HISTORY

home | gallery | hall of fame

1955 "Rebel Without A Cause" and "Blackboard Jungle" establish a new role model for teenagers, the rebellious loner and sometimes juvenile delinquent
Pete Seeger releases the first album of African music by a white musician, Bantu Choral Folk Songs
Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line launches a new genre in Britain, "skiffle"
Hungarian composer Georg Ligeti, while studying at Cologne, coins a "texture music" that has minimal movement
Chuck Berry cuts his first rock and roll records, the first ones to have the guitar as the main instrument, and invents the descending pentatonic double-stops (the essence of rock guitar)
Bo Diddley invents the "hambone" rhythm
The Chordettes and the Chantels are the first girl-groups
Ray Charles invents "soul" music with I Got A Woman, a secular adaptation of an old gospel
Indian sarod player Ali Akbar Khan performs at the Museum of Modern Art of New York
The magazine "Village Voice" is founded by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher and Norman Mailer
Ace Records is formed by Johnny Vincent in New Orleans, specializing in black music

1956 Heartbreak Hotel starts Presley-mania
The rock'n'roll music of white rockers is called "rockabilly" (rock + hillbilly)
Screamin Jay Hawkins' I Put A Spell On You introduces voodoo into rock'n'roll
Wanda Jackson is the "queen of rockabilly"
The popularity of rock and roll causes the record industry to boom and allows independent labels to flourish
Ska develops in Jamaica
Martin Denny's Exotica invents a new genre
Norman Granz founds Verve to promote alternative jazz musicians
Elektra pioneers the "compilation" record, containing songs by different musicians

1957 Golden age of the teen-idols
Link Wray's Rumble invents the "fuzz-tone" guitar sound
LaMonte Young composes music for sustained tones
Max Mathews begins composing computer music at Bell Laboratories
Lejaren Hiller writes a program for a computer to compose the Illiac Suite
Bruno Maderna's Musica su Due Dimensioni is the first electroacoustic composition
Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat launches "calypso"

1958 Golden age of instrumental rock
Eddie Cochran overdubs all instruments and vocals on Summertime Blues and C'mon Everybody
The Kingstone Trio's Tom Dooley launches the folk revival
Lowman Pauling invents guitar distortion and feedback on the Five Royales' The Slummer The Slum
The film company Warner Brothers enters the recording business
Big Bill Broonzy dies at 65
RCA introduces the first stereo long-playing records
Don Kirshner opens offices at the Brill Building
David Seville's The Witch Doctor and the Tokens' Tonite I Fell In Love are the first novelty hits
Edgar Varese premieres his Poeme Electronique in a special pavilion designed by architect Le Corbusier, where the music reacts with the environment
John Fahey invents "American primitivism"
Bobby Freeman's Do You Wanna Dance begins the "dance craze"
Antonio Carlos Jobim's Chega de Saudade coins bossanova
The Columbia-Princeton studio is established in New York for avantgarde composers, with an RCA Mark II synthesizer
Stax is founded in Memphis to promote black music

1959 Frank Zappa and Donald Van Vliet cut a record together
In Jamaica Theophilus Beckford cuts the first "ska" song, Easy Snapping
Rick Hall founds the FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama
The Drifters' There Goes My Baby introduces Latin rhythm into pop music
Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion introduces the USA to African polyrhythms
The first Newport Folk Festival is held
John Cage performs "live electronic music"
LaMonte Young and others found the "Fluxus" movement
Barry Gordy founds Tamla Motown in Detroit to release party-oriented soul records
Chris Blackwell founds Island in Jamaica
Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and others found the "Tape Music Center" near San Francisco
Raymond Scott invents the first sequencer, the "Wall of Sound"
600 million records are sold in the USA
Buddy Holly dies at 22 in a plane crash
Since 1955, the US market share of the four "majors" has dropped from 78% to 44%, while the market share of independent record companies increased from 22% to 56%
Since 1955, the US market has increased from 213 million dollars to 603 million, and the market share of rock and roll has increased from 15.7% to 42.7%

TM, ®, Copyright © 2002 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.
1960 Twist is the biggest dance-craze in the year of the dance-crazes
Larry Parnes, Britain's most famous impresario, arranges a show for the Silver Beetles in Liverpool
The Shirelles' Will You Love Me Tomorrow coins a form of romantic multi-part vocal harmonies
The British producer Joe Meek uses the recording studio like an instrument for the space opera I Hear a New World
Eddie Cochran dies at 22
The word "reggae" is coined in Jamaica to identify a "ragged" style of dance music, with its roots in New Orleans rhythm and blues
The movie-jukebox "Scopitone" is invented in France (a refinement of the Panoram)
Russ Solomon opens the first Tower Records in Sacramento (California), the first music megastore
Philips buys Mercury
Frank Sinatra founds Reprise Records

