Definition:

To my mind the Rock genre began when the electric blues groups decided to bury the blues at the expense of mechanical riffs and extended guitar solos. As I interpret it, the genre began to take hold in the mid-to-late-60s through artists such as The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and Led Zeppelin, and developed into heavy metal via the likes of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and AC/DC. Outside of the pure classic Rock and Heavy Metal variants, I have primary genre tags for Alternative Rock, Blues Rock / Soul Rock, Folk Rock / Americana, Prog, Rock n Roll / Rockabilly, Soft Rock / A.O.R. and Trance Rock

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The Jukebox Pick (of 2,332):

 Ace Of Spades

 (Eddie Clarke, Ian Kilmister, Phil Taylor)

 Motörhead

  “Utterly perfect” Rock

 Released as a single in October, 1980, before settling down to live as the title-track on their album released just a couple of weeks later. It's always great to see “no-compromise” artists shaking up the pop charts, and such was the case with this thundering beast of a track. Rumbling the 'quake were: Lemmy (bass, lead vocals), 'Fast' Eddie Clarke (lead guitar) and Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor (drums). In what surely stands as one the greatest intros of all-time, Lemmy's overdriven, apocalyptic bass sets an ominous tone... get ready for the assault! Much credit goes to Vic Maille at the production helm who “used an expert ear to translate the monstrous live sound and feel of the band to vinyl”. As with many artists, Lemmy was proud of his signature song, but also got sick of it: “I used gambling metaphors, mostly cards and dice — when it comes to that sort of thing, I'm more into the slot machines actually, but you can't really sing about spinning fruit, and the wheels coming down. Most of the song's just poker, really - 'I know you've got to see me, read 'em and weep, Dead man's hand again, aces and eights' - that was Wild Bill Hickock's hand when he got shot. To be honest, although 'Ace of Spades' is a good song, I'm sick to death of it now. Two decades on, when people think of Motörhead, they think 'Ace of Spades'. We didn't become fossilised after that record, you know. We've had quite a few good releases since then. But the fans want to hear it so we still play it every night. For myself, I've had enough of that song... I'm glad we got famous for that rather than for some turkey, but I sang 'The eight of spades' for two years and nobody noticed...” No one lives forever, but songs do. Well played Lemmy and the boys.

Some favourite artists:

Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Motörhead

The Jukebox pick: