Seraphic Side-Projects & Ostentatious Manifestations Of Individual Dexterity
Often in bands and musical groups ideas
come flying in from all angles with a high degree of velocity kind of like a
bukkake without the shame. Just look at the amount of
producers Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Madonna,
Rihanna and all those other guys have sticking their thumbs in the pie and
collectively molesting it as if they were the clergy. Talk about too many fluffers
on the set.
Then you have those like Dave Mustaine or Steve Harris who rule
their musical projects with an iron fist with no deviation from a set formula
despite the changes in the spiritus mundi and the shifting of astral planes and
all that kind Platonic gobbledegook. Gobbledegook that dictates trends.
This is
where side projects come in. Playing for one band and doing dates all around
the world from Detroit to Danzig can get tiring playing the same ten or so
songs then feigning to walk off stage and then coming back out half blootered
to play an encore for another ten minutes and then leaving to rapturous
applause.
It gives artists an opportunity to have a look at alternative styles
to varying degrees of success that don’t always result in the spritz, tits,
glitz and glamour (see Brian Wilson’s rapping career after his days munching
tabs like they were tic tacs) and this list can raise the curtain on some of
the better attempts at these bards going it alone and dichotomizing from their
main musical projects. Or even going solo and outstripping or at least matching
the heights of their previous band somewhere in the euphonious stratosphere.
Ozzy Osbourne
Where to start with this man? With the time
he bit the unsuspecting noggin off a bat on stage, or the time he bit the
unsuspecting noggin off a dove in a meeting or the time he momentarily decided
on a career on interior design and painted the walls in shark blood? Being one
of the most ostentatious members of the heavy metal fraternity which includes
such depraved luminaries as Nikki Sixx and Lemmy Kilmister this indicates a fun
loving character to say the very least.
On being given the ass from Black Sabbath
one could be forgiven for thinking that he’d do a Dale Evans and disappear into
the stygian blackness of relative anonymity and opening a pub or something. But
our Ozzy isn’t a man to lie down and let the vultures descend on the rapidly
gathering carrion of his career. Oh no. No no no. His first solo album Blizzard
of Ozz featuring virtuoso shredder Randy Rhoads (who was incinerated in a plane
crash all too soon) was a fantastic effort and propelled him into the heights
of fame of which you can be blamed for ruining the younger generation. I’m
talking about of course the controversy surrounding Suicide Solution from
Blizzard of Ozz in which a clinically depressed teenager shot himself listening
to the song and the parents of course wanted to shift the blame. Frivolous I
know.
Guitar Hero veterans will be happy to know
that such favourites as Mr. Crowley and Crazy Train appear on the record and
both are high watermarks in the whole genre of heavy metal and showcase the
fact that classical music and the modes contained within are incredibly similar
and that there is a whole lot in common between the two genres. Except one is
electrified and one isn’t. Crazy Train especially is a song that has stood the
test of time and its enchanting aural musk can still be heard on a semi regular
basis if you still have the patience to listen to your clock radios.
Blizzard of Ozz was arguably his high point
from a commercial and critical point of view although they were a few other
successes under the control of his imperious wife Sharon who was able to bring
Ozzy back from the pits after his acrimonious exit from Sabbath largely due to
the ties her dad had in the industry. A little bit of nepotism does go a long
way.
Eric Clapton
Up in a select pantheon of people to
outstrip their main band lies old slowhand otherwise known as everyone’s
favourite drunken ranter and raver Eric Clapton. Originally apart of various
pioneering bands such as The Yardbirds, (A band that gave us Jimmy Page and
Jeff Beck) Cream and Derek and The Dominos, Clapton never really had a stable
band that lasted as long as your Rolling Stones or your Shadows and has spent
most of the past half of a century releasing his own work. That’s not to
discount anything at all from Cream or any of the others as they are all their
own separate chimichangas
of joy. Especially Cream with its alternating vocalists. Kind of reminds you
the Waters/Gilmour dynamic in Pink Floyd although without the white hot mutual
animus and revulsion.
