for the group's best-selling albums to date. " Mayor of Simpleton " reached number 46 in the UK and number 72 in the US, making it their only American single to chart. To support the album, XTC embarked on an acoustic-guitar American radio tour that lasted for two weeks in May. The shows were carried out without financial compensation for the band. Gregory commented that it
22800-619: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
23028-534: The United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock
23256-751: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
23484-478: The acid rock movement emerged: "Rock music is a regenerative and revolutionary art, offering us our first real hope for the future (indeed, for the present)." When played live at dance clubs, performances were accompanied by psychedelic-themed light shows in order to replicate the visual effects of the acid experience. According to Kevin T. McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of
23712-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
23940-470: The age of 12. She threw away the tablets, and over the next year, he experienced intense withdrawal effects that he later described as "brain melt". XTC became their own producers for their next album project. Until this point, Partridge had insisted that every part of the band's arrangements on record could be replicated live. He believed that "if I wrote an album with a sound less geared towards touring then maybe there would be less pressure to tour." As such,
24168-436: The album became the best-known of XTC's discography and Moulding and Partridge would look back on this point as the symbolic start of the band's career. To follow up "Nigel", the band released "Wait Till Your Boat Goes Down" (1980), a reggae -influenced Partridge song with production by Phil Wainman of Bay City Rollers fame. It was their lowest-selling single to date. Concurrently, Virgin issued Moulding's "Ten Feet Tall" as
24396-414: The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album , but lost to Tom Waits ' Bone Machine . In 1993, Partridge conceived XTC's next project to be an album of bubblegum pop songs disguising itself as a retrospective compilation featuring 12 different groups from the early 1970s. The lyrics were also heavily sexual, with song titles such as "Lolly (Suck It and See)" and "Visit to
24624-656: The band perform at Upstairs at Ronnie Scott's and asked them to appear on his BBC Radio 1 block. Partridge credited him as "responsible for us getting a recording contract. ... As soon as we recorded that session for the BBC, suddenly three or four record labels wanted to sign us up." After declining CBS , Harvest and Island , they signed with Virgin Records . In August 1977, XTC made their first commercially released studio recordings with producer John Leckie at Abbey Road , which appeared on their debut album 3D EP in October. Their first full-length record, White Music ,
24852-611: The band renamed themselves the Helium Kidz. Partridge's musical conceptions were "blown away" upon hearing the New York Dolls : "I suddenly just wanted to play three chords again and get out my mum's makeup and stuff." He subsequently wrote hundreds of songs for the Helium Kidz, and some demo tapes were sent to Decca Records . NME ran a small profile on the "up and coming" band, which consisted of Partridge, Moulding, Chambers and guitarist Dave Cartner: "They aspire to attain
25080-512: The band toured for the next five years. The group also made appearances on the children's television shows Tiswas and Magpie , which meant they would occasionally play for under-16 crowds on these early tours. Partridge enjoyed these early shows, but would later resent touring as the band's audience numbers grew and the performing experience became more impersonal. By August 1978, XTC were prepared to record their next album. The band had contacted Brian Eno to produce after they learned that he
25308-417: The band's first US single. According to Gregory, "Colin began to fancy himself as the 'writer of the singles'". In response to "the fuss made over Colin's songs", Partridge attempted to exert more authority in the group: "I thought I was a very benevolent dictator." Gregory disagreed, recalling that the band was "pretty tired" and that Partridge "could be a little bit of a bully". Partridge at this point released
25536-605: The band's stock-in-trade and didn't rock out until the last song, 'Funk Pop a Roll.' ... Mummer signaled a strange rebirth for XTC." Moulding thought that "when we came back from America after our aborted tour of 1982 ... people like Spandau Ballet had moved onto the scene; new groups were coming up and there was no place for us." Mojo journalist Chris Ingham summed up the period: "In 18 months, XTC had gone from Top 10 hits and critical superlatives to being ignorable, arcane eccentrics. Partridge later said "Your average English person probably thinks we split up in 1982". XTC released
