Ninetales

but recognizable is relative. what did rock n roll mean before it became a popular genre? its a nonsense name no better than shoegaze to describe sound.

Dylstew

before it became a popular genre? I guess Rhythm & Blues slightly sped up, but with the majority of people playing it being white instead of black.

Ninetales

well I just mean naming a genre of music after a cluster of minerals doesn't describe the sound of it.

Oriphiel

Sure it does. Metals are usually heavier (or, I guess more accurately, denser) than crystals, and other solids. Heavy Metal referred to Rock music that was "heavier" than normal, have deeper bass lines, more distorted instruments, a thick wall of sound. The term supposedly came from the song "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf (the line "a heavy metal thunder!") and was used to describe heavy prog/psychadelic songs.

Urban Hat€monger ?

I thought Rock n Roll was named after the motion of rocking rather than stonework.

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Rexx Shredd

the terms "Rock N Roll", "Rock Me", "Roll Me", etc all used to describe the act of sex in the early 20th Century

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Rexx Shredd

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Kedvesem

Which fits quite well with the pulsing, pounding beats I hear in rock 'n' roll.

I have rarely heard anything so straight-up erotic as "Paint It Black". The sound of it...

GD

In regards to the discussion about uninformative genre descriptions, I have noticed that the most silly and least descriptive labels are often coined by the music press/music journalists (for example "shoegaze" and "krautrock") and the genre names that are more informative and logical often originate from the musicians themselves (many from song titles or lyrics it seems). Don't know why so many of the former category have gotten the status of "official" genre names, though.

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Freebase Dali

I wonder where this conversation might go when dealing with electronic music. Or really, just any music that has a certain characteristic between subgenres that lends itself to a style and approach that human beings just generally find classification of such to be a discovery tool, rather than a status...

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