1961 Dick Dale uses the term "surfing" to describe his instrumental rock and roll
Bob Dylan arrives at New York's Greenwich Village
British bluesman Alexis Korner forms the Blues Incorporated, with a rotating cast that will include Charlie Watts, John Surman, John McLaughlin, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Keith Richard, Eric Burdon, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, etc
Howling Wolf cuts the Rocking Chair album, the masterpiece of rhythm'n'blues
July: The magazine "Mersey Beat" is founded in Liverpool
The Tokens' The Lion Sleeps Tonight uses operatic singing, Neapolitan choir, yodel, proto-electronics
Stax begins to produce soul records in Memphis
Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff found Philadelphia International to produce soul records with orchestral arrangements
Robert Ashley and Gordon Mumma organize the first ONCE festival of avantgarde music at Ann Arbor (Michigan)
LaMonte Young creates the "dream house", where the environment is part of the music
MGM buys Verve
The "Peppermint Lounge" opens in New York

1962 The Beach Boys' Surfin (released in december 1961) launches surf-music in the charts
The American producer Phil Spector creates a style of production named "wall of sound"
the Tornado's futuristic instrumental Telstar is the first British record to top the USA charts
Most pop hits are written and produced at the Brill Building
First show of the Rolling Stones at the Marquee (July 12)
First show of the Beatles at the Cavern (August 18)
Robert Wyatt and others form the Wilde Flowers, the beginning of the dynasty of the Canterbury school
Seattle guitarist Jimi Hendrix begins working as a session-man
The bishop of New York forbids Catholic students from dancing the Twist
Golden age of the girl-groups
Herb Alpert founds A&M in Los Angeles
Boom of the Tamla Motown record label
MCA buys the American recording company Decca
The US market share of the four "majors" drops to 26%

1963 "Beatlesmania" hits Britain
The Trashmen's Surfin' Bird and the Surfaris' Wipe Out extend the scope of surf music
Davy Graham in Britain and Sandy Bull in the USA fuse folk, blues, jazz and Indian raga
Eric Clapton joins the Yardbirds
Daevid Allen of the Wilde Flowers experiments with tape loops
A soul record, Marvin Gaye's Can I Get A Witness, becomes the anthem of British mods
The Kingsmen stage the first Louie Louie marathon (playing the song over and over again for one hour), and garage-rock is born
Pierre Henry's Rock Electronique employs electronic riff and rhythm
50% of American recordings are made in Nashville
Elmore James dies at 45
The FBI spies on folksingers such as Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs.
Warner buys Reprise

1964 Don Van Vliet forms the Magic Band and adopts the nickname Captain Beefheart
Jesse Colin Young's The Soul Of A City Boy is a folk album that employs jazz musicians
The "British Invasion" exports to the USA the enthusiasm created by Beatlesmania in the UK
The riff of You Really Got Me by the Kinks virtually invents hard-rock
Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop is the first worldwide ska hit
Eric Clapton of the Yardbirds uses the guitar to produce feedback and fuzz
Debbie Reynolds makes a video for If I Had A Hammer, the first music video
Wilson Pickett creates an evil, ferocious kind of soul music with with In The Midnight Hour
Charles Dodge and James Randall perform "computer music"
ESP is founded by lawyer Bernard Stollman
Karlheinz Stockhausen's Mikrophonie I is the first example of "live electronic music"

1965 March: Bob Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man begins the season of psychedelic music
June: the Byrds' version of Mr Tambourine Man invents "folk-rock"
The Supremes have four number-one hits and the Four Tops have two, all of them written by Tamla's team of Brian Holland, Lamond Dozier and Eddie Holland
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, featuring Eric Clapton, import Chicago's rhythm and blues to Britain and become the epitome of "blues-rock"
Country Joe McDonald releases the first "rag babies", agit-prop music to support Berkeley's civil-rights movement
Fred Neil's Bleecker And McDougal is a folksinger who merges folk, blues and psychedelic music
James Brown coins a percussive style of soul, the predecessor of "funk"
Dick Clark's "Where the Action Is" airs from a different location every time
Graham Bond plays the first mellotron on record
The Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Loving Feeling launches "blue-eyed soul"
The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction is banned by radio stations across the UK and USA
The "Diggers" turn San Francisco's Haight Ashbury into a "living theater"
Bob Dylan cuts Like A Rolling Stone and unveils an electric band at the Newport Festival
Sonny Boy Williamson dies at 66
The Who's My Generation creates a new kind of rebellious rock anthem
In America garage-bands spring up everywhere
Robbie Basho's Seal Of The Blue Lotus fuses raga, jazz, blues and pop music
The Kinks' See My Friends (july) introduces Indian music into rock and roll
The Byrds' Eight Miles High invents raga-rock
The San Francisco band Charlatans perform for six days in front of a hippie crowd
Andy Warhol incorporates the Velvet Underground in his multimedia show "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable"
The Warlocks (Grateful Dead) are hired to play at the "acid tests" (Ken Kesey's LSD parties), where they perform lengthy instrumental jams, loosely based on country, blues and jazz
Otis Redding's I've Been Lovin' You Too Long is soul music in which the instrumental backing has de facto replaced the gospel choir
Terry Riley and Steve Reich compose music based on repetition of simple patterns ("minimalism")
October: The Family Dog Production organizes the first hippie festival at San Francisco's Long Shoreman's Hall
November: Bill Graham opens the "Fillmore" as a venue for San Francisco's new bands
Other significant albums of the year: Bob Dylan's Highway 61 revisited, Donovan's Fairy Tale
Alan Freed dies at 42 of a kidney disease
The "Whiskey-A-Go-Go" opens on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood
Noel Black's movie SkaterDater is the first skateboarding movie