25764-460: The band. In search of his replacement, Partridge found Barry Andrews through a "keyboard player seeks band" advertisement. Instead of a formal audition, the two went out drinking together. Andrews was immediately hired. During the first band rehearsal, Partridge recalled, "He sounded like Jon Lord from Deep Purple ; fuzz box, wah wah pedal, bluesy runs. I said, You don't have to play like that, you can play like us if you want. The next rehearsal, he
25992-441: The band." After the group arrived at Utopia Sound recording studio in upstate New York , Rundgren played a large role in the album's sound design and drum programming, providing them with string and brass arrangements, as well as an assortment of gear. However, the sessions were fraught with tension, especially between him and Partridge, and disagreements arose over drum patterns, song selections, and other details. Partridge likened
26220-585: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
26448-539: The book Chalkhills and Children ) or a couple years afterward (according to Partridge). He legally retained the title of XTC's manager until near the end of the decade. In April 1984, the group learned that he had incurred them an outstanding value-added taxes [VAT] bill and that he had significantly mishandled their revenue stream. A lawsuit was filed by the band, while he counter-sued for "unpaid commission on royalties". Virgin were then "legally required to freeze royalty and advance payments and divert publishing income into
26676-519: The characteristics that would come to define acid rock: the use of feedback and distortion replacing early rock music's more melodic electric guitars. Another group included on the Nuggets album, the 13th Floor Elevators, began as a straight garage rock band before becoming one of the original early acid rock bands and the innovators of psychedelic rock in general, with a sound consisting of distortion, often yelping vocals, and "occasionally demented" lyrics. Their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of
26904-461: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
27132-426: The charts at numbers 32, 31 and 16, respectively. "Sgt. Rock" provoked feminist hate-mail for the lyric "keep her stood in line". Partridge regretted the song, calling it "crass but not enjoyably crass". " Respectable Street " was banned from BBC radio due to its references to abortion and a " Sony Entertainment Centre ". Partridge believed Black Sea was the closest the group had come to representing their live sound in
27360-449: The course of a 20-year contract with Virgin Records, and after achieving gold and platinum status in album sales on a number of discs, XTC never saw any publishing royalties. During the middle months of 1982, Partridge spent his time in convalescence and writing songs. He later surmised that relinquishing Valium inadvertently gave him a new sense of creative direction: "I was thinking clearer and wanted to know stuff. Life's big questions." In
27588-423: The covers band Dean Gabber and His Gaberdines was invited to join as a second guitarist. Partridge remembered holding a "pretend audition" where Gregory was asked to play "This Is Pop", only for Gregory to inquire whether they wanted the album version or the single version: "We thought, 'Bloody oh, a real musician.' But he was in the band before he even knew." Gregory was anxious of whether the fans would accept him as
27816-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
28044-401: The distinctions between the two bands lessened. XTC continued to produce more progressive records, including the albums Skylarking (1986), Oranges & Lemons (1989) and Nonsuch (1992). In the US, " Mayor of Simpleton " (1989) was their highest-charting single, while " Dear God " (1986) was controversial for its anti-religious message. Due to poor management, XTC never received
28272-455: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
28500-460: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
28728-465: The early 1970s, bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath combined the loud, raw distortion of acid rock with occult lyrics, further forming a basis for the genre now known as "heavy metal". At a time when rock music began to turn back to roots -oriented soft rock , many acid rock groups instead evolved into heavy metal bands. As its own movement, heavy metal music continued to perpetuate characteristics of acid rock bands into at least
28956-462: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
29184-519: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
29412-581: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
29640-498: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
