Doesn’t matter which genre - basically any member of a band/ensemble who decided to spread his or her wings and attempt to find some kind of musical expression sans previous music-mates, resulting in a putrid puddle of something I really don’t want to describe.
First up is that distinctively-eyebrowed Who drummer who must’ve gone on a completely horrible, nasty bender and then came up with this little splotch of scraped-off-the-wall brain matter:
Like - WHAT THE FUCK WERE THINKING, KIETH?!?!?!?!?!?!
Nice to hear him mentioning the synthesizer.
Also nice seeing him get in a quick snog with the Mrs. in the control room.
There’s vague memories of daring to dive into the Kiss solo records - I think I might have dallied, quite stupidly, with Ace’s album. If I remember correctly he had an incredibly beautiful voice…incredibly beautiful if you like sad clown-faces wallpaper.
True fact: when I read the first sentence of the OP, I prepared to write about Keith Moon’s solo LP, which I still own on lovely vinyl (the album cover features a picture of Moon at a car window, but you reverse the sleeve insert and instead it has an ass in the window - mooning, get it?). God it’s bad.
Since R.E.M. broke up, Peter Buck has been putting out solo albums on his own label; AFAIK, all of them are also vinyl-only and limited edition, 1,000 copies or less, and he plays all the instruments and even “sings”. I know what Buck’s speaking voice sounds like, and whoever this vocalist is, I don’t think it’s him unless someone’s doing some serious vocal tweaking.
From what I have heard of them, I can’t even imagine 1,000 people being enough of a hardcore R.E.M. fan to want this dreck. But it’s his time and money, and he could be doing a lot worse things (and unfortunately, by some accounts is; there have been credible rumors over the years that he’s a really bad alcoholic ).
When Boston was at the height of their fame the first time around, guitarist Barry Goudreau put out a solo album. My local AOR station played this song until they got a cease and desist order from the band’s legal department.
They did make a video. Yeah, that’s Bradley Delp (RIP) on vocals. It’s a pretty feeble attempt at a hit single. Sure, it’s catchy, etc. but it wasn’t Boston.
I’m not afraid to admit it…at one time, particularly during my teenage years, I was a bit of a Kiss fan. And a big goal with my CD collecting then was getting all of the original makeup era Kiss albums. I did fine up through deciding to go ahead and give the solo albums a whirl, and got Ace Frehley and Peter Criss’ efforts. Ho. Ly. Damn. I got those albums because of two things…one, Ace and Peter were my favorites of the four with their characters, and two, I had read numerous reviews saying that if you get one Kiss solo album, get Ace’s for it was ‘the best’ by default. All of those freakin’ reviews grossly beyond GROSSLY overrated Ace’s album…outside of “New York Groove” (which was/is a Russ Ballard/Hello cover AND the biggest hit single from all four solo albums), I could never, ever get into Ace’s entire album to save my life. He always lost me at track number four…“Ozone”, his junkie glorification anthem and bit of ‘persuasion’ (and a TERRIFIC example of what you were saying about Ace’s vocals, Eddie). Why reviews considered that and “Fractured Mirror” (an instrumental that doesn’t really go anywhere, nor have much if any substance to it) such great numbers was, is, and will always be beyond me. Peter Criss’ album was better, but not by much, and only because I found “That’s The Kind Of Sugar Papa Likes” and his cover of “Tossin’ And Turnin’” harmless fun at the time (these days, I suspect I’d find them uber-cheesy when and if I ever go back to re-listen to them), but it was/is a little too ballad heavy. I actually do and will always have respect for Peter Criss being trained by Gene Krupa, but Criss got to be a bit too reliant on the slow side of jazz and rock…
But anyways, that was it for my Kiss solo album dabbling…I never even dared to touch Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley’s discs. :eek:
When Boston was at the height of their fame the first time around, guitarist Barry Goudreau put out a solo album. My local AOR station played this song until they got a cease and desist order from the band’s legal department.
They did make a video. Yeah, that’s Bradley Delp (RIP) on vocals. It’s a pretty feeble attempt at a hit single. Sure, it’s catchy, etc. but it wasn’t Boston.
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Ha! I've got that one on vinyl! It's fantastically mediocre, especially in the shadow of Boston's first album, as if the guys were just messing around while waiting for Tom Scholz to show up and give them some direction. But totally worth the $1.25 I paid for it, if only for *Mean Woman Blues*.
RTZ (Return To Zero) was another Boston spin-off that should have been … not done. I own that too, but only because I’m too ornery to just throw it out.
There are points in both albums where it seems pretty clear Goudreau is about as happy with his Boston experience as Tina Louise was with her role in Gilligan’s Island.
I know some people liked it, but the one that comes to mind that I bought and only listened to once was Robbie Robertson’s eponymous 1st solo release. Guy can’t sing…no wonder they kept his mic turned off most of the time.
Several years earlier, Alex Lifeson put out a solo album under the pseudonym “Victor”. Never heard any of it (that I know of) but I’ve heard that while the music’s OK, lyrically it’s hard to listen to.
Richard Butler from The Psychadelic Furs formed Love Spit Love when the Furs disbanded and they released two really quite good Alt-rock 90s albums. There are some spectacular pop singles on there that should have been big hits (IMHO). So I was quite pleased when I saw he had released a solo album about 10 years later.
I was…not pleased when I actually heard it. Just bland and boring, wandering, aimless wallpaper paste music. Listened to it once and never again…
Kevin Rowland of Dexy’s Midnight Runners gave us My Beauty. I’ve never heard it, but with a cover like that, who needs to?
Around the time of Genesis’ Duke/Abacab era, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford each put out a solo album on which they both insisted on singing. Wisely, neither of them ever, ever did that again.
I liked Geddy Lee’s solo album. Alex Lifeson’s record was just plain weird.
Well call me Ethel Merman’s guy-for-hire, but I actually didn’t mind that “Ozone” number. Certainly not a 4/4 time signature during the chorus (at least keeping me on my toes), and then back into the main guitar riff again, which, hey, I’ve heard a lot crummier riffs (such as the main one, played between the verses, in Rupert Holmes’s “Pina Colonic - Great Escape”)
Even Ace’s solo didn’t make me burp up any puke.
Sure, the lyrics are compostable mulch…and yeah, especially gross with all the coercion shit. His voice funnily reminds me of Johnny Winter when the latter belts it out.
Did you mean Alex Lifeson?
I actually had no problem with Sting’s “Dream of the Blue Turtles” album.
Around the same time, Steve Hackett, (who split G. a little earlier), came up with a nosedrip of an album called “Cured”. Classic 80’s synth/drum machine chicanery, and the vocals…
O
M
F
G…
I didn’t want to post a link orelse I probably would have been reported.
The lone instrumental track, though - “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, I thought was great - kinda spooked me too, a bit. lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8r0oqlsG1k
Wow - all those Boston spin-offs! Too bad they didn’t have a No Wave iteration. (super depressing, unsavory story about Mr. Delp tho)
Regarding “My Beauty” - when I saw that, it reminded me of a decade earlier when I was dating a record store owner, and EVERY.SINGLE.TIME someone bought Prince’s “Lovesexy”, they would cringe and say, “…the cover…”
As for Genesis, a few weeks ago I had the local classical station on as background music, and the announcer said that the previous piece had been composed and conducted by Tony Banks. I wondered, “THAT Tony Banks?” Yup. That Tony Banks.
One wonders what the Neil Peart solo album might sound like.
My default answer for this is Dee Dee King’s (Dee Dee Ramone) Standing In the Spotlight. Dee Dee does a Rap record.
It’d be a lot funnier if he wasn’t serious. I thought he wrote some damn good songs for the Ramones, and the songs he wrote for this record might have worked there. But there was something he fundamentally didn’t get about Rap, and apparently there wasn’t anyone around to tell him to either make it better or stop. The production sounds like the worst cheesy demo tape you’ve ever heard, and he doesn’t rap in a manner that works in any way I can discern. It has all the hallmarks of a person who’s newly sober trying to remake themselves into somebody they’ve picked, rather than finding out who they are. No matter how much sympathy you can have for a person that’s struggling with addiction, and I have a lot: It’s a colossally bad record.
I bought my copy ages ago for $2 out of the bargian bin, but before it went to being a cutout. I’d read a lot of exposes on how bad it was, and I wanted to try it just once…You know? The horror is that this record actually seems to sell for $35 and higher online in the present day (you can buy one now for $135 at Amazon). If I was a lot more evil, I’d sell mine. As it is, it merely sits as a problem for the inheritor of my estate. If you see this record for sale, do not buy it.
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