1966 Boom of the blues revival in the USA and Britain
The Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead move to the Haight-Ashbury of San Francisco, the epicenter of "acid-rock" and of the "Summer of Love"
March: Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, the first double record and the first concept album
The Velvet Underground cut their first record in two days in the spring of 1966
The 13th Floor Elevator's The Psychedelic Sound Of and the Jefferson Airplane's Takes Off are the first albums marketed as "psychedelic"
Paul Butterfield's East-West is a jam that fuses Afro-American and Indian improvisation
June: The elaborate arrangements of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds define a new standard for pop music
July: Frank Zappa's Freak Out, the first double album of rock and roll
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones plays dulcimer, flute, oboe, sitar, marimba, mellotron, etc on the band's singles
The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations is the first pop hit to employ electronic sounds
The Fugs' Virgin Forest experiments with collage, tapes and world-music
The Holy Modal Rounders invent "acid-folk"
Year of the jam: Virgin Forest by the Fugs, Up In Her Room by the Seeds, Going Home by the Rolling Stones, Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands by Bob Dylan, etc
The Cream, the first "power-trio" debut and sell millions of copies with albums of improvised jams
Bob Dylan has a serious motorcycle accident and disappears for a while
First bubblegum hits
Jean Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley create electronic pop on In Sound From Way Out
London disc-jockey John Peel begins broadcasting American psychedelic music from his radio program "Perfumed Garden"
The UFO Club begins organizing "Spontaneous Underground" shows in London
The magazine "Crawdaddy" is founded in New York
Sire is founded in London
Robert Moog begins selling his synthesizer
Other significant albums of the year: 13th Floor Elevator's Psychedelic Sound, Laura Nyro's More Than A New Discovery, Fugs' Second Album, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's Part One

1967 Love's Da Capo (january) features a side-long track, Revelation
A "Human Be-In" is held at the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco
June: Monterey festival
Ralph Gleason founds the magazine "Rolling Stone"
Velvet Underground & Nico (january) introduces droning, cacophony and repetition (besides improvisation) to rock music, and connects rock music to the avantgarde
Frank Zappa releases Absolutely Free, the first rock opera
Dyke And The Blazers cut Funky Broadway, the song that gives a genre its name
The Doors (january) fuses rock and roll, blues, psychedelia, Indian raga, free-form poetry and drama
The Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (february) is the first album of San Francisco's acid-rock
Red Crayola's Parable Of Arable Land (march) turns psychedelic rock into abstract sound-painting
The Incredible String Band's 5,000 Spirits introduces medieval and middle-eastern music into rock and roll
Jimi Hendrix debuts and turns the electric guitar into the equivalent of the symphonic orchestra
The Pink Floyd debut and invent space-rock with Interstellar Overdrive
Family Stone's bassist Larry Graham invents the "funk" bass lines
Swedish band Parson Sound fuses rock and minimalism in lengthy trance-drone jams
The French composer Pierre Henry writes a rock mass, Messe Pour Le Temp Present, that mixes symphonic, rock and electronic instruments
The Nice perform keyboard-driven arrangements of classical and jazz music
40 psychedelic bands perform at the "14 Hours Technicolour Dream" in London
Otis Redding dies at 26
Woody Guthrie dies at 55
Mort Garson's Zodiac Cosmic Sounds employs synthesizers
Warner Brothers purchases Atlantic
Chrysalis is founded in London
The alternative press flourishes and a number of alternative papers unite in the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), including the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, the Berkeley Barb, San Francisco's Oracle, Detroit's Fifth Estate, Chicago's Seed, and Austin's Rag
In Jamaica, disc jockey Ruddy Redwood makes instrumental versions of reggae hits
Neil Diamond's Red Red Wine is the first reggae hit by a pop musician
Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil found the "tropicalismo" movement in Brazil
Morton Subotnick releases a free improvisation on synthesizer, Silver Apples of the Moon, the first work specifically commissioned for the recording medium
Other significant albums of the year: Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk, Holy Modal Rounders's Indian War Whoop, Love's Da Capo, Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing At Baxter's, Kaleidoscope's Side Trips

