When the press release announcing that Social Distortion had signed a new record deal with Epitaph Records went out in the middle of last year, no one was really shocked but there was a gratified chorus of, “Well, it's about time” that went up. That...
Hey junky, Wow – did it ever not take long for the business to shift right into gear! Here's the proof: las' week, I had, what, thirty ill-gotten pieces o' SWAG fer yer samplin' pleasure? Yeah, that was a drop in the bucket bitch! This week, I got...
Adebisi – "Genki Shank" https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG40Adebisi_Shank-genki_shank.mp3 Adebisi – "International Dreambeat" https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG40Adebisi_Shank-International_Dreambeat.mp3 Amanda Palmer –...
While it didn't exactly sell in earth-shattering numbers at the time of its' release, Hollywood Town Hall did establish a foothold in the public consciousness for The Jayhawks and at least proved that the band wouldn't dry up under a little bit of...
Some bands just can't recognize an opportunity when it's staring them in the face, and no singer is more aware of that fact than Keith Morris. For the last three decades, Morris has fronted punk rock stalwarts the Circle Jerks and both reveled in the praise and...
It's funny to look back now, and see how alternative rock and grunge totally inverted the plains of “mainstream” and “underground” music. In the early Nineties, there's no arguing that bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice...
There's no doubt that 2011 promises to be a good year for Tom Waits. While rumors of the singer working on a new stage musical with director (and long-time collaborator) Robert Wilson and playwright Martin McDonagh as well as talk of the singer beginning to write...
What do you do after you’ve taken a forgotten scrap of a musical style, dusted it off, polished it a bit and made it suddenly renowned? If you’re most bands, you ride that sound to the bank. If you’re the Decemberists, you work with it until...
Happy New Year ya mooks! Sorry it took me a while to get back, I had a couple of things that needed doin' an' hadda spend a little time somewhere. Apparently, I should not drink Egg Nog in public – ya know what I'm sayin'? I was out at a holiday...
This isn't meant to sound petulant, but “rare birds” are so-called for a reason and it is this: evolution is cruelest to those creatures that don't easily fit in. Most often, “rare birds” meet unfavorable ends because they have no place...