Ground To Zero

Freedom and music

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!

[VOTE NOW]

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 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.

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 28^th 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!

I mentioned in my previous post that, during our first ‘open jam’ session the other week, we actually wrote an awesome song.  Such a tease I am to tell you about our awesome new song without letting you hear it for yourself.  Such a horrible tease I am, all talk and no substance …that’s what she said!

Well thanks to Suzy and Gazz for having the forethought to bring a digital camera along to the rehearsal room, we now have raw video evidence of our first musical collaboration!

This video comes with a little disclaimer though: the featured song is still a work-in-progress and the video itself is not exactly ‘broadcast quality’.  Fortunately the video quality is just fine for YouTube, so check it out!

For a small digital camera, I was actually surprised at the results.  No fancy studio equipment was used (I hadn’t planned on recording anything that day!), but the song is quite audible and the image is not too bad either.  Ain’t technology grand?  Maybe Suzy will let us use her camera again next time (hint hint).

The song itself was only about 4 hours old when we recorded it, so it still needs some more work… and a title.  We’ll keep you posted of any developments in the song’s evolution, as well as any other songs that may emerge.

For now, let me leave you with a few of Suzy’s happy snaps from the rehearsal studio.

Update: seems that folks are liking the video!  The Ground To Zero YouTube channel has reached #52 – Most Viewed (Today) – Musicians – Australia.  Nice!  Remember, if you like the video, you’re free to share it around, so post it on your Myspace, share it with a friend on Facebook, whatever, it’s free*!

*Free for non commercial use only, and Ground To Zero should always be credited for the content (as well as any derivatives, remixes, etc), because that’s just polite dammit!  Check out the details on the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia licence.