29868-415: The first two albums is focused into a cohesive statement with a distinctive voice that retains their clever humor, quirky wordplay, and decidedly British flavor. ... driven by the powerful rhythms and angular, mainly minimalistic arrangements." The distinctive drum pattern of its lead single, Moulding's " Making Plans for Nigel ", was an attempt to invert drum tones and accents in the style of Devo 's cover of
30096-455: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
30324-418: The forefront; it's too well-arranged to be cacophonous, but there's a degree of sensory overload, especially given the band's newfound tendency to blast synthesizers in our faces. ... whether or not this album holds up for you depends on how much you like the band's boisterous side." It became the highest album they had in the charts since 1982's English Settlement , rising to number 28 in the UK and number 44 in
30552-513: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
30780-400: The genre's nascence. However, the distinction between the heavier "acid rock" and the more general or inclusive genre of "psychedelic rock" has been well established. According to Per Elias Drabløs, "acid rock is generally considered a subgenre of psychedelic rock", while Steve and Alan Freeman state the two terms are more or less synonymous, and that "what is usually referred to as acid rock
31008-435: The group debuted on Virgin Records and were subsequently noted for their energetic live performances and their refusal to play conventional punk rock, instead synthesising influences from ska , 1960s pop, dub music and avant-garde . The single " Making Plans for Nigel " (1979) marked their commercial breakthrough and heralded the reverberating drum sound associated with 1980s popular music. Between 1979 and 1992, XTC had
31236-465: The group devoted two weeks to the sessions. Calling themselves " the Dukes of Stratosphear ", the spin-off group consisted of Partridge and Moulding with Dave and his drummer brother Ian. Each adopted a pseudonym: Sir John Johns, The Red Curtain, Lord Cornelius Plum and E.I.E.I. Owen. At the sessions, the band dressed themselves in Paisley outfits and lit scented candles. With "nothing to live up to" as
31464-458: The group requested that manager Ian Reid help pay for the debts, but he refused, saying that they had owed him money. They tried distancing themselves from Reid by renegotiating their contract with Virgin. Six more albums were promised to the label in exchange for covering their debts, as well as a guarantee that subsequent royalty and advancement cheques be redirected into the band's own deposit account. Royalty rates were still kept relatively low, as
31692-486: The group to work with him: "I reminded Andy that Todd had produced one of his favourite New York Dolls records [ New York Dolls , 1973]. In the absence of any better alternatives, he agreed." Once contacted, Rundgren offered to handle the album's entire recording for a lump sum of $ 150,000, and the band agreed. In January 1986, Partridge and Moulding mailed Rundgren a collection of more than 20 demo tapes they had stockpiled in advance. Compared to previous XTC albums, much of
31920-448: The group was not selling enough records, Virgin reportedly concluded, was that they sounded "too English". The label forced the group to work with one of their selected American producers. When shown a list of their names, they recognised none except for Todd Rundgren . Gregory was a fan of Rundgren's music, particularly since hearing the 1978 album Hermit of Mink Hollow . His bandmates were not as familiar with Rundgren, but Gregory urged
32148-424: The group's A&R man Paul Kinder explained, they had "appalling management for a number of years. Usually if a manager has got any kind of business acumen he will renegotiate the contract to get a better royalty. A record company expects this, which is why they keep royalties low initially. It's just business really. Nobody addressed the contract for XTC." Reid remained XTC's manager until January 1983 (according to
32376-516: The group. After most of Andrews' songs were dropped from the final track list, the keyboardist told journalists that he foresaw the band "explod[ing] pretty soon". Go 2 , a more experimental venture, was released in October to positive reviews and a number 21 chart peak. Like White Music , it was given praise in Sounds , Melody Maker , and the NME . One of the tracks, "Battery Brides (Andy Paints Brian)",
32604-408: The harder acid rock sound, and their 1966 instrumental " East-West ", with its early use of the extended rock solo , has been described as laying "the roots of psychedelic acid rock" and featuring "much of acid-rock's eventual DNA". The Beatles' June 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a major influence on American acid rock groups. Originating in the early 1960s, garage punk
