Somehow, that Ground Control's Holiday Gift Guide coverage begins now — several weeks before Christmas, still feels a little late in coming. Standing back from it, the whole thing actually began with a dark pall (it was black and came on Friday, November 23, even) and saw normally sensible shoppers raiding department stores like the end of the world was nigh, so it was the perfect time to stock up on just about everything one could imagine or dream up....
As excited as some people were when Jah Wobble and Keith Levene announced that they were working on new music together, there's no way that supporters were expecting much from the duo. That statement isn't meant to sound as condemning as it probably does, but let's be honest – over-inflated expectations would have been unreasonable because both players have always been sidemen; their names are good, but each has always been reliant upon a larger star to help them really...
Metallica announced today that they have taken ownership of all their master recordings including all music and long form videos, a move almost unprecedented for musicians signed to recording contracts. Under provision of their renegotiated joint venture agreement with the Warner Music Group in 1994, all masters revert back to the band as of today, November 30, 2012. "We would like to thank everyone at the Warner Music Group for twenty-eight years of a fantastic relationship, particularly since 1994 where we...
How important can innocence be to an artist and how infectious can the spirit of that state be when that artist is first starting out? As Cody ChesnuTT proves with Landing On A Hundred, innocence can mean everything in the world and losing it can be a bitter pill to swallow for the fans who have to deal with it. When the singer first appeared ten years agowith a double album recorded at home on no budget and released with...
Norris-Whitney Communications is helping out with a fundraising campaign for Toronto guitarist Rick Gunn, who has been waging an ongoing fight with cancer. the Toronto arts community has been moved into action to help Gunn and, on December 2, 2012, a benefit concert is being held at The Revival Bar at 783 College Street East which will include performances by artists including Bob Segarini, Seb Agnello, Lori Alter, Terry Draper (Klaatu) And The Prime Radiant,...
H'awright you luckyli'l junkies youse, So I know whatcher thinkin', “What the hell is Donnie doin' back so soon? I didn't short'im or nothin', an' I saw that he gave up some more free mp3s four days ago!” Well, yer right junky, but now that it's comin' up onna holiday season, my heart's swellin' up wit' da givin' spirit! It didn'hurt eith this I know I found a coupla things thit jus' fell offa the back o'trucks thit I want,...
With South African Hip-Hop trio Die Antwoord leading the way, the annual Sonor Tour rolled into the Fox Theater in Oakland and provided enough more than enough music for the ears of the nearly sold-out crowd. After DJ sets by Seth Troxler, Nic Fanciulli, and Paul Kalkbrenner pumped the kids up for the headliners, DJ Hi – Tek of Die Antwoord strolled out onto the stage and over to his turntables. And after throwing down the beats for his signature...
At this point in his career, it's hard to know what to even hope for from Neil Young – let alone what to expect. With Psychedelic Pill, Neil Young creeps up on seventy with his old noise-mongering cronies in Crazy Horse in tow, forty-three years after their debut together. Young's guitar foil in 1969 was the late Danny Whitten, a player whose style was no less ferocious, if not quite as wooly, than his mid-Seventies replacement Frank Sampedro. With his...
Sometimes the thing which makes a story engaging is a combination of the circumstances which helped to shape events and the personalities involved. Under the right circumstances, a perfect mess can just seem perfect; if one looks at Casablanca, for example, viewers can fall in love easily with the story of Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund and their doomed love affair, but what really makes the film a classic is the undercurrent which runs beneath every scene Humphrey Bogart and...
Do you remember where you were the first time you heard any one of the ten songs which comprise Rage Against The Machine's self-titled debut? Some readers may not remember, or they may list off any number of memories which revolve around car stereos, bedrooms, house parties or record store stereo systems, but I remember exactly where I was: I was in a movie theater. I had snuck in to see Natural Born Killers underage in September 1994, and I...