20th Century Music Audio Timeline Part 4: 1960s

A lot of really interesting things happened during this decade. In no particular order:

Bubblegum pop emerges.

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

The chief characteristics of the genre are that it is pop music contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, is produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, using faceless singers and has an upbeat "bubblegum" sound. The songs typically have singalong choruses, seemingly childlike themes and a contrived innocence, occasionally combined with an undercurrent of sexual double entendre. They also have a catchy melody, simple chords, simple harmonies, danceable beats, and repetitive riffs or "hooks".

Well, that sound familiar. Wikipedia goes on to say that the music of the 90s, such as Britney Spears and boy bands, developed from this same genre. I'm glad we're all in agreement.

Their main example is the Monkees, who, apparently, were formed for a TV show of the same name. It doesn't really get more corporate than that.



Folk Music and Bob Dylan

Folk Music saw a revival, with a crop of singer-songwriters writing "protest music," spearheaded by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Minnesota and was really into early rock and roll in his youth, such as the music of Little Richard and Buddy Holly. He only turned to folk music later, in his college days, because for him, it seemed more tragic and deep and had the ability to express a wider range of human emotions. He started introducing himself as "Bob Dylan" when he was playing his college folk circuit (he was a fan of the poetry of Dylan Thomas). In 1961 he dropped out of college and moved to New York, where he started playing the Greenwich Village scene and made his first few records with Columbia. By 1963 he was already established as a singer-songwriter and associated with the anti-war and civil rights movements, along with his supporter and lover Joan Baez, who promoted him at her own concerts. His music had a great following amongst the fringe elements of the 60s.



Starting to feel a little constrained by the folk movement, he reinvented himself as a folk-rock pop star. In 1965 he released "Like a Rolling Stone." According to Wikipedia: At over six minutes in length, the song has been widely credited with altering attitudes about what a pop single could convey. Bruce Springsteen, in his speech during Dylan's inauguration into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame said that on first hearing the single, "that snare shot sounded like somebody'd kicked open the door to your mind."



Rolling Stone has it as the greatest rock song ever made, and it's easy to hear why. It sounds like it could have been written today. Hell, if it came out today, it would probably immediately chart and eclipse most of the drivel that enjoys airtime now.

He also started using electric instruments, which was a big controversy at the time and alienated a lot of fans (presumably, they thought he had betrayed them. How dare he experiment with something unfamiliar!).

He would leave a very extensive legacy. He is considered the voice and the guiding spirit of the counterculture movement. His songwriting has been compared in depth and quality to Keats, Eliot, and Tennyson and he is credited with bringing a level of seriousness and intellectual ambition to pop music. His musical style spanned everything from rock to gospel to R&B to folk to country -- basically every genre of pop music that had been invented at the time. Many artists credit him with laying down the foundation for "lyric, tune, seriousness, spirituality, and depth of rock music." Basically, he was the first really famous rock star to use music to actually say something profound.

Soul and Motown develop

I'm trying to avoid talking about the Beatles just yet, so we're going to move onto something else in the meantime.

Soul music is a combination of gospel music and rhythm and blues. There are a bajillion offshoots and I simply don't have the patience to go into all that. Instead, here is a video of James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul."



Sort of in response, Motown develops, which is actually a record label founded in Detroit owned by African Americans featuring mostly African American artists that sang soul music with a distinct pop flair.

San Francisco Sound and Acid Rock/Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelic rock is a genre that tries to recreate the experience of tripping out on acid in a musical form. As Wikipedia puts it: Psychedelic rock bridged the transition from early blues-based rock to progressive rock, art rock, experimental rock, hard rock and eventually heavy metal.

Elements include:

• electric guitars -- 12-strings being preferred for their 'jangle';
• elaborate studio effects, such as backwards taping, panning (sound placement in the stereo field), phasing, long delay loops, and extreme reverb;
• exotic instrumentation, with a particular fondness for the sitar and tabla
• a strong keyboard presence, especially Hammond, Farfisa, and Vox Organs, the Rhodes electric piano, Harpsichords, and the Mellotron (an early tape-driven 'sampler');
• a strong emphasis on extended instrumental solos; and/or
• modal melodies (a melody that is not really in any major or minor key) and surreal, esoterically-inspired, or whimsical lyrics;
• Rather than writing about love or poverty they would write about literature

The roots of the movement can be traced back to the British Invasion and what was going on in folk music at the time, but also to the Beat Generation poets such as Ginsburg and Kerouac and Ken Kesey. In 1965, a band called the Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions from San Francisco switched from acoustic to electric guitar, fell in with Kesey's Merry Pranksters, changed their name to the Warlocks, then to the Grateful Dead. Their sound is sort of a fusion of blues, folk rock, and country, and also something totally different altogether. They were different from most bands in that they never had a setlist, and would often go into lengthy improvisational jams onstage. They started playing light shows for the Pranksters, but influenced a whole wave of new artists, including Jefferson Airplane, whose album Jefferson Airplane Takes Off brought the sound to the attention of the nation.





