When the press release announcing that Social Distortion had signed a new record deal with Epitaph Records went out in the middle of last year, no one was really shocked but there was a gratified chorus of, “Well, it's about time” that went up. That response was understandable; in their thirty-three-year history, Social D has released a host of good punk albums on a series of different labels, but never for “the” punk label that can safely say it is...
Hey junky, Wow – did it ever not take long for the business to shift right into gear! Here's the proof: las' week, I had, what, thirty ill-gotten pieces o' SWAG fer yer samplin' pleasure? Yeah, that was a drop in the bucket bitch! This week, I got FIFTY new songs fer you to rifle through, an' there ain't a limp one in the lot! Check this out – in addition some the stuff I lifted that is just too...
Adebisi – "Genki Shank" https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG40Adebisi_Shank-genki_shank.mp3 Adebisi – "International Dreambeat" https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG40Adebisi_Shank-International_Dreambeat.mp3 Amanda Palmer – "Map Of Tasmania" https://groundcontrolmag.com/music/SWAG40Amanda_Palmer-Map_of_Tasmania.mp3 …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead – "Weight Of The Sun"...
While it didn't exactly sell in earth-shattering numbers at the time of its' release, Hollywood Town Hall did establish a foothold in the public consciousness for The Jayhawks and at least proved that the band wouldn't dry up under a little bit of limelight, The album reached number eleven on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and developed a bit of a buzz around the band, and that must have told the group's label that there might be something to them after all....
Some bands just can't recognize an opportunity when it's staring them in the face, and no singer is more aware of that fact than Keith Morris. For the last three decades, Morris has fronted punk rock stalwarts the Circle Jerks and both reveled in the praise and weathered the storms of critical disapproval with them but, when work began on a new album in late 2009, Morris became dissatisfied with how the sessions were going. He had written some new...
It's funny to look back now, and see how alternative rock and grunge totally inverted the plains of “mainstream” and “underground” music. In the early Nineties, there's no arguing that bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains were the dominant institutions of the day but, if one looks a little closer and deconstructs the fanfare that those bands generated, it's possible to see that there was something very unusual going on underneath; Soundgarden was tied to the...
There's no doubt that 2011 promises to be a good year for Tom Waits. While rumors of the singer working on a new stage musical with director (and long-time collaborator) Robert Wilson and playwright Martin McDonagh as well as talk of the singer beginning to write new material with wife Kathleen Brennan for a follow-up to 2006's Orphans collection had already begun to circulate and build some excitement, it was announced that the celebrated singer will finally be inducted into...
What do you do after you’ve taken a forgotten scrap of a musical style, dusted it off, polished it a bit and made it suddenly renowned? If you’re most bands, you ride that sound to the bank. If you’re the Decemberists, you work with it until it’s just south of everybody’s playlists, and then you drop it to find the next obscure artifact to meld into artistic genius. The Decemberists made sea shanties popular with the twenty-something crowd, brought back...
Happy New Year ya mooks! Sorry it took me a while to get back, I had a couple of things that needed doin' an' hadda spend a little time somewhere. Apparently, I should not drink Egg Nog in public – ya know what I'm sayin'? I was out at a holiday party an' I might've had a little too much Christmas cheer because, when the cops showed up to try an' break up the party, I tried to break them...
This isn't meant to sound petulant, but “rare birds” are so-called for a reason and it is this: evolution is cruelest to those creatures that don't easily fit in. Most often, “rare birds” meet unfavorable ends because they have no place of their own and no community. It's a grim reality, but it is the reality which will cause those who find Restorations to hope that the band hangs around for a while; their debut EP, Strange Behavior, is a...