Fair enough some of the songs on his
compendium of albums can give you the same reaction and comportment as you’d
get from sitting on a flaccid cock, but when he’s on top of his game like on
‘Layla’ or on ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ or on ‘Tears in Heaven’ he is the top of
his class like a soigné Stradivarius. Or to put it in guitar terms, he is like
an Ibanez JEM. A refined and ambrosial musician. A Lamborghini purring along.
Compared to your Jason Becker’s and your
Yngwie Malmsteen’s he doesn’t quite have the same ability to perform fretboard
pyromancy so he is instead more revered and respected for his tone. In
particular the so called ‘woman tone’ that was played on a Gibson SG and a
prime example of this is in the Cream song ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ in both solos of the song. He’s also
remembered for how he has influenced those who followed his lead as he charged
through life with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other.
Lou Reed
Lou Reed, the recently departed doyen of
rock and the esoteric is perhaps one of the most influential musicians of all
time. Playing at first with The Velvet Underground, this band was amazingly
versatile changing from the avant garde, to the folky and even to the melodic
pop hook laden. Just like an acoustic chameleon.
At the time of the first release from
Velvet Underground, the one with the banana on the front which was produced by
Andy Warhol, such lyrical subject matter such as smack addiction and sexual
tomfoolery sent a shockwave of salacity through the flimsy, piss soaked moral
scaffolding of the time which were exceedingly prudish compared to today where
the elderly will have you believe all manners of deviancy and sinful behaviour
occurs. Songs released with titles as subtle as ‘Heroin’ were monolithically
bold moves back in 1967 and morally reprehensible to the moral codes of the
time. Kind of like lighting a bushfire in the middle of gethsemane as Jesus’s
disciples run around in flames like little shrilly ululating comets, split
across the cosmos glowing and radiant.
One of the greatest bands of all time
unfortunately had a quite frankly fucking retarded death or euthanizing or
however you view it in which everyone quit except one man being Doug Yule who
rather admirably decided to solider on and record everything himself.
Transformer is easily his most famous work and it’s easy to see why, being
produced by David Bowie’s well informed ears it has a very glam influence about
it and continues the theme of Mister Reed’s tendency to write socially
transgressive lyrics including a summary of the tales of the pop art circus that
went on at Andy Warhol’s studio in perhaps his most famous song ‘Walk On The
Wild Side’.
All in all, if someone ever says to you
they have never heard of Lou Reed, I give you permission to look down on them
with a vitrifying, basiliscan glare of patrician disdain.
Jello Biafra
Apart from being named after a short lived
African sham republic and fighting the good fight against the frothy mouthed
convocation of wowsers and conservative moral extremists at the PMRC who
painted a venomous and carcinogenic misinterpretation of popular music and
especially the lyrics encased within, Jello Biafra also fronted the punk band
The Dead Kennedys.
The lyrics that come from this man do speak
of a certain degree of cerebral aptitude and a perennial quest to give birth to
some morbidly iconoclastic satire. Ranging from making comparisons of then
California governor Jerry Brown to a certain Nazi powerbroker all the way to
rounding up and irradiating the poor, painting a hugely hyperbolic, but mildly
accurate picture of the political arena in the 1980’s.
After The Dead Kennedys slowly withered and
decomposed, Jello went down the path of a more demagogical Kevin Bloody Wilson
and started performing spoken word routines with a spicy hot undercarriage of
political sentiments which you will find are good value. They are also
influenced by his ding-dong battle for supremacy with Tipper Gore and the rest
of the PMRC and censorship attempts as a whole, ranging from campaigns to ban
the teaching of evolution in American schools to disc jockey Alan Freed’s
arrest for allegedly inciting a riot with a few innocuous comments which
thankfully wasn’t the precursor to an Orwellian takeover of some sort.