32832-434: The harder variant of psychedelic rock known as "acid rock". Many acid rock bands would subsequently become heavy metal bands. The influence of acid rock was evident in the sound of heavy metal in the 1970s. Iron Butterfly's " In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida " is sometimes described as an example of the transition between acid rock and heavy metal or the turning point in which acid rock became "heavy metal". "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" serves
33060-531: The heart to tell anyone you can't carry on so I'm gonna mess you up." The band's remaining tour dates in England were cancelled. After recovering from the episode, Partridge rejoined the group for their first tour of the US as a headlining act. The band played the first date in San Diego. Gregory said that they were "totally unrehearsed" during the performance because "we'd not played together for two weeks. ... It
33288-399: The heavier form of psychedelic rock known as acid rock developed from the late 1960s California music scene. The Charlatans were among the first Bay Area acid rock bands, though Jefferson Airplane was the first Bay Area acid rock band to sign a major label and achieve mainstream success. By July 1967, Time magazine wrote, "From jukeboxes and transistors across the nation pulses
33516-458: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
33744-431: The impossible dream of being able to throw a TV or two out of the window of an American hotel and have no one complain." This version of the group lasted until 1975, when the Helium Kidz decided to rebrand themselves and change their music to "three-minute pop songs that were fast and inventive." Gregory auditioned for the band at this juncture, but did not end up joining. His musicianship was determined to be "too good". It
33972-524: The interim, Chambers moved to Australia and started a family. Feeling dismayed by Partridge's decision not to tour, he had to be persuaded to return to Swindon for the next album's rehearsals in September. At one rehearsal, Partridge recalled asking Chambers for "tiny, cyclical, nattering clay pots", which he replied sounded "a bit fucking nancified". The newly-wed Chambers soon left the band to be with his wife in Australia. Drummer Pete Phipps , formerly of
34200-467: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
34428-619: The label of "acid rock" due in part to its "energy and intimation of psychic overload". Exemplary acts of "garagey" psychedelia include Blues Magoos , the Electric Prunes , and the Music Machine , all of which may be defined as early acid rock bands. The earliest known use of the term "garage punk" appeared in Lenny Kaye 's track-by-track liner notes for the 1972 anthology compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from
34656-517: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
34884-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
35112-494: The late 1960s, in addition to the deliberate use of distortion and feedback , acid rock was further characterized by long guitar solos and the frequent use of electronic organs . Lyric references to drug use were also common, as exemplified in Jefferson Airplane's 1967 song " White Rabbit " and Jimi Hendrix Experience 's 1967 song " Purple Haze ". Lyrical references to drugs such as LSD were often cryptic. At
35340-554: The late 1960s. They had a top 40 hit in 1971 with the song " One Tin Soldier ", the theme song of the movie Billy Jack . In addition to pioneering occult rock with lyrics and aesthetics that explicitly dealt in themes of Satanism and witchcraft , they are recognized by metal fans and metal historians as being the band that introduced the " Sign of the horns " to rock, metal and pop culture, as seen on their 1969 debut album release Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls . By
35568-432: The loud acid rock of groups such as Steppenwolf , who contributed their song " Born to Be Wild " to the soundtrack of the 1969 film Easy Rider , which itself glamorized the genre. Ultimately, Steppenwolf and other acid rock groups such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Led Zeppelin paved the way for the electrified, bluesy sound of early heavy metal. Coven is an American rock band formed in Chicago in
35796-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
36024-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
36252-449: The material contrasted significantly with its mellower feel, lush arrangements, and "flowery" aesthetic. Rundgren responded with the idea of a concept album to bridge "Colin's 'pastoral' tunes and subject matter and Andy's 'pop anthems' and sly poetry. ... The album could be about a day, a year, or a lifetime. ... Using this framework, I [Rundgren] came up with a sequence of songs and a justification for their placement and brought it to
36480-674: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
36708-609: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
36936-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
37164-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
37392-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
37620-647: The moon and Virgin weren't prepared to give it him." Whatever new music the band recorded would have been automatically owned by Virgin, and so the band enacted strike action against the label. Prince and George Michael also went on a strike against their respective labels that was heavily publicized at about the same time. XTC's strike, however, received little press. In the meantime, Partridge produced Martin Newell 's 1993 album The Greatest Living Englishman and early sessions for Blur's second album . "I thought I did sterling work. ... Next day, [ David Balfe from
37848-556: The more extreme side of the psychedelic rock genre, frequently containing a loud, improvised, and guitar-centered sound. Alan Bisbort and Parke Puterbaugh write that acid rock "can best be described as psychedelia at its rawest and most intense ... Bad trips as well as good, riots as well as peace, pain as well as pleasure - the whole spectrum of reality, not just the idyllic bits, were captured by acid rock." "Acid rock" has also been described as more heavily electric and containing more distortion ("fuzz") than typical psychedelic rock. By
38076-421: The musical director of Virgin, who, after seeing the songs, was convinced the band "could do better" and asked them to write more material. With the band sitting on the material, the director left the label a year later, and his replacement liked the band's content, hurrying them to record the album. Gus Dudgeon produced, even though Partridge felt he was the wrong choice, and Fairport Convention 's Dave Mattacks
38304-690: The musicians in the scene, including bands such as the Charlatans and the Quicksilver Messenger Service , became involved in Ken Kesey 's LSD-driven psychedelic scene, known as the Merry Pranksters. Heavy metal evolved from psychedelic music and acid rock and added psychedelic/acid rock to the basic structure of blues rock . In the 1960s, the heavy, blues -influenced, psychedelic hard rock sound of bands such as
38532-465: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
38760-446: The new music showcased more complex and intricate arrangements, song lengths were longer, and subject matter covered broader social issues. Much of the new material also featured acoustic instruments. Gregory bought a Rickenbacker 12-string and began contributing to the records as a keyboardist. In February 1982, English Settlement was released as the group's first double album. The hook of its lead single, " Senses Working Overtime ",
38988-608: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
39216-401: The novelty recording effects or whimsy of British psychedelia; instead, the subgenre emphasized the heavier qualities associated with both the positive and negative extremes of the psychedelic experience . As the movement progressed into the late 1960s and 1970s, elements of acid rock split into two directions, with hard rock and heavy metal on one side and progressive rock on the other. In
39444-429: The past tense". Moulding and Chambers briefly reunited as the duo TC&I in the late 2010s. Partridge and Gregory remain musically active. Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding grew up on Penhill council estate in Swindon . Partridge jokingly characterised the community as being populated almost entirely by people with physical, mental or emotional defects. In the 1960s, he was a fan of contemporary pop groups like
39672-413: The power struggle to "two Hitlers in the same bunker". He expressed resentment toward Rundgren's contributions when sessions concluded, but later softened his view and praised the result. Rundgren said that in spite of all the difficulties, the album "ultimately ... sounds like we were having a great time doing it. And at times we were having a good time." On Skylarking ... the band has accomplished
39900-471: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
40128-653: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
40356-474: The remarkable feat of pulling the kinks out of its music without sacrificing its peerless originality. The band members have become the deans of a group of artists who make what can only be described as unpopular pop music, placing a high premium on melody and solid if idiosyncratic songcraft. —Writer Michael Azzerad , 1989 Skylarking spent one week on the UK album charts, reaching number 90 in November 1986, two weeks after its release. Moulding's " Grass "
40584-400: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
40812-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
41040-522: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
41268-555: The second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including