Los Angeles also got into the the psychedelic scene. In 1965, the Doors formed with Jim Morrison, and they released the song "Light My Fire," which at 7 minutes long, broke the 3-minute pop radio song idiom.



In England, the advent of Pirate Radio helped psychedelic music reach a huge audience. Soon, everyone was getting into the scene. In 1966, the Jimi Hendrix experience was formed, fronted by Hendrix, who is considered one of the greatest guitarists of all time.




The Beach Boys got rid of their squeaky clean image to release the psychedelic-influenced Good Vibrations. The Who's Tommy and the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" and Their Satanic Majesties Request featured psychedelic sounds. Even the Bee Gees were psychedelic for a time, before reinventing themselves to disco. Then, there was the Beatles.

Now we have to talk about them.

In 1963 "I want to hold your hand" was first played in the US. The Beatles were already popular in England before making their extremely well received US debut in 1964 amidst a rising tide of Beatlemania. Once they became established, they started the British Invasion. Their albums Revolver and Rubber Soul had already established their dominance in trippy experimental ism (although, after all, it was the 60s. Most of rock and roll as it exists today hadn't been invented yet. Just about everything they wrote that was modern sounding was "experimental" at the time. And the acid was showing its effects, too). These two albums were greatly inspired by Bob Dylan's example, while proving to be just as catchy and radio-friendly as "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," which had just come out in 1965 and was a huge smash hit for their countrymen, the Rolling Stones.

The Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in 1967, in the aftermath of waning Beatlemania and a decision to return to the studio after a long time touring. The Beatles had made their career in studio albums but had been touring excessively and were starting to feel the strain of being so special. The idea was to record an album as a fictional band, so that they could be free and not feel the pressure of being "The Beatles." It is rated as one of the most influential records of all time. Rolling Stone has it at #1 position on its list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and after gushing over it for paragraphs (how influential it is, how it perfectly complemented the 1967 "Summer of Love" and spearheaded this feeling of love and peace all across the globe, how it represented the pinnacle of cutting edge studio work and collaborative harmonics, and on and on), it finally says, "Yet Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the Number One album of the RS 500 not just because of its firsts -- it is simply the best of everything the Beatles ever did as musicians, pioneers and pop stars, all in one place."

As Wikipedia puts it: it is a veritable encyclopaedia of psychedelia (among other elements), as well as an explosion of creativity that would set the standard for rock albums decades later. From the title track to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" to "Within You Without You" to "A Day in the Life", the album showcased a wildly colourful palette, with unpredictable changes in rhythm, texture, melody, and tone colour that few groups could equal.





Other "British Invasion" bands included the Rolling Stones and The Who. Here is "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones, featuring a very characteristically psychedelic-rock sounding opening riff:



The Who formed in 1964 and soon rose to fame in the UK, helped by the advent of pirate radio which became a major contender to BBC broadcasting. They had crossover success in the US, starting from Tommy (1969). They became known for energetic live performances and for trashing their instruments on stage, and later on became associated with the punk and hard rock movements. Here is Baba O'Riley from Who's Next, featuring a synthesizer intro:




Prog Rock

Another notable band from this genre is Pink Floyd, whose sound influenced the Beatles on the making of their Lonely Hearts album, as they shared studio space with them. Progressive rock formed out of the late 1960s and went on through the 70s partly as a response to the influence of the Beatles and is, according to Wikipedia, a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." The following characteristics are all lifted from Wikipedia:

Form: Progressive rock music either avoids common popular music song structures of verse-chorus-bridge, or blur the formal distinctions by extending sections or inserting musical interludes, often with exaggerated dynamics to heighten contrast between sections. Classical forms are often inserted or substituted, sometimes yielding entire suites, building on the traditional medleys of earlier rock bands. Progressive rock music also often has extended instrumental passages, marrying the classical solo tradition with the improvisational traditions of jazz and psychedelic rock. All of these tend to add length to progressive rock music, which may last longer than twenty minutes and are usually not "songs" per se, but musical works that have a lot more in common with more established musical concepts.

