FEATURES

ARTIST: 2015 Holiday Gift Guide Part Two All the most marvellous gift ideas that Ground Control’s favorite Santa’s helper Ollie Mikse could imagine. DATE: 12-11-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman Now Playing: ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas’ by the Eels Hello there!?? It’s the holiday season and time to completely buy into the capitalist society we pretend not to live in. While Bill Adams will keep you covered with the music related-items we think will tickle your gift-giving fancy this year,...

The holidays are a fantastic time of year aren’t they? They’re the time when all the nonsense which may have congested personal relationships is put aside, and everyone seeks to be with those closest to them. They exchange gifts and it’s wonderful. If you’re like me though reader, you have a habit of over-thinking those gifts. Eventually, you find yourself wandering through the mall in a daze; you know you care for the people on your list, but have no...

ARTIST: Ground Control’s Back To School Guide (Part Two) Time is growing short, here is Ground Control’s last cram for the stuff you might need to make life livable after you go back to school. DATE: 08-22-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman   Mininch Toolpen If you can see a certain trend in our back to school guide, it’s that practical and space saving are incredibly important to us. Living in a dorm can be the most fulfilling experience of your life,...

ARTIST: Ground Control’s Back To School Guide (Part One) Is it almost that time already? Sure is! You’re bound for institutions of higher learning, but Ground Control studied up and has Cliff’s Notes on what you might need after you get there. DATE: 08-10-15 WRITER: Ollie Ottoman Welcome to our first ever Back to School guide! Ground Control isn’t just about telling you what cool music, shows, comics and movies you should be checking out, it’s also what cool gear...

As contrary to the basic mindset of music journalism as it might seem (most critics like to see themselves as taste-makers with an ear for a hit, a finger on the public’s cultural pulse and a keen eye which recognizes emerging future trends), sometimes there’s just no way to explain how or why a band succeeds or fails to break through and become a cultural icon. It could be argued that it just boils down to dumb luck; sometimes a...

If you see enough “rock n’ roll” movies, eventually you begin to realize that there are always a few key points that are totally unbelievable: the best bands came from nothing (and a lot of them started by accident); their rise to greatness really begins at the moment the hardworking group sticks it to the man and starts doing things their own way, they reach a pinnacle of appeal and creative power at roughly the same time or immediately before...

Soundgarden bassist Ben Shepherd has a lot of big ideas. Recently, he has entertained the idea of creating a zip-line range at a location where “you can go tearing from location to location in the tree tops, but you can only get to it by boat or if you already know where it is” and developing a concert experience whereat a band (which the bassist has dubbed Forming Policy) will experiment with different sonic frequencies and motifs for the purposes...

While he doesn’t want to admit it for fear of jinxing the whole thing and watching it go down the tubes, singer/guitarist Jesse Elliott knows that something is about to happen to his band, These United States. He doesn’t know what, but anyone who speaks with him knows he can feel it coming; something’s going to happen. “Something about this record – God – where do I start,” beams the singer breathlessly. “I mean, with each one we’ve made, every...

It has been said just often enough at this point that it could be taken as gospel: “Necessity is the mother of invention” but no one truly revels in that sentiment more than Mike Watt. First as the bass player for The Minutemen and then as the bassist in fIREHOSE, Watt helped to usher in a new approach to his instrument both in the context of punk rock and rock n’ roll in general. While other players of the same...

In art, as is the case in life, it has been proven time and again that the population of intelligent people in the world fall into one of two groups: those that consider themselves to be smart and those that simply are. So what’s the difference? Those that assume themselves to be intelligent usually come by the notion honestly – they might be scholarly, they might be good (if fairly humorless) conversationalists, they may be the ones that their friends...