While performers since the Beatles had been packing venues traditionally used for football games, tThe platinum-selling success of Peter Frampton's 1976 live double album Frampton Comes Alive in the mid-1970s illustrateproved that rock music was nowhad become a multi-million dollar industry whose stars could routinely pack giant stadiums. Bands could split the difference between hard-rock aggression and singer-songwriter sappiness andNow a pack venues traditionally used for events like football games new breed of mid-'70s arena rockers like Frampton began gearing both their sound and their live set to these enormous spaces. These mid-tempo pet dinosaurs of the proletariat were called arena rockers. Few musical groups genres have been so critically maligned while gaining such complete public acceptance. Some arena rockers, such as Foreigner, Meatloaf, and REO Speedwagon relied on rock's bombast a mix of rock bombast anded with tender sentimentality, while others like Styx, Journey, and Electric Light Orchestra brought a futuristic, quasi-progtechnically complex sensibility aesthetic to the masses. By watering downsoftening the original recipe of rock ''n'' roll's trademark rebelliousness and smoothing the edges avant-garde sensibilities of the early - late-'760s creative explosion, arena rockers made music safe for mass consumption. FWhile few music fans today will confess to owning, much less enjoying, albums by Supertramp, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or Billy Squire., But their unifying influence of arena rock carried over to the hair metal scene of the '80, and it lives on on in the stadium- packing tours of Matchbox 20, AerosmithCreed, and the The Dave Matthews Band.

Notable Artists: Aerosmith, Peter Frampton, Queen, Kiss, Pink Floyd