Timbre (instrumentation and tone color): Early progressive rock groups expanded the timbral palette of traditional rock instrumentation of guitar, organ, bass, and drums by adding instruments more typical of jazz or folk music, such as flute, saxophone, and violin, and more often than not used electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and electronic effects units. Some instruments – most notably the Moog synthesizer and the Mellotron – have become closely associated with the genre.

Rhythm: Drawing on their classical, jazz, folk and experimental influences, progressive rock artists are more likely to explore time signatures other than 4/4 and tempo changes. Progressive rock generally tends to be freer in its rhythmic approach than other forms of rock music. The approach taken varies across different works but may range from regular beats to irregular or complex time signatures.

Melody and Harmony: In progressive rock, the blues inflections of mainstream rock are often supplanted by jazz and classical influences. Melodies are more likely to be modal than based on the pentatonic scale, and are more likely to comprise longer, developing passages than short, catchy ones. Chords and chord progressions may be augmented with 6th, 7th, 9th, and compound intervals; and the I-IV-V is much less common. Allusions to, or even direct quotes from, well-known classical themes are common. Some bands (notably King Crimson) have used atonal or dissonant harmonies, and a few, such as Henry Cow, Shub-Niggurath, and 5UUs, have even worked with rudimentary serialism.

Texture and imagery: Ambient soundscapes and theatrical elements may be used to describe scenes, events or other aspects of the concept. For example, leitmotif is used to represent the various characters in Genesis' "Harold the Barrel" (from Nursery Cryme) and "Robbery, Assault and Battery" (from A Trick of the Tail), and more literally, the sounds of clocks and cash registers are used to represent time and money in Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.

Technology: To aid timbral exploration, progressive rock bands were often early adopters of new electronic musical instruments and technologies. The analog synthesizer is the instrument best associated with progressive rock. This included the modular Moog used by ELP, Mini Moog by Yes, ARP Pro Soloist by Genesis, Oberheim by Styx, etc. The mellotron, particularly, was a signature sound of early progressive bands. Pink Floyd utilized an EMS Synthi A synthesizer equipped with a sequencer on their track "On the Run" from their 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon. In the late 1970s, Robert Fripp, of King Crimson, and Brian Eno developed an analog tape loops effect (Frippertronics). In the 1980s, Frank Zappa used the Synclavier for composing and recording, and King Crimson utilized MIDI-enabled guitars, a Chapman Stick, and electronic percussion.

Concept albums: Collections of songs unified by an elaborate, overarching theme or story are common to progressive rock. As songs by progressive rock acts tend to be quite long, such collections have frequently exceeded the maximum length of recorded media, resulting in packages that require multiple vinyl discs, cassettes, or compact discs in order to present a single album. Concepts have included the historical, fantastical, and metaphysical, and even, in the case of Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick, poking fun at concept albums.

Lyrical themes: Progressive rock typically has lyrical ambition similar to its musical ambition, tending to avoid typical rock/pop subjects such as love, dancing, etc., rather inclining towards the kinds of themes found in classical literature, fantasy, folklore, social commentary or all of these. Peter Gabriel (Genesis) often wrote surreal stories to base his lyrics around, sometimes including theatrical elements with several characters, while Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) combined social criticism with personal struggles with greed, madness, and death.

Presentation: Album art and packaging is often an important part of the artistic concept. This trend can be seen to have begun with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and played a major part in the marketing of progressive rock. Some bands became as well known for the art direction of their albums as for their sound, with the "look" integrated into the band's overall musical identity. This led to fame for particular artists and design studios, most notably Roger Dean for his work with Yes, and Hipgnosis for their work with Pink Floyd and several other progressive rock groups.

Stage theatrics: Beginning in the early 1970s, some progressive rock bands began incorporating elaborate and sometimes flamboyant stage theatrics into their concerts. Genesis lead singer Peter Gabriel wore many different colourful and exotic costumes in one show and frequently acted out the lyrical narrative of the songs, Pink Floyd would utilize burning gongs and crashing airplanes and inflatables, Yes incorporated futuristic stage sets designed by Roger Dean, performing 'in-the-round', and one of ELP's many stage antics include Emerson's "flying piano" at the California Jam concert, in which a Steinway grand piano would be spun from a hoist.

In short, prog-rock incorporates just about every "modern" feature of modern rock music.