1968 The Electric Prunes release a mass performed with rock instruments, Mass In F Minor
Gram Parsons invents "country-rock" with the International Submarine Band
The Creedence Clearwater Revival fuse Louisiana blues, soul and folk-rock
The Cockettes, a hippie-decadent musical theater troupe of drag queens, debuts in San Francisco, the first glam-rock experience
The Soft Machine debut, the leading group of the Canterbury school
The Silver Apples experiment with electronics in a rock and roll format
The Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild contains the expression "heavy metal" that comes to identify a new genre
Blue Cheer debut, playing heavy psychedelic music (the prototype for stoner-rock)
Toots And The Maytals' Do The Reggae launches reggae in the USA
Joni Mitchell establishes the figure of the intellectual female singer-songwriter
The Band's Music From Big Pink invents "roots-rock" by fusing folk, gospel, country, and rock
The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow is the first British rock opera
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks invents abstract, free-form folk-rock by fusing soul, jazz, folk and psychedelia
Tim Buckley's Happy Sad fuses folk and free-jazz
John Fahey's Voice Of The Turtle fuses instrumental folk, jazz and raga
The Pentangle and the Fairport Convention debut, the leading groups of British folk-rock
The musical "Hair" opens on Broadway, the first musical that uses rock music
10,000 people attend the first Isle of Wight festival in England
Bob Krasnow founds Blue Thumb, that values the cover design as much as the music
Walter Carlos' Switched On Bach turns the synthesizer into a pop instrument
Syd Barrett, mentally unstable, leaves the Pink Floyd
Conrad Schnitzler, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Klaus Schulze found the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin, the first venue for electronic music
The magazine "Creem" is founded in Detroit, with Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Dave Marsh
Youstol Dispage dies
Other significant albums of the year: Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat, Leonard Cohen's Songs, Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, Pink Floyd's A Saucerful Of Secrets, United States Of America's self-titled, Pearls Before Swine's Balaklava

1969 August: 300,000 people attend the Woodstock festival
Warner, Atlantic and Elektra are unified as WEA
King Crimson's In The Court Of The Crimson King and Frank Zappa's Uncle Meat herald the golden age of progressive-rock
Jazz giant Miles Davis records Bitches Brew, an album that combines funk/soul rhythms and electronically-amplified rock instruments
Neil Young invents a neurotic, dissonant form of guitar accompaniment
German group Can plays rock music inspired by the classical avantgarde and modern jazz
Led Zeppelin's debut launches hard-rock and defines the LP as rock's medium of choice
Crosby Stills & Nash popularize West Coast's vocal harmonies
Nico's Marble Index brings gothic, archaic and classical elements into rock music
Captain Beefheart cuts ""Trout Mask Replica"", possibly the greatest rock album ever
The Who release Tommy, the most famous rock opera
Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones dies at 27
150,000 people attend the rock festival at the Isle of Wight
The Third Ear Band invents "world-music"
Holger Czuckay's Canaxis 5 fuses electronics and ethnic music
Beaver & Krause's Ragnarok Electronic Funk uses the Moog with acoustic instruments
Annette Peacock improvises live with the synthesizer
The MC5's Kick Out The Jams and The Stooges create a new Detroit sound founded on extreme violence
The world's music market is worth two billion dollars
Capricorn is founded in Alabama
Manfred Eicher forms the ECM label in Germany
Other significant albums of the year: Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers, David Peel's Have A Marijuana, Colosseum's Valentyne Suite, Band's II, Pink Floyd's Ummagumma, Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa

TM, ®, Copyright © 2002 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.
1970 King Tubby invents "dub" in Jamaica using the recording console like an instrument
Syd Barrett retires from music
12,000 people attend the alternative festival at Glastonbury, in England
ZZ Top and Allman Brothers launch "southern-rock"
Black Sabbath debut, playing heavy, dark rock music (the prototype for black metal and doom metal)
Todd Rundgren plays all instruments by himself on Runt, the first "do it yourself" production
German group Kluster (Cluster) plays keyboards-based instrumental music that is inspired by the industrial society
At the peak of British jazz-rock, the Soft Machine cut Third
Smokey Robinson's The Tears Of A Clown fuses vaudeville, classical music and soul music
T.Rex's Ride A White Swan opens the age of glam-rock
David Geffen founds Asylum Records
Richard Branson founds Virgin to promote alternative musicians
Pierre Boulez founds the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris
Robert Moog unveils the Minimoog, the first portable synthesizer
September: Jimi Hendrix dies at 28
October: Janis Joplin dies at 27
Other significant albums of the year: Nico's Desert Shore, Soft Machine's 3, Tim Buckley's Lorca, Syd Barrett's Barrett, Van Morrison's Moondance, Amon Duul II's Yeti, Third Ear Band's Third Ear Band, Peter Green's End Of The Game

1971 Jim Morrison of the Doors dies at 27 (July 3)
The German band Tangerine Dream invents "kosmische musik", using synthesizers and sequencers
Johnny Thunders forms the New York Dolls, a band of tranvestites with a trash aesthetic that plays very fast and simple rock'n'roll
Alice Cooper mixes decadence, horror and hard-rock in his "shock rock"
Marvin Gaye, Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder begin producing artsy soul records
The musical Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber opens on Broadway
Tonto's Expanding Head Band release Zero Time, the first pop album entirely played at the synthesizer
The Joy Of Cooking debut, the first band led by feminists
Alice Cooper's Love It To Death launches horror-shock rock
German group Faust plays rock songs that are studio collages of rock music, electronic sounds and "concrete" noise
Marvin Gaye's Mercy Mercy Me is the first ecological song
Duane Allman dies at 25
Gene Vincent dies at 36
A benefit concert for Bangla Desh is attended by rock stars
Sandy Pearlman of "Crawdaddy" uses the expression "heavy metal" for Artificial Energy on The Notorious Byrd Brothers
Malcom McLaren opens a boutique in London that becomes a center for the non-conformist youth
Rhys Chatam founds the avantgarde music program at the Kitchen Center in New York
Other significant albums of the year: John Fahey's America, Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man, Can's Tago Mago, Kevin Ayers's Shooting At The Moon, Robbie Basho's Song of The Stallion, Joni Mitchell's Blue, David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name
"Creem" writer Dave Marsh coins the term "punk-rock" for the music of Question Mark & The Mysterians

1972 Popol Vuh's In Den Gaerten Pharaos is recorded inside a cathedral and fuses electronic music and Eastern music (predating new-age music)
Deuter's Aum is released, a fusion of Eastern and Western religious music, of acoustic instruments and natural sounds
Tangerine Dream's Zeit is a double album that contains four side-long suites
Annette Peacock's I'm The One fuses synthesizer and vocals
Neu! plays obsessively rhythmic music
Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht is a cosmic symphony played with electronic instruments
Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell form the Neon Boys
Japanese group Taj-Mahal Travellers plays lengthy improvised psychedelic jams
David Bowie's Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust is the culmination of glam-rock
By fusing Mersey-beat, folk-rock and hard-rock, the Big Star coin power-pop
Boom of singer-songwriters
The Vertigo label is founded to promote progressive-rock
Philips and Siemens merge their music companies into Polygram and buy MGM/Verve
"Rolling Stone" writer Vince Aletti writes an article on "disco music"
Cameroon-born and Paris-based musician Manu Dibango invents "disco music" with Soul Makossa
Other significant albums of the year: Rolling Stones's Exile On Main Street, Roxy Music's Roxy Music, Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Yes's Close To The Edge,

1973 George Lucas' film American Graffiti launches the nostalgic revival of the music of the 1950s and 1960s
Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company is an album of lengthy electronic suites
500,000 people attend the Watkins Glen festival (Allman Brother, Grateful Dead, Band)
"The Midnight Special" debuts on tv, led by Wolfman Jack and Helen Reddy
The film The Harder They Come brings reggae to the West
September: Gram Parsons dies at 26
Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers dies
Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon invents a polished, keyboard-based sound for pop music, and would remain in the Billboard charts for over 600 weeks
Mike Oldfield cuts an album-long suite of instrumental music, Tubular Bells, all played by himself
A tv special uses the term "salsa" for Latin music
Asylum buys Elektra
Roland introduces the SH-1000, Japan's first synthesizer
Other significant albums of the year: Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, Gong's Radio Gnome Invisible, John Fahey's Fare Forward Voyagers, New York Dolls's I, Magma's Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh, Faust's IV, Klaus Schulze's Cyborg

1974 The Rocky Horror Picture Show is released
Barry White plays orchestral soul for the discos
August: The Ramones debut at the CBGB's and launch punk-rock
The Residents reinvent rock music with Meet The Residents
The Grateful Dead, the most successful live band of all times, performs using 25 tons of loudspeakers
Robert Wyatt cuts Rock Bottom, possibly the greatest Canterbury album
Nick Drake dies at 26
Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy fuses electronics and pop, and introduces post-modernism into rock music
The magazine "Trouser Press" is founded to cover the British music scene
Kraftwerk's Autobahn becomes the first hit entirely played on electronic instruments and with an electronic rhythm, the blueprint for disco-music
July: Patti Smith's Piss Factory is the first single of New York's "new wave"
August: the "new wave" groups begin performing at New York's club CGBG's
Technics introduces the Technics SL-1200, a turntable that becomes popular among New York DJs
Other significant albums of the year: Henry Cow's Unrest, Yahowa 13's Penetration - An Aquarian Symphony
Greg Shaw founds Bomp Records in San Francisco, specializing in garage-rock

1975 Boom of funk music
Calhoun's Dance Dance Dance is the first 12" single
Giorgio Moroder releases the first tracks of European "disco-music" and invent the extended "disco mix"
Lou Reed releases Metal Machine Music, an album of pure noise
Jamaican disc-jockey Clive "Hercules" Campbell re-invents the breakbeat in New York, thereby inventing "rap music" and "hip hop"
The Queen film a bizarre, artistic video for Bohemian Rhapsody
Tim Buckley dies at 28
"Saturday Night Live" debuts on tv
Robert Moog introduces the Polymoog, the first commercial polyphonic synthesizer
13-year old (Grand Wizard) Theodore Livingstone accidentally discovers the "skratching" sound of a turntable and uses it at a party in the Bronx
Other significant albums of the year: Neil Young's Tonight's The Night
December: John Holmstrom founds the fanzine "Punk" in New York, the first fanzine for punk-rock and new-wave music

