A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2017 vinyl reissue of Damn The Torpedoes by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. It might sound like a grandiose claim to say something like, “Truly and genuinely rare is an album like Damn The Torpedoes – it has really introduced some of the biggest and most respected institutions in the modern music industry” but those who think so simply do not know the whole story of the album. First, it’s important...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP edition of Legacy by David Bowie. On the surface, the existence of Legacy – the newest compilation of the greatest hits from David Bowie’s songbook – likely comes off as a little confusing. The set arrived almost two years to the day after Nothing Has Changed (a.k.a. The greatest hits comp which was curated by the artist himself) and, name-for-name, features a very, very (very – it’s about 75% the...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP Beggars Arkive Edition reissue of The Closer You Get by Six. By Seven. By the time the ‘century’ portion of the calandar rolled over seventeen years ago, rock was already beginning to mutate in some pretty interesting ways. By then, the “rap-rock” fan had already come and helped to administer a hefty injection of fresh, crotch-grabbing energy to the form, goth was bigger and more mainstream than it had ever...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the 2LP+1CD deluxe edition of the Singles soundtrack. While there are several great soundtracks which were released in the 1990s (the Tank Girl, The Crow and Great Expectations soundtracks all leap to mind), arguably the greatest and most culturally important of the lot proved to be that of Cameron Crow’s first “rock memory scrapbook” picture, Singles. The reason for that is pretty easy to explain; released in 1992, Singles happened to come...
Bertrand Russell The Impact of Science on Society One of the things we love doing here on Ground Control is share some of our favorite books with our readers. We review everything we think looks interesting, even when they turned out to be less-than-stellar (hey, when a publisher sends us a book we ask for, we review it, no matter what). Other times, it’s an absolute joy to write these reviews and tell our audience about these great...
Get Out It’s an absolute joy to write about Get Out, and for too many reasons to get into really. But if I could highlight one thing in particular it’s that Get Out is a movie that lives up to the hype. Unfortunately, sites like Rotten Tomatoes have served less as an accurate gauge of a movie and more as another example of rating inflation. Wonder Woman had some OK moments and holds a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes....
The Russian Revolution 1917: A Personal Record by N.N. Sukhanov by Nikolai Nikolaevich Sukhanov, Joel Carmichael It’s incredible to believe that it’s been 100 years since the Russian Revolution: the Ten Days that Shook the World as Jack Reid called them. It begun one of the greatest social experiments in humanity and now, 100 years later, having “failed,” it’s still subject to in depth analysis, what it accomplished, where it fell short, and what we can learn from it. Probably...
Dance of Reality Blu-ray (Abkco) I’m not sure what made Jodorowsky abandon movie making for 23 years, but it’s certain that the world lost one of its most unique filmmakers in the process. It might have been the monumental task of trying to get a Topo sequel financed, and maybe Jodorowsky was finally disillusioned with filmmaking, but the man certainly stayed productive during those years, writing books and comics galore. However, it’s no surprise that such a passionate filmmaker would...
Toasting the XX Factor – The Aging Punk Looks At How More Women Are Taking Up The Axe To Save Rock N’ Roll. I recently went to a show featuring one of my favorite local bands. There were three bands on the bill in total; I walked into the bar in the middle of the first band’s set. I was disappointed to see that it consisted of all guys. Not that I have anything against male musicians, but right now...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Sleeping Through The War LP by All Them Witches. They might not actually be from the desert (in fact they’re from Nashville, TN), but that doesn’t mean All Them Witches haven’t channelled the heat, aridity and all the weirdness normally associated such a landscape and front-loaded it onto their fourth full-length album, Sleeping Through The War. This time though, no introductions get made (none are really necessary – the band had...