Icelandic rock music

Rock and roll is a style of popular American music which has spread across the world, including to the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland.

History

Rock came to the island beginning in the mid-1950s. Rock's popularity increased steadily over the next few years. This wave peaked with the tour by Tony Crombie & His Rockets in May 1957. A few bands with their own style did emerge, however, including City, Disco and Lúdó.

From 1930 until the mid-1980s, radio broadcasting in Iceland was a state monopoly which did not allow much time for rock music. But despite this state of affairs, Icelandic popular culture was not completely isolated from the outside world. Crews of Icelandic fishing boats and commercial aircraft would buy rock records in America, England and Germany and bring them back home to Iceland. Also, the US Navy base in Keflavík, Iceland, operated a radio station for the troops (AFRS 1484 on the radio dial) that mainly played rock music and was very popular with young Icelanders in the Reykjavík area and remained important to Icelandic rock music until at least the mid-1970s. Some of the disc-jockeys from the early '70s were Tom Wiecks, Jim Roark, Karl Phillips, Ron Smart, Tom Hughes and Mark Lazar.