1976 Pere Ubu cut Modern Dance, possibly the greatest new-wave album
Richard Hell cuts Blank Generation
David Grisman coins "newgrass", a fusion of jazz and bluegrass
Wanted: The Outlaws, featuring Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter, is the first country album to be certified platinum
April: the first Ramones album is released
July: a Ramones tour organized by Malcom McLaren exports punk-rock to Britain
September: the Saint's I'm Stranded is the first Australian punk-rock single
November: the Sex Pistols' Anarchy In The UK is the first British punk-rock single
Boom of reggae music outside of Jamaica
Phil Ochs dies at 36
Howling Wolf dies at 66
William Ackerman invents new-age music and founds Windham Hill
New York disc-jockey Grandmaster Flash begins spinning on Boston Road, where he experiments with "cutting" and "phasing"
The magazine "Musician" is founded
December: Blondie's first album bridges the gap between disco-music and punk-rock
Other significant albums of the year: Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia, Penguin Cafe` Orchestra's Music From The Penguin Cafe

1977 Punk spawns a self-publishing revolution ("do it yourself") both for music and for magazines ("Ripped & Torn", "Sniffin' Glue", "48 Thrills")
The film "Saturday Night Fever" starts the disco fever by promoting disco-music beyond gays and blacks
April: The Screamers are a punk band that uses two keyboards and no guitars and performs at multimedia events on the Hollywood strip
Boom of independent labels
Suicide's Suicide fuses rockabilly and electronic music
Elvis Presley dies at 42
Peter Laughner of Pere Ubu dies
Three members of the Lynyrd Skynyrd are killed in a plane crash
Ronnie VanZandt dies at 28
Bukka White dies at 71
Marc Bolan of the T.Rex dies at 29
The disco "Warehouse" opens in Chicago and Frankie Knuckles becomes its resident disc-jockey
The magazine "OP" (later "Option") is founded in Olympia and becomes the reference for independent music of all genres
Roland introduces the first commercial rhythm machine
Martin Mills's record store Beggars Banquet becomes an independent label
London record store Rough Trade becomes an independent label
Independent labels founded in 1976 include: Beserkley (Berkeley), Stiff (London)
October: The Avengers' We Are The One is the first single of the punk scene of San Francisco's Mabuhay Garden club
Other significant albums of the year: Television's Marquee Moon, Clash's Clash, Talking Heads's 77

1978 Brian Eno discovers the no-wave of DNA, Mars, Contortions, Lydia Lunch
Brian Eno invents ambient music
The Public Image Ltd bridge dub and punk
The disco "Paradise Garage" for black gays opens in New York and its founder Larry Levan becomes the first superstar disc-jockey
The California composer Monte Cazazza and the British band Throbbing Gristle coin "industrial music", that soon finds its headquarters in the English industrial town of Sheffield
July: The Germs' Forming is the first single of California's punk-rock
Fred Frith organizes the "Rock In Opposition" (RIO) festival that unites progressive-rock and militant politics
Keith Moon of the Who dies at 32
Sandy Denny dies at 31
"Crawdaddy" ceases publications
Mute is founded
Roland introduces the MC-4 sequencer, the first sequencer for the masses
Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits) introduces the Prophet-5, the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument, and ushers in the age of digital synthesizers, replacing the voltage-controlled (analog) synthesizers
Other significant albums of the year: Residents's Not Available, Talking Heads's More Songs About Building And Food, Michael Hoenig's Departure From The Northern Wasteland
Independent labels founded in 1978 include: Ace of Hearts (Boston), Cherry Red (London), Rhino

1979 The Pop Group's Y delivers agip-prop anthems in a style that fuses punk-rock, jazz, dub and funk
December: Clash's London Calling mixes punk-rock with reggae, ska, funk, blues, etc
The Talking Heads' Fear Of Music, produced by Brian Eno, fuses new wave and funk, and invents "techno-funk"
The B52's fuse new wave and dance music
The Specials launch a ska revival in Britain
Todd Rungren makes the first video-disc
Sony and Philips invent the compact disc (CD), a digital storage for music
Eleven fans die at a Who concert
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols dies at 21
Lowell George of the Little Feat dies at 34
Maybellene Carter dies at 70
the first New Music festival of avantgarde music is held in New York
Sony launches the "Walkman" portable stereo
The Australian company Fairlight Instruments introduces the first keyboard-based digital sampler, the CMI
Independent labels founded in 1979 include: Alternative Tentacles (San Francisco), SST (Los Angeles), Factory (London)
The world's music market is worth over 10 billion dollars and five "majors" control over 70% of it
Other significant albums of the year: Chrome's Half Machine Lips Move, Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time, Public Image Ltd's Second Edition, This Heat's This Heat, Contortions's Buy