41496-546: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
41724-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
41952-422: The stage during the opening song 'Respectable Street', and afterward, took a flight back to Swindon for treatment, which amounted to hypnotherapy . He described feeling nausea and stomach pains while on stage: "My body and brain said, You're hating this experience I'm going to make it bad for you. When you go on stage I'm going to give you panic attacks and stomach cramps. You're not enjoying this and you haven't got
42180-455: The stage." Partridge eventually obtained a guitar and taught himself how to play it with no formal training. At the age of 15, he wrote his first song, titled "Please Help Me", and attracted the nickname "Rocky" for his early guitar mastery of the Beatles' " Rocky Raccoon " (1968). By the early 1970s, his music tastes had transitioned "from the Monkees to having a big binge on this Euro-avant-garde stuff. I got really in deep." One of his first bands
42408-516: The studio. It remains XTC's second-highest charting British album, placing at number 16, and the most successful album in the U.S. of their career, peaking at number 41 on the Billboard 200 . That October, the documentary XTC at the Manor , which featured the band faking a studio session for "Towers of London", was broadcast on BBC2 . From 1980 to 1981, XTC toured Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
42636-510: The style is generally defined by heavy, distorted guitars and often contains lyrics with drug references and long improvised jams . Compared to other forms of psychedelic rock, acid rock features a harder, louder, heavier, or rawer sound. Much of the style overlaps with 1960s garage punk , proto-metal , and early heavy, blues -based hard rock . It developed mainly from the American West Coast , where groups did not focus on
42864-405: The third album by the Lilac Time , and compered for an unbroadcast children's game show named Matchmakers . Gregory played for Johnny Hates Jazz , Marc Almond and Francesco Messina whilst producing for Cud . Moulding performed a special event concert with David Marx and the Refugees, a Swindon-based band that reunited him with Barry Andrews. Tarquin Gotch , who served as XTC's manager for
43092-558: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
43320-430: The time, the term "punk rock" referred to the garage rock of the 1960s, such as that present in the Nuggets compilation. Bands such as Count Five , with their 1966 song " Psychotic Reaction ", as well as other groups featured on Nuggets , would eventually epitomize the overlap between 1960s garage rock and psychedelic punk, or acid rock. As one of the first successful acid rock songs, "Psychotic Reaction" also contained
43548-443: The track " Tomorrow Never Knows ", as having "opened the doors" to acid rock. Former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls recalls: "I was in the music business at the time, and my very first recognition of acid rock ... was, of all people, the Beach Boys and the song ' Good Vibrations ' ... That [song's electro theremin ] sent so many musicians back to the studio to create this music on acid." According to Laura Diane Kuhn,
43776-421: The turned-on sound of acid-rock groups: the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors , Moby Grape ". In 1968, Life magazine referred to the Doors as the "kings of acid rock". Other bands credited with creating or laying the foundation for acid rock include garage rock bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Count Five . The blues rock group the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are also credited with spawning
44004-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
44232-411: The work as "industrial pop" inspired by Swindon, a "railway town". The result, The Big Express , returned the group to a brighter and uptempo sound marked by studio experimentation and denser arrangements, setting a template that they would develop on subsequent albums. He jokingly referred to some parts of the album as the only time the group were befallen with stereotypical 1980s-style production. It
44460-418: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
44688-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration
44916-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to
45144-462: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
45372-460: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " and " Kon-Tiki ", while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
45600-422: Was a devout Catholic). Partridge was feeling inspired by Nick Nicely 's 1982 psychedelic single "Hilly Fields 1892", and devised a recording project to fill the newfound gap in his schedule. The rules were as follows: songs must follow the conventions of 1967 and 1968 psychedelia; no more than two takes allowed; use vintage equipment wherever possible. After receiving a £5,000 advance from a skeptical Virgin Records,