Earlier on in the 60s part of their career, Pink Floyd was associated with psychedelic rock. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was released in 1967 when Syd Barrett was still with the band, and is considered one of the most influential albums of all time. By 1973, when Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon, the prog-rock sound is hard to deny:



Ah, Pink Floyd - so ahead of their time.

Country Music

Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton are popular.



Velvet Underground

In 1967 The Velvet Underground and Nico was released. The band itself had gained notoriety, although not commercial success, as the house band for Andy Warhol and his shenanigans. The album is considered to be extremely influential to the punk and alternative movements of the 70s and 80s. At the time, it was controversial because of its blatant themes of S&M and drug use.

The Velvet Underground - Venus in Furs




In 1969, Woodstock was held, featuring many of the great acts of the time, including the Who, Hendrix, Joan Baez, Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane. It was a flagship moment for the hippie peace and love generation.

The Beatles split up in 1970, Hendrix died in 1970 under mysterious circumstances, and Morrison was found dead in his bathtub in 1971. Thus, we kick off the 1970s.

20th Century Music Audio Timeline Part 3: 1950s

Rock and Roll is born.

Well, really, it's a lot more complicated than that. Rock and roll was born out of a fusion of a tradition of African slave music (rhythm and blues type stuff) with the restlessness and rebellion of the Baby Boomer generation, who grew up in the prosperous American 50s to parents who were of the WWII era.

There is a lot of controversy around what the first rock and roll song truly is. It is mostly agreed that rock and roll developed out of the rhythm and blues of the 1940s and 1950s. At the time, "rhythm and blues" was a catchall term for any music produced by African Americans, although someone categorized it as "rocking, jazzy urban music with a strong insistent beat." It developed out of the tradition of jazz and blues, and was also influenced by the boogie woogie rhythms that had sprung up in the 40s. Boogie woogie is a form of piano-based blues that is associated with dancing. There is a long laundry list of characteristics that it supposedly has, but I thought this "typical bassline" was more informative.





The term "rock and roll" had been used as slang by the blues and R&B communities to refer both to dancing and to sex. Around 1951, Cleveland radio DJ Alan Freed first coined the term to describe the kind of music he was playing. Around this time, a lot of black R&B artists were playing music that was indistinguishable from early rock and roll.

The articles don't really give a sense of just how revolutionary this must have been. This was the 50s, after all, and almost everything about rock and roll was controversial or naughty (this was pre-Civil Rights America, it was the music of black people, it was covertly all about sex and dancing and it was probably all considered degenerate and immoral).

One of the candidates for "first rock and roll song" is Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, recorded in 1954. Haley used to be a country music performer who switched to this newly emerging rock and roll style. His band ("Bill Haley and His Comets") is considered the first white band to bring the rock and roll style to national attention, and many people consider them to be just as influential in their time as the Beatles would be in the 60s.



Fats Domino also has a contender for first rock and roll song. Domino popularized boogie woogie and, along with Ray Charles, helped to bring blues to attention. Also, the Notorious BIG must have been channeling him, especially with that finger bling:



But undoubtedly, this is the era of Elvis. An untrained musician who nevertheless knew a huge number of songs by ear and could sing just about anything, he was born in Mississippi and later moved to Memphis where he got into the Beale Street blues scene. He was also a fan of country, gospel, and R&B music of the time. His particular brand of music became known as "rockabilly," which is a portmanteau of "rock" and "hillbilly," meaning a fusion of country and R&B music with a strong back beat.

In the 1950s, he started generating some radio and recording interest and developed his pelvis-gyrating, leg moving style during his live performances, at which he routinely caused a huge stir amongst girls in the audience. He is, indeed, quite a doll. Just look at that face:



In 1955 he signed with Paramount Pictures and thus began his successful film career; although his films were disliked by critics, they always did well at the box office. In 1956 he signed with RCA Records and began a string of controversial and popular national television appearances, including an infamous performance on the Milton Berle show, during which his dancing style was described by outraged older viewers as obscene and vulgar. It generated such a stir that he was booked for the Ed Sullivan show, on which they appearently censored him by only showing him from the waist up. The bottom half of him was too hot to air.

In 1957, he was drafted into the army and went off to his post in Germany. His mother died the following year. When he returned from the army, he continued with his acting career, but by 1968 he had failed to place a Billboard 100 hit for six years. He had a "comeback" TV special on NBC, which catapulted him into national fame again and led to a string of US tours, which continued up until his death in 1977. By then he had become a parody of his former self; he was battling weight and other health problems and was addicted to pills and alcohol.