TM, ®, Copyright © 2002 Piero Scaruffi. All rights reserved.
1980 Beggars Banquet employee Ivo Watts-Russell founds 4AD
The Cramps' Songs The Lord Taught Us invents "voodoobilly"
The Bad Brain's Pay To Cum fuses punk-rock and reggae in Washington
Ian MacKaye forms the Minor Threat in Washington
A psychedelic revival spreads from the UK to the US
The Minutemen play dissonant, funky, jazzy, punk-rock in Los Angeles
The Sugar Hill Gang cuts the first "hip hop" record in New York
Pioneering rap label Tommy Boy is founded
Glenn Branca composes music for dissonant and percussive guitars
David Geffen founds Geffen Records
John Bonham of the Led Zeppelin dies at 33
Bon Scott of the AC/DC dies at 25
John Lennon of the Beatles is murdered at 40
Ian Curtis of the Joy Division commits suicide at 23
Derby Crash dies at 22
Polygram buys the British recording company Decca
Warner acquires Sire
Independent labels founded in 1981 include: Wax Trax, On-U-Sound
Other significant albums of the year: Bruce Springsteen's River, Feelies's Crazy Rhythms, Soft Boys's Underwater Moonlight, Colin Newman's A-Z, Pere Ubu's Art Of Walking, Pop Group's For How Much Longer

1981 Juan Atkins begins making "techno" records in Detroit (pounding and fast rhythm from a Roland sequencer MSK-100, stripped-down funk)
Venom's Welcome To Hell invents "black metal"
Billy Idol weds hard-rock and disco-music
New Zealand bands such as Tall Dwarfs and Clean invent "lo-fi pop"
New York rapper Afrika Bambaataa pays tribute to Kraftwerk with Planet Rock and thus invent "electro"
Boom of synth-pop in England
Husker Du and Replacements wed hardcore and pop in Minneapolis
Michael Jackson films a 15-minute, highly cinematic video for Thriller
MTV debuts on cable tv with the Buggles' "Video Killed The Radio Star"
Simon and Garfunkel reunite for a live concert in Central Park for a crowd of 500,000
Mike Bloomfield dies at 37
Alex Harvey dies at 32
Bob Marley dies at 34
Independent labels founded in 1981 include: Touch & Go, Epitaph, Dischord, Flying Nun
Other significant albums of the year: Rip Rig Panic's God, Gun Club's Fire Of Love, Public Image Ltd's Flowers Of Romance, Deuter's Silence Is The Answer

1982 The Sonic Youth invent "noise-rock"
The R.E.M. resurrect folk-rock and launch Georgia's neo-pop school
The club "Batcave" opens in London, cathering to the gothic (dark-punk) crowd
The Cocteau Twins invent dream-pop
The Violent Femmes weds the aesthetics of punk-rock and the format of roots-rock
A pacifist concert is held in Central Park attended by 800,000 people
Sony and Philips introduce the "compact disc"
Mike Gunderloy begins mailing "Factsheet Five", a fanzine of fanzine reviews
800,000 people attend a concert in New York's Central Park with Springsteen and others (for nuclear disarmement)
The magazine "Maximum Rock and Roll" is founded and becomes the reference point for punk-rock
The magazine "Puncture" is founded and becomes the reference point for alternative rock
Peter Gabriel organizes the WOMAD festival, dedicated to world music, art and dance
Rock critic Lester Bangs dies at 34
Other significant albums of the year: David Thomas's The Sound Of The Sand, Dream Syndicate's Days Of Wine And Roses, Richard Thompson's Shoot Out The Lights, Waitresses's Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful, Fear's The Record, Misfits's Walk Among Us, Mission Of Burma's VS, Flipper's Generic Album

1983 Metallica's Kill 'Em All invents speed-metal
Turntablist DST (DXT) plays a solo of "sktratch" on Herbie Hancock's Rockit
The Frightwig's Cat Faboo Farm is the first hardcore album by a female punk band
Madonna becomes the folk icon of the punkettes
The Suicidal Tendencies fuse hardcore and heavy-metal
The psychedelic revival leads to Los Angeles' "Paisley Underground"
Big Black's Lungs coins a claustrophobic form of hardcore
Run DMC fuse hip hop and heavy metal
Trouser Press magazine dies and the first "Trouser Press Guide", edited by Ira Robbins, is published
Yamaha introduces the DX-7, the first synthesizer to be sold by the hundreds of thousands
Roland introduces the first keyboard enabled with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), a system to connect music instruments to computers
Muddy Waters dies at 68
Michael Jackson's Thriller spends 37 weeks at number one and becomes the best-selling album of all times
Tower Records lunches its own magaine, "Pulse"
Felix Pappalardi of Mountain is murdered
Independent labels founded in 1983 include: Creation, Projekt,
Other significant albums of the year: Swans's Filth, Cocteau Twins's Head Over Heels, REM's Murmur, Mark Stewart's Learning To Cope With Cowardice, Jane Siberry's No Borders Here, Butthole Surfers's Butthole Surfers, Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex, Einsturzende Neubaten's Zeichnungen Das Patienten

