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Vinyl Vlog 532
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Vespa & Londonians 12” EP by Booze & Glory. Remember back in the early aughts when Fearless Records compiled a series of albums which found some genuinely great punk bands covering a multitude of different artists and genres – recasting them all in a punk context? Some of those covers were actually really, really cool (hearing AFI perform Guns N’ Roses’ “My Michelle” was pretty cool, as was Strike Anywhere’s cover...

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Wednesday, 08 December 2021
Vinyl Vlog 531
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Vicious DreamsSelf-titled  Get ready, dear readers because this is one of the good ones. It’s tough getting music recommendations, because most of the time, people don’t know what they’re talking about. So, when I made up a pile of compelling music to go through my ears perked up when Vicious Dreams came on. I was expecting music that might sound like contenders to put on my heavy rotation, not something that I immediately fell in love with. I had to...

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Tuesday, 07 December 2021
Vinyl Vlog 530
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Grade 2’s Graveyard Island: Acoustic Sessions 12” EP. As someone wise once said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans,” and no punk band is making the best of a bad situation more than Grade 2 has, lately. The band had to put the promotional efforts behind their Epitaph debut album, 2019’s Graveyard Island, on hold when the CoVid-19 pandemic caused all touring routes to shut down indefinitely a couple...

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Saturday, 27 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 529
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Love I Bring” b/w “My Cat is on Prozac” split 7” single by Sic & Mad and The Slackers. There’s little doubt that this review will sound dismissive – such is the most common byproduct of a release which isn’t very good. Now, it’s true that the governing wisdom in the music industry has always been that, “They can’t all be genius,” and that may be true – but basic quality...

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Friday, 26 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 528
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Windowland” / “I Almost Lost You” 12” Digitally-Printed single by The Slackers. It can be fun to write a short review once in a while and, when one addresses The Slackers’ newest single, “Windowland,” it’s impossible to not be brief. Clocking in at less than ten minutes total, the two songs on the single (“I Almost Lost You” is the second cut in the running but, because both songs appear on...

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Sunday, 21 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 527
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the To Victory EP by Lars Frederiksen. After a career spent tirelessly writing, recording and performing music with a celebrated list of bands on an incredible number of releases (to date, that list includes no fewer than forty-five releases recorded with bands including Rancid, Stomper 98, Old Firm Casuals, The transplants, The Bastards and Oxley’s Midnight Runners), it seems genuinely surprising that, only thirty-eight years after he started, Lars Frederiksen has added...

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Saturday, 20 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 526
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A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Digital Age of Rome LP by T. Hardy Morris. It’s weird to think how tumultuous a year 2020 was, and how that tumult was reflected in the music which was released at the time. Even if a band didn’t actually have a political streak in their hair or bone in their body, conflict in the times seemed to appear in the music. Now, 2021 has had its share of rough running...

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Thursday, 11 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 525
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Rage Against the MachineThe Battle of Mexico CityRecord Store Day Release Let me start off this review by painting a picture of just how important Rage Against the Machine were to my development as a teenager. Growing up in Aruba in the 90s, completely isolated from the world, we craved outside culture. We didn’t have a good idea of what was going on in the cool parts of the world (like the USA), so we’d rely on word of mouth...

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Wednesday, 10 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 524
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Vic Berger IVThe Cabinets & The Cupboards We’re very lucky here at Ground Control to actually get vinyl to review on our column. We’re sometimes doubly lucky, and caught completely unawares, when the label sending us the record we requested, adds on another record because they think we’d like it too. Maybe “shocked” is a better description than “caught unawares,” because vinyl is becoming more and more of a luxury to own, and it’s becoming harder and harder for labels...

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Saturday, 06 November 2021
Vinyl Vlog 523
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Pearl JamAlive 12” (Record Store Day edition) Everything critical that can be said about Pearl Jam has already been said. What’s left now are just end stories and personal experiences. The validity of “grunge” as a music genre can be debated (and it should be since it’s complete limited to the bands that came out of a certain part of the earth in a certain point of the 90s), but what is a fact is that Pearl Jam was one...

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Tuesday, 26 October 2021