The most recent foray into the creative
arts from him which was a return to hardcore punk was The Guantanamo School of
Medicine which mainly focuses on the jingoistic, nonsensical bedlam that can be
described as American foreign policy and could be seen as a modern day
reincarnation of The Dead Kennedys. (As you might have guessed from the name)
Audioslave
Grunge met funk in the resulting encounter
which proved to be extraordinarily erotic and romantic, bred something
moderately sexy named Audioslave which could also be considered a supergroup
although all the members except Chris Cornell of Soundgarden fame came from
Rage Against The Machine. Tom Morello’s unconventional style of playing the
guitar and tendency to play in Drop B (Yes that’s right. Drop B) contributed to
their unique sound. If you haven’t been introduced to Tom Morello, he’s a
fantastically innovative player often making sounds that you’d otherwise think
would be coming from a synth pad or a turntable. Prime examples of this are in
the songs ‘Gasoline’ and ‘Like A Stone’ along with all those songs from Rage
Against The Machine that are as dizzying as they are beauteous.
Lacking the lefty leaning political outlook
that was prominent in Rage Against The Machine for the most part, it was inevitable
that anything involving Tom Morello would no doubt get that way eventually and
the boot was stuck into the administration of Bush Jr. over many things, most
notably being Iraq War II and the slack, gastropod like reaction in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But with both Soundgarden and Rage Against the
Machine deciding to reform and return to touring the world, it looks unlikely
that Audioslave will get back and add to their three albums any time soon, if
ever. REST IN PEACE. AVE ET VALE.
Mr. Bungle
I could probably make another article on
side projects involving side projects from Mike Patton but this one is
definitely his best but not even close to the weirdest. Which is saying
something as this band is quite simply crazier than wanking with a fistful of
shit. Transcending and cartwheeling chaotically through several genres
including but not limited to spaghetti western, film scores, traditional Middle
Eastern music and lounge with relative ease although not always with too much
thought which gives you an idea of the diversity within.
These cycles through
the genres can occur through the course of a single song which is again like a
chameleon, but perhaps a chameleon that is somewhere on the spectrum. Bungle
began as a high school death metal band that somehow survived despite Patton
touring and recording simultaneously with Faith No More and the other members
such as the prodigiously talented Trey Spruance having a bevy of other bands to
contend with. They got their first album out and whether or not Faith No More’s
success helped them off the ground will divide opinion but what was contained
on the debut seemed as if it was written by Kokopelli himself and an
interesting choice of samples. Yes one of these is from a porno.
Not an easily accessible band by any means,
but the craft in creating such a disparate and perplexing labyrinth of noise or
a sonic smorgasbord if you will, cannot be understated and maybe the closest
classification you could give this is maybe jazz on amphetamines so it’s
definitely worth a look. To truly appreciate a work of art, one must do more
than simply give the piece a glance and move on. To do this you’d have to d̶o̶w̶n̶l̶o̶a̶d̶
̶i̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶p̶i̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶b̶a̶y̶ purchase their work from your local record
store as hearing this lot on the radio would be the subversive equivalent of
breaking into a Bullingdon meeting and donkey punching everyone there.
A Perfect Circle
A Perfect Circle could also be considered a
supergroup and with Maynard James Keenan involved in proceedings, it means that
things are bound to get profoundly profound. Don’t let that make you think that
this is just Tool wearing a beige sweater though.
A Perfect Circle is
completely different basket of wombats and offers a more melodic exposition
that doesn’t require the mental dynamism one needs to take Tool in fully.
Considering that the main composer is Billy Howerdel, originally the guitar
tech for Adam Jones it makes perfect sense that there is a difference in sound
and content so it can be considered more an industrial pursuit along the lines
of Nine Inch Nails in quite a few songs.
The future for A Perfect Circle is shrouded
in mystery and there hasn't been a new album in a decade (apart from a greatest
hits compilation. Pah.) despite being on the touring circle and even
co-headlining Soundwave in 2013 you’d have to think that this is just another
fossil in the landscape to be found by a budding young archaeologist of sorts
looking for new tunes. Would love to be proven wrong although it’s a bit of a
long shot, although as of recently they are still doing the rounds and touring
about the land like minstrels and playing old material and covers at festivals
and various shows so who knows what’s going to happen next. Probably nothing.