Ash Fyfe, a frequent participant of the Ground To Zero project, has set himself a challenge: for 22 days he is going to write and record a new song each day, and each song being of a different genre. Quite an ambitious project, but he is almost half way through and going strong.
Check out www.usunkmybattleship.com for a new song every day throughout the month of January. Here are the songs he has released so far, be sure to leave a comment.
I thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve been doing outside of Ground To Zero. This recent entry brings us to part five!
More than just the corner stone of every bachelor’s diet, Doritos have also launched a nation-wide competition called “Make An Ad, Make A Fortune”. The competition pits aspiring film makers against each other to create the next Doritos TV commercial so their advertising agency doesn’t have to. We at Golden Tusk Productions think that’s a brilliant idea, so we threw our hat into the ring.
Combine the above with alcohol, boredom and one overacting cowboy and this is what you get:
Does this make us sell outs? Absolutely not. What makes us sell outs is that we’re asking all of you to vote for our video to be selected for TV air time. By voting for our video, you’ll be helping us fulfil our life long dream of being ripped apart on the Gruen Transfer.
We need your votes before next week to win the round, so go now and vote my lovely ladies and gentle folk!
Have I plugged the voting thing enough yet?
I thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve been doing outside of Ground To Zero. Welcome to part four (will this never end?).
In the world of Star Wars geekdom, not much escapes me. It was only a matter of time before I caught wind of the Star Wars Uncut project. I mentioned it to my pals over at Golden Tusk Productions and, to my surprise, they loved the idea. And so, the following bastardisation of Star Wars was born.
If you want to see our scene make the final cut, cast your votes at www.starwarsuncut.com. Run Luke, run!
So I thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve been doing outside of Ground To Zero. Welcome to part three.
I got to talking with guitarist Adam Kurzel last year. Both of us were badly depleted of motivation since the demise of Nitidus and its short-lived successor Shotgun Zero. However, Adam had written a bunch of songs that never quite suited either band. We jammed on some of the songs and liked what we were hearing, so we recorded a few rough demos, nabbed ourselves a bass player in one Ben Howling (from Immersion) and settled on the band name Romeo Knights.
As of this writing, most of the songs are already good to go. We plan to write a few more, then lay down the best tracks in a home studio so you can hear our new sounds before we take it to a stage near you.
For now, here’s one we prepared earlier. This is a track Adam and Marki recorded during the Shotgun Zero days that has found a home in the Romeo Knights set list.
If you would like to keep up to date on the band’s progress, head over to www.romeoknights.com and subscribe to the feed.
So I had a little extra spare time recently and thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve been doing outside of Ground To Zero. Welcome to part two.
We had so much fun making Wine Capades for Golden Tusk Productions that we made a sequel with a cleverly imaginative name. Beer Capades is just like Wine Capades, except with more hops… and nothing like Wine Capades. Watch the teaser video, you’ll get the idea.
EDIT: So, I forgot to mention the most important part! The theme song for Beer Capades was written and recorded by Ground To Zero regulars Catherine Robinson (guitar) and myself (drums). You may remember seeing Catherine in our Demo 1 video from the first jam session. Now finally we have some new music here for you. Enjoy!
You can check out the rest of the show on the Golden Tusk Productions YouTube channel.
It’s a long weekend here in Australia (except for WA). This is a time when we celebrate the birth of the Queen of England by doing… nothing in particular. Possibly the best reason for Australia to remain under a monarchy. Not that being a republic wouldn’t also be fab.
So anyway, I had a little extra spare time this weekend and thought I’d take a few moments to share what I’ve been doing outside of Ground To Zero. Welcome to part one.
Over the past year or two I’ve been stepping out from behind the drums and in front of a camera with the rest of the Golden Tusk Productions crew. We’ve been making odd-ball indie short films for years, but this time we put together a mini-series devoted to one of life’s most wonderful pleasures: wine drinking! Here’s a little taste of Wine Capades:
You can check out the rest of the show on the Golden Tusk Productions YouTube channel.
Today we fight back against the Australian government! What have they done this time? How about systematically killing live music venues in Victoria!
Here’s a little background from S.L.A.M. (Save Live Australia’s Music), a “non-politically aligned, independent entity made up of musicians and music-lovers”:
In a bid to address street violence, Liquor Licensing Victoria (LLV) has introduced sweeping changes with unintended consequences for the local music scene.
LLV should admit its mistake and make simple changes immediately, acknowledging that there is no link between live music and high risk. The Tote is gone, who’s next?
On 23 February, coinciding with the 34th anniversary of AC/DC’s famous ‘It’s A Long Way To The Top’ film clip shoot down Swanston Street, S.L.A.M. is protesting in support and celebration of Victoria’s music scene, where new liquor licensing laws threaten to pull the plug on live music.
