Archives

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vinyl Me Please edition of Super Ape by Lee “Scratch” Perry. Music is a wonderful thing. If you listen to it correctly and put in the time, it can form a sort of six degrees of Kevin Bacon in your mind; bands...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Pride & Tradition reissue by Harrington Saints. Now that the band has reached out a bit and found some fresh and receptive ears (the Fish & Chips EP which came out last year helped toward that end) it’s no...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Record Store Day reissue of At Budokan – The Complete Concert 2LP by Cheap Trick. While the 1970s are known for lots of things which happened musically (like the break-up of The Beatles, the deaths of Jimi Hendrix,...

A critical evaluation of Funny Girl by Nick Hornby. I owe a great deal to Nick Hornby, partly for writing one of the greatest movies ever (no, it’s not the new one), but mostly for getting me into reading books in the first place. This happened many years ago...

Wayne Federman The Chronicles of Federman (A Special Thing Records) As a comedy fan, I’ve heard the name Wayne Federman thrown around for a while. I really had no idea that it was because the man is a bit of an institution in the alt-comedy world and has been...

Brooks Wheelan Middle East – Cambridge, Massachusetts – May 7, 2016 Frequent readers of Ground Control (as you should be) know my love for Brooks Wheelan’s stand-up debut “This is Cool, Right?” We listen to a lot of records here on Ground...

A critical evaluation of Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk by John Doe with Tom DeSavia and friends, published by Da Capo Press While the stories are (almost) never the same, it’s pretty surprising how consistently structured and formulaic...

FEELS CD by Feels Castle Face Records Reviewed by G. Murray Thomas Feels play noisy guitar rock. Glorious noisy guitar rock, if you’re into that. And I am. However, buried beneath the fuzz and feedback are well crafted songs. From the slinky bass lines of...

  NOFX Live: 04-28-16 Venue: Paradise in Boston, MA Review: Ollie Ottoman Photo: Scott Murry Whenever I think of NOFX live shows, I do that Italian gesture of kissing my fingers and go, “MUA!” Seriously, I have seen NOFX in small clubs and large...

Marc Maron WTF: The First 100 Episodes (A Special Thing) They say everything old is new again, and as far as our entertainment is concerned, that certainly seems to be the case. Sure, big budget productions are more plentiful than ever, but people are also “doing...