However, his legacy is hard to understate. He was the first big rock and roll superstar, and a symbol of the rebelliousness that it would forever be associated with. Adults disliked his black-influenced music and his dancing style; they saw him as a sex pervert and an immoral influence even as young people saw him as a sex symbol. Although many blacks considered him to have ripped off of their style, he did bring the black style of music to national attention and opened the door for many black performers. He would go on to inspire an entire generation of musicians -- everyone from the Beatles, who were all Elvis fans, to Cher, to Bob Dylan. He would basically show the world that it was possible for a performer to have a powerful and lasting impact on an audience.

In 1959, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash. This is dubbed "The Day the Music Died" in the song "American Pie." Thus, we close out the 1950s.

50s music hasn't really aged well over the years -- it sounds dated and is relegated to "oldies" status, but music from the Beatles era still sounds passably modern enough to still be enjoyed today.

20th Century Music Audio Timeline Part 2: Jazz

According to Wikipedia, jazz is a form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, poly rhythms, call and response, and improvisation. First, some definitions:

Blue Note: You have a major scale, such as CDEFGABC, but you play some notes of it in a different pitch, for example, the Eb (E flat) instead of the E. Usually blue notes are a semitone lower than the "normal" note. And they are played over a major chord, which gives it a slightly dissonant element.
Syncopation: Basically any rhythmic stress that occurs in a place where it normally would not be (in terms of the large-scale rhythm pattern of strong and weak beats).
Poly rhythms: Two different rhythms played at the same time, for example, 3 evenly space notes against 2, played so that they both start and end at the same time (the 3 notes are faster than the 2).

Jazz is also notable for being the first form of music to come out of the United States (rock and roll and all its offshoots being the second one...), and it arose directly from the African slave trade. Art is Resistance, etc.

Ragtime, as a genre, developed at the turn of the century while black entertainers were enjoying some popularity as lowbrow entertainment in clubs and vaudeville. Wikipedia claims that this arose largely in part because newly segregated blacks had trouble finding work in other avenues, but that's neither here nor there. Ragtime was taken up by more high class patrons; here is a ragtime song by the white classically trained pianist Scott Joplin, "The Entertainer."



In New Orleans, a crop of entertainers who played the red-light bars and brothels and came from a tradition of African funeral marches sprang up. Jelly Roll Morton (a New Orleans creole) published his Jelly Roll Blues in 1915 as the first jazz composition on paper.



With the passing of Prohibition, jazz moved into the venue of the speakeasy, where it became synonymous with decadence and degenerate virtues. In the 1930s, big band swing became popular and with it, famous performers such as Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington. Here is a Benny Goodman song from the Swing Kids movie, which is a film about young German youngsters in Nazi Germany who secretly listen to the music of Jews and black people while hating Hitler.



In the 1940s, a Dixieland revival returns to the elements of the original New Orleans style. Wikipedia describes it as a "contrapuntal" style. The idea of counterpoint (which is basically two different melodies that when played at the same time, sound good together) is a really old concept that goes back to Bach, who actually published a song that is supposed to be the pinnacle of counterpoint. In particular, Louis Armstrong's All Stars band becomes popular around this time.

As a sort of reaction to the swing movement, bebop arose in the 1940s, which is a less danceable and more performance oriented movement of jazz, commonly associated with chromatic scales (playing all the notes moving up one semitone at a time), the tritone (basically just a chord that is the one and the flat five, like C-F#), more dissonance, and improvisation. It is also faster than big band swing and features drumming where the cymbal is used to keep time and the other drums used for accents. Famous bebop musicians include Charlie Parker (Bird) and Thelonius Monk.





In the 1950s, bebop gave way to "cool jazz" which was slower and had more of an emphasis on long melodic lines. Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool is recorded around 1950.



Since that basically takes us up to 1950s and the birth of rock and roll, I'm going to leave off the jazz timeline here. Apologies to all the hardcore jazz fans.

20th Century Music Audio Timeline Part 1: Classical Music

Impressionism as a musical movement arose around the turn of the century, part of the larger Impressionistic art movement of Monet and pointilism and art that looks better from far away than up close (which could be said to be a reaction to the invention of the camera. Why bother trying to reproduce anything realistically when the camera can do it a million times better than you?).