1984 The Chicago record store "Imports Etc" sells "house" records (as a contraction of "Warehouse", the disco where DJs play electronic dance music built around drum-machines and soul vocals), first ones being Frankie Knuckles' Your Love and Walter Gibbons' Set It Off
A new British invasion (of dance-rock bands) sweeps America
The Red Hot Chili Peppers invent funk-metal
The Pogues' Red Roses For Me weds punk-rock and folk-rock ("rogue-folk")
Van Halen's Jump is the first heavy-metal song to top the Billboard charts
Schoolly D's Gangster Boogie coins "gangsta-rap"
Boom of new-age music
John Chowning founds the CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) at Stanford University
Ensoniq introduces the synthesizer Mirage, that includes a built-in sampler, making it cheap to create samples-based music
Marvin Gaye dies at 45
Independent labels founded in 1984 include: Cuneiform, Homestead
Other significant albums of the year: Husker Du's Zen Arcade, Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime, Nick Cave's From Her To Eternity, Replacement's Let It Be, Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic's Magnetic Flip, Julian Cope's World Shut Your Mouth, Foetus's Hole

1985 A Chicago disc-jockey, DJ Pierre (later Phuture), invents "acid-house", built around the Roland TB-303 bassline machine
Youth Of Today invent "straight-edge" hardcore
Green River invent "grunge" in Seattle
Operation Ivy fuse ska and hardcore in Berkeley
Merzbow begins releasing cassettes of noise music in Japan
Rites Of Spring invent "emo-core" in Washington
Phranc's Folksinger starts the acoustic folk revival
The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy fuses noise and pop
"Live Aid", a multi-national benefit concert
The magazine "Spin" is founded in New York
German media giant Bertelsmann buys RCA and founds BMG
MCA buys Chess
Alternative Press is founded to cover the scene of independent rock
Digidesign releases recording and editing software for the Macintosh, that allows anyone to compose music and store it on a computer disk
Independent labels founded in 1985 include: Amphetamine Reptile, Def Jam, C/Z, Chemikal Underground, Ambiances Magnetiques
D. Boon of the Minutemen dies at 28
Joe Turner dies at 74
Other significant albums of the year: Butthole Surfers's Psychic Powerless, Foetus's Nail, Sonic Youth's Bad Moon Rising, Swans's Cop, Nick Cave's The Firstborn Is Dead, David Thomas's More Places Forever, Husker Du's New Day Rising, Fetchin Bones's Cabin Flounder,

1986 Bristol disc-jockeys form the Wild Bunch, whose sound mixes soul, dub and hip hop
Ministry's Twitch fuses industrial music and hardcore
The Melvins perform long, droning, super-heavy dirges
Mr T Experience and Green Day with their punk-pop style are protagonists of the "Gilman St scene" in Berkeley
Paul Simon's Graceland incorporates African music into folk and rock music
Richard Manuel of the Band dies at 43
Larry Harvey burns a wooden man at a San Francisco beach in front of a small crowd of friends, the first Burning Man event
Robbie Basho dies at 45
Independent labels founded in 1986 include: Silent
Other significant albums of the year: Big Black's Atomizer, Stan Ridgway's Big Heat, Death Of Samantha's Strungout On Jargon, Flaming Lips's Hear It Is, UT's Conviction, David Thomas's Monster Walks The Winter Lake, Swans's Holy Money
Subpop is founded in Seattle

1987 The My Bloody Valentine invent "shoegazing" psychedelia
Zeni Geva's How To Kill is the first album of Japanese "noise"
Coldcut's Say Kids What Time Is It is the first dance hit made of samples
Napalm Death invents grindcore
Beastie Boys' Licensed To Ill is the first hip-hop album to reach the top of the Billboard charts
Paul Butterfield dies at45
Detroit disc-jockey Derrick May cuts Nude Photo and Strings Of Life, which are broadcast on Alan Oldham's "Fast Forward" radio show and start the techno revolution
Guns'N'Roses' Appetite For Destruction and Jane's Addiction's first album vent the anger of Los Angeles' "street scene"
Enya fuses celtic music, electronic keyboards, and avantgarde vocals
Public Enemy play highly politicized hip-hop
The drug "ecstasy", banned in Britain and the USA, becomes popular at all-night parties at the open-air dance club "Amnesia" of Ibiza (Spain) that attracts people from all over Europe
After spending a summer in Ibiza, British disc-jockey Paul Oakenfold organizes "Spectrum", the first ecstasy-based party in London
Philips acquires the whole of Polygram
The Roland D50 ushers in the age of digital keyboards for the masses
M/A/R/S/S' Pump Up The Volume is the first hit built as a collage of samples
Death's Scream Bloody Gore invents death-metal
Dave Datta at the University of Wisconsin creates an on-line archive of musical information on the Internet
Independent labels founded in 1987 inc