Today is the day people! If you’re in Melbourne this afternoon and want to show your support (or just hang out with your favourite local musicians), head over to the State Library at 4pm, where they’ll be marching to Parliament House and being generally disgruntled until 7pm 6pm.
I work in the city, so I’m hoping to stop by later on. I’ll be sure to take some of my usual low-quality Blackberry photos. Come say hi if you’re there, I’m the one in the brown jumper (because stupid me forgot to bring one of my many local band t-shirts).
Update: as promised, my happy snaps…
You can find more photos from the rally under the “slam” tag on Flickr.
Don’t let all the internet politics and piracy debates fool you, the Ground To Zero project is all about making music and sharing it freely! The music-making machine fired up again last Saturday (thanks again Jake and Gazz), however you may have noticed that I’ve totally slacked off in the music sharing department. That ends here dammit!
Unfortunately we don’t have any studio tracks for you, but we do have a metric shit-tonne of raw video footage taken from our 2009 jam sessions. “Shit-tonne” is of course the technical term for a hard disk full of video files, which I’ve been trawling through like a pig digging for truffles. Before you get too excited, let me first point out that these videos were never meant to be high quality productions. What we have is a demo reel of musical experimentation, and some of those experiments failed spectacularly. Others sucked considerably less (to my ears anyway), so I’m going to release those ones to the world. Why? Because that’s how we roll bee-atch (cue the gansta beatz).
My god that was a lot of preamble.
If you’re keen to hear some raw new music, check out this demo track I cobbled together from our second jam session on 28th March 2009. It features Jase on bass, Jake on guitar and both Gazz and myself on the duelling drum kits. Roll it…
So now that we’re all sharing, it’s time for you to share your comments. You can even share the video itself if you want, it’s free under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License. Have fun!
OK, I’ve had my rant about the internet censorship filter and the iiTrial, now it’s time for an update on the Ground To Zero project itself.
Here it is in a nutshell:
We’re back baby, yeah!!
Here it is again in slightly more words:
A sixth jam session was intended for mid 2009, but other commitments demanded attention at the time and unfortunately Ground To Zero lost momentum. The media landscape of course continued to change and I did my best to capture the highlights on our FriendFeed. Lessons were learned, the Ground To Zero concept evolved and pretty soon another decade passed into history. I was keen to get this project rolling again, and so were a lot of people apparently, so it’s about time we break the silence… and by that I mean make some serious noise!
To be more specific:
So there it is, lots of stuff happening. Probably a good time to subscribe to our news feed if you haven’t already. Not into RSS or newsletters? Fine, we’ll come to you. We’re on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Myspace, plus I have just carved out territories on Flickr, Vimeo and thesixtyone as well, so friend us up on your favourite sites.
That’s enough words from me, I’ve got videos to edit and jam sessions to organise. Ciao.
Yeah, I will get to my updates on the Ground To Zero project soon, but first some AWESOME breaking news:
iiNet won their court case against AFACT!!
If that statement alone has you fist-pumping the air right now, then carry on celebrating noble freedom fighter! 🙂
If you’re wondering why I’m so happy, let me explain. Way back in November 2008, Australian ISP iiNet was taken to court by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) for allegedly failing to pass on copyright infringement notifications to its customers. AFACT argued that by not enforcing their demands, iiNet was supposedly “authorising piracy” on their network.
Let me put it to you like this: if someone steals water from their neighbour’s garden hose, is the water company responsible because they provided the water? The correct answer of course is HELL NO! The water company is just a utility providing a service, they’re not responsible for how water is used. In the same way, ISPs are a utility for providing internet services, not for policing how it’s used. If AFACT had their way, ISPs would be forced to monitor all their customers’ usage. It’s illegal for the postal service to check our mail, so why should ISPs be allowed to snoop on our internet activity?
Despite logic being on our side, most of us didn’t expect iiNet to win this case. However, last Thursday Justice Dennis Cowdroy found that iiNet did not authorise the infringements and ruled in their favour. Cowdroy stated that “The mere provision of access to the internet is not an authorisation of infringement“. Despite what AFACT would have us believe, this does not mean pirates are “off the hook”. After the verdict was announced, iiNet CEO Michael Malone emphasised that they do not condone piracy, but insisted that litigation isn’t the right way to fight it. Rather, the best way to deal with the issue is to make the content available legally online in a way that’s mutually beneficial for the studios and the consumers. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/video/embed/22497191
That’s nice, but why do I care?
You should care because this is a big win for our privacy as consumers. It means the big studios can’t bully ISPs into breaching the privacy of their customers. The pretence of fighting piracy doesn’t give them the right to spy on all of us, and fortunately the court saw it that way too.
Just when things were looking gloomy for Australians with the proposed internet censorship filter still undefeated, it’s nice to see some good news for once.
Ground To Zero 
You must be logged in to post a comment.