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...

If you were to look at a timeline of the concert reviews I’ve written for Ground Control, you’d easily surmise that I’ve gone into retirement. When my name pops up once on an annual basis for “best album of the year” lists, that’s one thing – but to inspire me to attend a concert again, that takes the epic promise of music that will make me think deep thoughts and stir my soul. Last year it took Opeth to drag...

Quintessential California punk band NOFX celebrate their monumental 30th anniversary by announcing the release of a limited edition deluxe LP collection of every studio album they have released, from 1988’s Liberal Animation through 2012’s Self Entitled on February 19th 2013. This limited edition collection will be available for pre-order today at: www.nofxboxset.com . The must-have collection of only 2500 pressings will include all of NOFX’s studio albums, as well as the 2xLP for the "7 Inch of the Month...

Awright junky,Here we go again, ya reprobates. Yup, da warm glow o' da Christmas season's ova an' my hangover from New Year's has faded a bit, so I'm startin' ta survey the damage. I's a little rough on my end but, lookin' atta amount o' stuff I wis able ta get fer dis first SWAG Report o' da year, I'm bettin' youse are gonna get well pretty quick! Seemed like, everywhere I turned, I had more stuff ta collect an'...