It's funny how music industry trends have changed over the last twenty-five years. A quarter of a century ago, for example, Sub Pop had a reputation for being the little label that helped launch grunge and, while their stable of artists has been getting more diverse since the departure of label co-founder Bruce Pavitt, the founding belief that guitar rock was golden held up for a really, really long time. Now though, in 2013, that founding tenet (as well as...
Ground Control's Editor-In-Chief, Bill Adams, and I had a discussion recently about who might be this generation’s Led Zeppelin. That is, which of today’s bands might be able to maintain their popularity and influence thirty or forty years into the future? I’m not talking about who the it bands of the moment are and what chance they may have of writing songs that people will still care about in five years, this is both a broader and more focused question...
When Camper Van Beethoven started making records in 1985, they truly seemed unstoppable and inspired. They released three albums within an eighteen-month span and not one of them felt rushed or featured any ill-advised turns; the mixture of punk rock snot, college rock weirdness, a hippy's love of folksy melodies and a progressive desire to cross generic lines with impunity was fully formed and totally accessible for the right minds. Kids who didn't really fit in with any crowd (just...
Ernie Ball is proud to announce the 2013 Play Crossroads contest, where the legendary string company will be partnering up with Guitar Center, Guitar World, UltimateGuitar.com and ReverbNation.com in a global search to give the next best undiscovered guitarist a chance to perform live on stage at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013 at Madison Square Garden on April 12th-13th. Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013, presented by Chase, draws thousands of fans from around the world to witness live performances from...
Top o' the mornin' to ya junky! How's tricks in yer corna? Me? I'm doin' great – everythin's comin' up Donnie today. Things're lookin' good fer youse too – lookin' at 'is new bag o' SWAG I foun' fo' ya. Awright, no bullshit – dis bag is great! Firs' I nabbeda new new tune by da newes' band ta sign ta KillRockStars, Hands. I's a cool song, butcha wouldn' think it'd be comin' from KRS – it's all light an'...
Remember the first time you heard The Screaming Trees? It was cool, in a way, because here was this band jamming hard on classic rock riffs (like “White Room” by Cream or something), but there was also a rough, scuzzy and decidedly 'grunge' spin on that classic style. That cross of indie, post-punk values and classic rock ambition turned out to be the thing which bridged the gap between 'alt-rock' and 'classic rock' for a lot of people, and it's...
It might be a little bit hard to believe now in 2013 – a decade after Broken Social Scene and the rest of the Arts & Crafts stable began making waves and winning fans – but there was a time when being a Canadian band, owning up to it and hoping to have a career outside the country's borders was a long shot. Outside of the “big heavies” (artists like Neil Young, Anne Murray, Leonard Cohen, Paul Anka and The...
No matter how it gets sliced or spun, ten years is a long time – for just about anything. In the music industry, a period of ten years can see the beginning and end of an era; really, the grunge phenomenon only ran from 1989 through 1994 and, before that, the world was still toasting hair metal bands like guns N' Roses and Motley Crue. By the same token, pop-punk bands like Green Day and NOFX were the mainstream squeezes...
According to legend, the material collected together on Greetings & Salutations form Less Than Jake is actually older than most fans might think. True, the album collects the Greetings from Less Than Jake EP (which was originally released in 2011) and the Seasons Greetings from Less Than Jake EP (which was released in 2012) as well as two other songs recorded during the same sessions so fans already know there's a bit of vintage, but the music actually has a...
It's remarkable how much something as simple as a change of format can radically alter a listener's perception of the music they're hearing. A good example of such a phenomenon can be found in listening to the vinyl release of July Talk's self-titled album which comes out as a Canadian import on January 8, 2013; while readers probably already know that I was already taken enough with this album to see that it shared my call for Record Of The...