One of the first prominent figures of the period was Claude Debussy, a French composer whose work is associated with atonality (which is music that has no key) or bitonality, parallel chords (chords that move up or down by the same interval, together), and use of the pentatonic scale (used heavily in rock music, it is a 5-note scale in constrast to the 7 note scale, starting at C they are C, D, E, G, A). By comparison to the music of the previous decade, his work sounds a little less settled because of the lack of a unifying key, but he was very good at creating beautiful harmonies even without the use of a key. His work has elements which seem to harken to the invention of jazz, which you can hear in this piece, "Reflections in the Water."



Another French Impressionist,Maurice Ravel, is probably most famous for his Bolero, but also wrote some songs in which the jazz element (which is not entirely an anachronism, jazz as a form existed during his lifetime, he was a contemporary of Gershwin) is blatantly obvious, such as in his Piano Concerto in G (the one that starts with a whip crack).



For comparison numbers, the Concerto in G was composed around 1930. Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue premiered in 1924. Gershwin probably deserves his own article, but suffice it to say here that he is the one that basically took "jazz off the streets, dolled her up, and took her to the concert hall". Here is the Rhapsody in Blue, because it is awesome, and has one of the best endings of any song, ever.





Gustav Mahler is another prominent composer of the period, who also worked in atonality. Here is his Adagietto from Symphony #5, one of the most beautiful pieces ever written.



Sergei Prokofiev is probably one of the more famous of the 20th century classical composers. He also used tonality in new ways and also introduced an element of dissonance (there are accepted chords that sound nice together because they follow certain harmonies, and any notes that don't fall into this nice sounding harmonic structure is considered dissonant). It is probably easier to illustrate this with an example.



His use of rhythm is very noteworthy also. You can get a further sense of it from his Romeo and Juliet ballet, 1935(give it about 1 minute to kick into the famous part).



Aaron Copland is an American composer who incorporated many elements of American folk music into his own classical style. Here is his "Hoedown" from Rodeo (1942), which is a concert staple nowadays. It has also been used in some kind of processed food commercial.



Aleatoric music developed around the 1950s with John Cage, whose music often left a lot of things up to the discretion of the performer instead of the traditional way of composing, in which every little thing is written down and the performer simply regurgitates it back exactly the way it is written. Some of his pieces just set down a set of notes and told the performer to play them in order but whenever he felt like it, other pieces left a lot of elements of the performance up to chance, such as telling the performer to jingle his car keys.

20th Century Music Audio Timeline

Overture

Initially, I just wanted to understand all the different branches of rock music out there today and how they relate to each other, but that naturally evolved into researching how all the different branches of popular music evolved throughout the 20th century. There are a lot of sources on the web that have annoyingly incomplete fragments of the whole story, and none that I could find that included clips of the actual music being discussed, so that's mostly what this article will do: attempt to give a 500-ft view of all the different kinds of popular music out there today, complete with audio examples.

Disclaimers:

• I am not a subject matter expert and most of the information here is probably going to be blatantly lifted from Wikipedia and other crowd-sourced sources. I'm also going to be talking about music theory, a subject on which I have minimal exposure and no formal training, so the information may be off or just blatantly wrong on multiple levels.
• I don't really care about the evolution of certain genres of music (like country), so this will not be comprehensive or exhaustive. I'll talk about them if there is something interesting to be said.
• I have to use examples to illustrate some of these points, and that means I have to pick one or two bands to exemplify a particular sound or movement. I'm really sorry if I happened to not pick your favorite band. I wasn't born when a lot of these people were famous and I do not count myself as familiar with most popular music scenes so I apologize in advance if I offend anyone here with my choice of examples.
• I'm going to try really hard not to insert my personal opinion of the state of popular music today, but there will be times when good taste will triumph over restraint.
  
• This is mostly an attempt to gain some perspective on how pop music evolved, so that when someone makes a statement like "The Vienna Franks are a good example of urban white acid folk revivalism laced with ska," I will have a better foundation to understand just how ridiculous of a statement that is. I make no attempts to be rigorous or scholarly.

The Colour and the Shape

Broad Trends, Musical Formats
Classical Music up to 1950s or so: Mahler, Gershwin, Debussy, Ravel, Copland, Prokofiev, John Cage
Jazz up to 1950s or so: Ragtime, Big Band/Swing, Bebop, Cool Jazz
1950s: Rock and Roll is born: Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, Richie Valens. "Rockabilly" is born. Blues is popularized by Ray Charles and Fats Domino, who introduced "boogie-woogie."
1960s: Bubblegum pop: the Monkees, folk music, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the British Invasion (The Who), San Francisco sound: The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and the birth of psychedelic rock (Hendrix and the Doors), progressive rock. Soul and Motown develop. Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton. Woodstock. Vietnam.
1970s: Lots of Famous People Die. Glam rock (David Bowie). German-inspired kraut-rock influences prog-rock (Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd), punk (Ramones, Sex Pistols, the Clash) and New Wave (Talking Heads). Hard Rock develops with Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. Country rock (the Eagles). Metal starts up (AC/DC, Aerosmith, Def Leppard). It is the age of disco (Bee Gees). Funk (James Brown) is also popular. Bob Marley and reggae become popular. 1979 saw the birth of hip-hop music with the song Rapper's Delight by Sugarhill Gang. Improvements in cassette tape technology makes it competitive to the 12-inch vinyl LP gramaphone.
1980s: alternative rock (U2 and REM). New Wave: new Romantic (David Bowie) and CBGB-style punk. Arena rock: Journey. Glam Metal/hair metal: Van Halen, Queen, Kiss. Hard rock/metal: Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns 'n Roses, Aerosmith. Orchestra-heavy disco is replacced by lighter synthpop. Teenpop is born: Madonna and Whitney Houston are popular. Michael Jackson releases Thriller in 1982. Hip hop: Run DMC, Salt n Peppa, Grandmaster Flash.
1990s: Teen pop singers and boy bands (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls). R&B: (Usher, R Kelly, Aaliyah). Alternative rock continues (Our Lady Peace, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins), Grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden). Pop punk (Greenday, Third Eye Blind). Britpop (Oasis, Blur). Indie Rock (the Pixies, Flaming Lips), Third Wave Ska (Mighty Mighty Bosstones). Hip hop explodes: Puff Daddy, Dr. Dre, 2Pac. Singer-songwriter revival (Alanis Morisette, Tori Amos). Industrial music spawns industrial metal (Nine Inch Nails). Other electronic movements such as house and techno music lead to trance. Massive Attack spawns the trip hop movement. European death metal (Rammstein).
2000s: The Hip Hop trend continues and surpasses rock as the dominant musical form: crunk and gangsta rap. Alternative rock spawns post grunge (Creed, Nickleback, Foo Fighters), numetal (Linkin Park, Evanescence), and emo (Dashboard Confessional, My Chemical Romance). Metal is popular again (Slayer), and death metal is popular in Europe. British invasion (Coldplay, Radiohead, Muse). Pop punk continues (Fall Out Boy). Indie Rock becomes very popular (the Strokes), more commercialized (Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie), and becomes catch-all term for non-commercial bands, also spawning lots of odd categories (chamber pop/baroque pop) because indie rock doesn't have a unified sound. Electropop remains big: Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga. R&B/Hip Hop is still huge. Ethnic music (is a terrible category name): Shakira, MIA. Country music is big. K-pop and J-pop are huge in Japan.

On with the Show

Technology changed the face of popular music on a lot of fronts. New instruments such as the synthesizer, the drum machine, the electric guitar, and the theremin were invented, which created genres built around new sounds. The radio and the rise of popular recording formats made music easier to distribute; musicians could now reach a wider audience than ever before. Music became more portable; we can now take our own music with us in CD players or iPods and listen to our own collection on headphones. Musicians can travel all over the world with ease and play to huge audiences with the rise of amplification techniques in stadium concerts. The music video as a form of popular dissemination rose to fame. The advent of digital music and file sharing is still changing the face of musical distribution in ways that the recording industry hasn't really caught onto yet.

The vinyl disc emerged as the first true hi-fi format around the 1930s and still holds some sway as the format of choice amongst really hard-core audiophiles. Around 1963 the cassette tape came into play, but it didn't really hit its stride until the advent of the Sony Walkman in the 1980s. There was a period of time in the 60s when the 8-track tape was popular, but it seems to be mostly a dead format now. I've never even seen one. In the 1980s, the CD emerged and still remains a popular format, even though the sound quality cannot compare with true analog. In the 90s, the MP3, the first truly digital format to receive any kind of wide acceptance, rose to prominence; however, as it is a lossy format, it will never have the same kind of audio quality as a CD, even though most people can't really tell the difference anyway. Then we get into the era of iTunes DRM and other ugly proprietary formats, a fight which the music industry is doomed to lose to common sense. There are also two audiophile versions of the CD, which are SACD and DVD Audio, although neither of them have gained much popularity since most people don't even have the equipment needed to play them.