45828-415: Was a fan, but he declined, telling them that they were good enough to produce themselves. Virgin rejected Eno's advice, and the group instead returned to Abbey Road with Leckie. Andrews appeared at the sessions with several original songs, but Partridge did not feel they were right for the band. He began taking Moulding and Chambers out for drinks without inviting Partridge, allegedly in an attempt to take over
46056-674: Was a mainly-American movement that involved R&B -inspired garage bands powered by electric guitars and organs. It was mainly the domain of untrained teenagers fixated on sonic effects, such as wah-wah and fuzz tone, and relied heavily on riffs . The music later blurred into psychedelia. American garage bands who began to play psychedelic rock retained the rawness and energy of garage rock, incorporating garage rock's heavy distortion, feedback, and layered sonic effects into their versions of psychedelic music, spawning "acid rock". Bisport and Puterbaugh, defining acid rock as an intense or raw form of psychedelia, include "garagey" psychedelia under
46284-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
46512-535: Was also one of the defining characteristics of the San Francisco Sound . The acid rock of the San Francisco Sound heavily incorporated musical improvisation , jamming , repetitive drum beats, experimental sound and tape effects, and intentional feedback. San Francisco acid rock generally took a non-commercial approach to song-writing: it often involved almost free jazz -like, free-form hard rock improvisations alongside distorted guitars, and lyrics often were socially conscious, trippy, or anti-establishment . Many of
46740-402: Was an "interesting" style of promotion, but "incredibly hard work", as the band performed at about four radio stations a day for three weeks: "We also did a live acoustic set for MTV in front of an audience which worried Andy a bit but he got through it." This inspired the network to invite more artists to perform stripped-down sets, calling the series " unplugged ". XTC's performance of " King for
46968-475: Was based on Manfred Mann 's " 5-4-3-2-1 " (1964), Both the album and single became the highest-charting records they would ever have in the UK, peaking at number five and number 10, respectively. In several territories outside the UK, the album was released as only a single LP. The group scheduled television appearances and an international tour in support of English Settlement . During a live-broadcast gig in Paris on 18 March, Partridge stopped playing and ran off
47196-453: Was because of an industry convention in the 1960s and the 1970s, and that when "we wanted to shift albums later on, that approach got blown out of the water." Drums and Wires , released in August 1979, was named for its emphasis on guitars and expansive drums. AllMusic reviewer Chris Woodstra wrote that it signalled "a turning point ... with a more subdued set of songs that reflect an increasing songwriting proficiency. The aimless energy of
47424-488: Was brought in as drummer. Nonsuch was received with critical acclaim when released in April 1992, and like Oranges & Lemons , peaked at number 28 in the UK, becoming their second consecutive and final Top 40 album. Rolling Stone ' s Michael Azerrad reviewed: "Emphasizing wonder and wit in opposition to the rage of most college rock , XTC makes alternative music for people who don't like ' alternative music '." Lead single " The Disappointed " reached number 33 in
47652-403: Was called "Stiff Beach", formed in August 1970. In early 1972, Partridge's constantly evolving group settled into "Star Park", a four-piece that featured himself with guitarist Dave Cartner, drummer Paul Wilson, and a bassist nicknamed "Nervous Steve". In 1972, Partridge became closer acquainted with Gregory, a diabetic then suffering from a bout of depression , while working as an assistant at
47880-420: Was chosen as lead single. It was issued exclusively in the UK with the B-side " Dear God ", an outtake. "Dear God" became so popular with American college radio stations who imported the record that Geffen Records (XTC's US distributor) recalled and re-pressed Skylarking with the track included. Controversy also broke out over the song's anti-religious lyrics, which inspired some violent incidents. In Florida,
48108-408: Was contacted to produce their third album with a drum sound that would "knock your head off". With engineer Hugh Padgham , the band embarked to the newly built Townhouse Studios , "with its now world-famous stone room"; Gregory later recalled that Padgham had "yet to develop his trade-mark ' gated ambience ' sound". Coinciding with Gregory's arrival, the band recorded " Life Begins at the Hop " (1979),
48336-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
