Rock band

Rock band

Rock group (or later rock band) is a generic name to describe a group of musicians specializing in a particular form of electronically amplified music. Deriving its name from the musical style which was its immediate progenitor, rock and roll, the type of music played by rock groups has its roots deeply steeped in both rock and roll, and its immediate forebear, rhythm and blues. In Britain of the early 1960s the term rock group was in universal use, but as psychedelia approached the name band came into vogue, typified by the Band. A rock group or band tends to have a heavy focus on certain instruments principally electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums (prime examples of this are The Who, Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, or more recently U2), with electric organs being featured from the outset by groups such as Manfred Mann and the Animals. Later in the 1960s, rock bands such as The Who, Pink Floyd and Hawkwind experimented with electric organs and synthesisers. Other instruments deployed within the context of a rock band include the electric violin, as used by Curved Air and the flute played by Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. Another instrument common in some rock bands is the musical keyboard, as pioneered by The Doors, Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
Many early rock groups or bands were in the vanguard of psychedelic music and the complexities arising largely led to rock music becoming a generic term broader than "rock and roll".
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Structure
A rock group or band usually consists of at least four musical roles:
A lead singer.
A guitarist.
A bass guitarist.
A drummer or percussionist.
These four may be joined by other instrumentalists, limited only by the creativity of the band; most popular are the addition of a keyboardist or rhythm guitarist. More experimental bands might try instruments from other ares of music; stringed instruments like a violin or cello, or horns like trumpets or trombones. When a band is seen as diverging too far from the main four roles, there is a tendency to classify the group not as a rock band, but with a genre seen as more specific than "rock" (e.g. ska or prog rock).
The lead singer may also play an instrument while singing, most commonly the guitar or bass. When the lead singer role is taken by one of the above instrumentalists, the group is termed a power trio. Some bands may have multiple lead singers (such as Pink Floyd and The Beatles). Still others will add background vocals, sung by other instrumentalists or dedicated singers.
While some rock bands may add several additional singers and instrumentalists, they hardly ever lose the four primary roles.
Many rock bands include two types of guitar players, a rhythm guitarist and a lead guitarist. The rhythm guitarist often plays chords and works closely with the bassist and the drummer as they drive both the beat and rhythm. The lead guitarist plays the second accompaning melody and plays most of the solos.






Fabulous Five Lipstick Conspiracy aspires to rock stardom, but that's a tough sell when you can't even tell your co-workers you're a tranny




Shawna Love has an enviable talent for driving in stiletto heels. On a recent Saturday, she's driving through a quiet, suburban neighborhood in South Hayward that looks as if it burst out of a Sears, Roebuck catalogue and hasn't been touched in fifty years: All the houses are squat, ticky-tacky things with manicured lawns, window boxes, and identical American flags hanging in the windows. She squints out her passenger-side window, skeptical that one of these stucco boxes actually belongs to her friend Kari, who fronts the all-tranny-girl rock outfit Trans Central Station -- a spinoff of Shawna's own band. Kari is hosting a barbecue and jamboree, and Shawna is dressed for the occasion: dark, smoky pantyhose, a black sequined dress to go with her heels, lipstick the color of cabernet.
She parks in front of a Pepto-Bismol-pink house whose only distinguishing features are the plastic flamingos on its front lawn. A cat jumps on the roof of the car and climbs through the window onto Shawna's lap, trying to claw at her stockings. A woman with poofy hair and culottes scurries over to scoop the critter up, apologizing profusely. Her eyes widen a little when she sees Shawna. "Oh, you must be a friend of Kari," she stutters.
"Yeah," Shawna laughs later, "another man in a fucking dress."
By now Shawna is used to the stir she creates when she hits the streets in all her finery. Driving home recently, she says, she peered in her rearview mirror at the Bay Bridge toll plaza to see a car slink up behind her. She could hear two guys talking in the backseat: "Yo, I think that's a dude. Eh, for real -- that's a dude!" The driver rolled down his window and hissed at her: "Eh, eh yo, dude!" When she turned to look at him, he added, "Yo, where'd you get your weave at?"
Shawna works as a maintenance man by day -- she is reluctant even to whisper her employer's name. She likes her job; the work is fun and fulfilling, and she gets benefits. The catch is that she has to work with a bunch of homophobes. And she can't be Shawna; she has to dress and act like one of the guys. She predicts that if she came out as a tranny at work her co-workers would ostracize her and make the job a living hell. "They'd probably go to my boss and say, 'I'm not working with him or it, or whoever the fuck he thinks he is; I'm not working with a fucking faggot,'" she says. Shawna recalls the time someone at her job started gossiping about another co-worker, saying that the co-worker went to parties "where there's all these punks and motherfuckers wearing wigs and shit." Then the guy telling the story "made the symbol of having a gun in his hand and shooting people."
In her private life Shawna plays guitar and bass for Lipstick Conspiracy, a rock band that features frontwoman and guitarist Sarafina Maraschino, with Marilyn Mitchell holding down guitar and bass duties, Tori Tait on keyboards, and Emme Yarwood on drums. Since its genesis in a San Francisco Victorian in 2003, the five-tranny band has played some 55 gigs -- including two San Francisco Gay Pride festivals -- toured the West Coast, self-released a five-song EP, garnered a Bay Guardian write-up as "Best Girl Band," and built up a cult of adoration in the trans and SOMA bobo communities. After the Lipsticks adopted Martuni's Piano Bar and Cocktail Lounge as their unofficial headquarters, on the far fringes of the city's Castro district, Sarafina says the Zagat Survey published a blurb describing it as a place where you can catch the occasional tranny. One of the joint's bartenders says he's naming a drink after the band. Sarafina says there's even a major label "sniffing around."