Film School Dropouts: Ridley Scott

Gladiator

For all its obviously huge production value, I think I liked the little things in Gladiator best, small details and moments that defy description -- but I'm going to try anyway. In the scene during which Maximum is passed out in a cart, on the way to being sold into slavery, he wakes up, having delusional visions, and his finger brushes a rock on the ground. To his addled mind, the impact of one small pebble hitting another is as loud an impact as a bullet being fired. In the closing scene, Juba buries Maximus's wife and son dolls, and when he stands up, the audience sees that he's standing in the Coliseum on a day it is not used for battle. Whereas all along it had been sunny and noisy and full of men and blood, today it is silent, empty -- the show is over. Small details like this, to which so much attention was obviously paid to, really stand out and made this movie something other than just another sword-and-sandals epic.

Overall, it's a decent revenge story (never mind the historical inaccuracies) wrapped inside beautiful visuals, courtesy of Ridley Scott, and impressive effects. The opening battle scene, when viewed on a theater screen, manages to impress and strike a note of dread with its image of barbarian hordes emerging from an untamed forest wilderness. Costumes and set design were lavish and rich, and the music was also excellent -- almost too good for the film itself, in fact. Russell Crowe didn't have to do much except sulk and be menacing for most of the film, but there are a few rare moments in which he gets to display that he can actually act. Although much was made of Commodus's immorality, there wasn't much to show for it in the movie except that he was kind of an ineffectual emperor and in love with his sister (forgivable, since it was Connie Nielsen). It's the kind of movie that leaves you feeling as if you had experienced something greater than what it actually was, and that in itself, I think, is commendable.

Kingdom of Heaven

Blade Runner

This film really stands out, not just from the main body of Ridley Scott's work, but from most other movies that I can think of. First of all, in terms of Phillip Dick adaptations, this would probably have to be the best one (and I'm mostly thinking of Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly, although Scanner wasn't half bad). But it's so different from the book that it might almost be another work altogether. The scale on which it was made probably links it most with cyberpunk, because the actual look of the two words isn't really the same. Cyberpunk is sleek, shiny,

Film School Dropouts: Sci-Fi

I'll admit it -- I'm fairly sensitive about this category. Mostly because I think a lot of the movies that take place in space don't really have anything to do with what I could define as science fiction, which is the exploration of how technology and science impacts the human condition. By that definition, movies like The Fifth Element aren't really science fiction, but simply action movies set in space, while movies not set in space but dealing with science issues, such as Oryx and Crake and Donnie Darko (because of the time travel elements) would be science fiction. But Hollywood tends to blur this line a lot, so I won't get too uptight about it.

Primer

This movie is the little indie film that could.

Children of Men

This movie was directed by Alfonso Cuaron and stars Clive Owen. That is reason enough for me to like it. However, it has a lot of standout elements. Cuaron really knows how to film a particular look masterfully -- Great Expectations looks always perpetually shrouded in the sunshine-drenched gardens of memory. Y Tu Mama Tambien also sort of looks that way. In this movie, the future dystopian look of a crumbling society where law and order have essentially fallen by the wayside and humanity is consumed by despair is capured perfectly. The look is further accentuated by the long newsreel type shots and the attention to detail -- the setting speaks for itself, instead of having everything spelled out. It's a very stark world of grey bombed out buildings, concentration camps, and urban chaos. It looks very real. The long scenes serve to build up tension and reinforce the drama. Long scenes are rare nowadays, because Hollywood just assumes that the average viewer has an attention span of only five seconds.

Special effects are integrated seamlessly into the movie, instead of being the sole reason to watch the movie. The acting is superb. It's a classy, intelligent science fiction movie.

The Fifth Element

The thing I like most about this movie is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. I hated it the first time I saw it, thinking that it was a pile of crap, but upon watching it again later, I realized the whole thing is sort of an elaborate running joke and that you're not expected to take it seriously. Seen from this viewpoint, the movie is wildly entertaining. Yves Saint-Laurent designed the costumes, which seem to be predominately planned around the color orange. The techno opera scene is a remix of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lamamour, with Sarah Brightman's voice. Even Tricky has a small role as Zorg's main henchman. There's some sort of Stargate-esque plot involving aliens and ancient Egyptians, but the entire first half of the movie is basically an opera comique until they actually arive at Phloston Paridise and Bruce Willis is allowed to bust out his guns and go all commando. But it's great fun, all around.