48564-436: Was decided that the band have another name change. "The Dukes of Stratosphear" was considered, but Partridge thought it was too "flowery" and "psychedelic". He derived "XTC" from Jimmy Durante 's exclamation upon discovering the lost chord : "That's it! I'm in ecstasy!" The name was chosen mainly for its emphatic appearance in print. Meanwhile, owing to creative differences with Partridge, synthesizer player Jonathan Perkins quit
48792-449: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
49020-490: Was going to say." The tour ceased. He continued his hypnotherapy treatment, fearing that he was turning into the archetypal rock burn-out (such as Syd Barrett ). "It got to the point where if I touched the front door knob, I wanted to throw up." For a period afterward, it was rumoured among fans and industry insiders that the group stopped performing because Partridge had died, and some American bands put on XTC tribute shows in his remembrance. [Because of our] bad record deal and
49248-482: Was immediately put to consideration, but the group could not go through with it due to their commercial obligations to Virgin. In November 1984, one month after The Big Express ' s release, Partridge and John Leckie traveled to Monmouth to produce the album Miss America by singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O'Hara , who had recently signed with Virgin. Partridge and Leckie were dismissed due to conflicts related to their religious affiliations or lack thereof (O'Hara
49476-436: Was like a maniac, like if Miró had played electric organ. Fantastic." December 1976 officially marked the beginning of the Partridge–Moulding–Chambers–Andrews line-up. The members cut their long hair and, for a time, wore " kung-fu mechanic" outfits on stage. I really didn't like the phrase 'punk'—it just seemed kind of demeaning. I didn't like ' new wave ' either, because that was already the phrase used for French cinema of
49704-450: Was obvious that he was ill, but exactly what it was, no-one knew." On 4 April 1982, XTC were scheduled to headline a sold-out show at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Partridge woke up that morning, he said, and "couldn't get off the bed. My legs wouldn't function. Walked to Ben Frank's coffee shop, where we'd all agreed to meet, in slow motion like I had both legs in plaster, trying not to throw up. I got in there, they knew what I
49932-429: Was originally used to describe the background music for acid trips in underground parties in the 1960s (e.g. the Merry Pranksters ' "Acid Tests") and as a catchall term for the more eclectic Haight-Ashbury bands in San Francisco . The Grateful Dead 's Jerry Garcia believed that acid rock is music you listen to while under the influence of acid, further stating that there is no real " psychedelic rock " and that it
50160-409: Was released in October 1984, reaching a higher chart position than Mummer , but was "virtually ignored" by critics. Virgin invested £33,000 into the music video for " All You Pretty Girls " to little effect. The band were charged for the sum. When Gregory joined the band in 1979, Partridge learned that they both shared a longtime enthusiasm for 1960s psychedelic music . An album of songs in that style
50388-411: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
50616-548: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
50844-439: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
51072-439: Was the first of a handful of XTC songs written over the years that reflected their poor financial state. Virtually every contemporary review of Mummer accused the band of falling out of touch with the contemporary music climate. Journalist Serene Dominic retrospectively wrote that the album was seen as "something of a disappointment at the time of release ... [It was] devoid of silly songs like 'Sgt. Rock' that had heretofore been
51300-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
51528-400: Was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated
51756-445: Was then recorded in less than two weeks, and released for January 1978. Partridge characterized the album as " Captain Beefheart meets the Archies " shrouded in 1950s-style retrofuturism . He reflected that the album was the sum of everything the band enjoyed, including the Beatles, Sun Ra , and Atomic Rooster , but dismissed the contents as premature songs "built around this electric wordplay stuff". White Music reached number 38 on
51984-401: Was written in tribute to Eno. The album also included a bonus EP, Go+ , which consisted of five dub remixes of XTC songs. Andrews left the band in December 1978, while they were on their first American tour, and went on to form the League of Gentlemen with Robert Fripp of King Crimson . Partridge said: "He enjoyed undermining what little authority I had in the band. We were bickering quite
#219780