Solo work from famous musicians. That is interesting. (heh)

You’re gonna make me post Zappa, right? I see your plan.

Stephen Malkmus. Breaks up more or less the defining 90’s indie-rock band (Pavement), and then just carries on making album after album of Pavement-adjacent, but even more laid-back, jangly guitar music.

Kimberley Rew is not a household name, but he was the other songwriter and main guitarist in the Soft Boys, with Robyn Hitchcock, and that’s his chiming guitar playing on “I Wanna Destroy You”, which somehow got appropriated to a Subway commercial last year.

Kimberley left the Soft Boys (and shortly after, Robyn Hitchcock went solo and began his own career) and put out a solo album of songs he couldn’t get onto Soft Boys records because…Robyn Hitchcock. (Also, let us wonder at a band fronted by two people named Kimberley and Robyn, and both a scruffy looking dudes.) Rew couldn’t find a major label willing to put out his solo recordings.

So…he put a new band together, searching for a woman to front and belt out songs. And he and his bandmates found that person in Katrina Leskanitch, an American. And…yeah. You’ve probably heard of Kimberley’s next band, Katrina & The Waves. And yep, you can blame him for “Walking On Sunshine”, which I’m sure he giggles about monthly when he goes to his mailbox and that ASCAP/BMI check is waiting for him.

But back to that solo album. It’s called “The Bible Of Bop”, it did eventually get reissued, and it is tremendous.

And here’s a song from that.

EDIT: it looks like BMG paid Kimberley Rew 10 million pounds for the publishing rights to “Walking On Sunshine” a few years ago, after the song was pulling in about $1.5 million years in royalties. It’s good to be Kimberley Rew.

Hey @richvr, figured you would have posted some of those Roger Taylor videos from that other thread. They were a revelation!

Oh man. You’re right, I should. Good call!

As I said in the other thread, Roger Taylor, drummer for Queen, had the same vocal octave range as Freddy Mercury. They originally sold clothes in a shop in London. Clothes for rock and roll musicians.

Susie Hoffs is best known as the lead singer of The Bangles, a band I will seriously fight you over if you dare deny their awesomeness. :)

But while the band was on hiatus from the late 1980s to 2000s, she put out a couple of solo records. And her second, self-titled album is a brilliant record from start to finish. I really think it’s the only album she ever made that sounds like the record SHE has always wanted to make. Because, the thing is, Susanna Hoffs, blazingly sexy though she may be, is a SERIOUS music nerd. And so on this record, she teamed up with songwriters she knew and who she’d spotted as up-and-comers. And one of those up-and-comers was Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse.

And so, if you’ve ever wondered what Sparklehorse would sound like with Susie Hoffs singing lead, I give you this:

John Lydon of the Sex Pistols did arty post-punk after he went solo with a vehicle called Public Image Ltd. (PiL for short) their music was adventurous (and Interesting):

Not sure about the Bangles, but I sure as hell do like the sound of this! I would love to hear more, but that will be tricky: it’s not on Spotify or Itunes. Guess I’ll have to try and track down an old cd…

Yeah, it’s sadly out of print now. The biggest problem with the Bangles was always material selection. They were always wise enough to realize that their songwriting skills had limitations, and so after their amazing first album, they got pushed into using a bunch of VERY commercial, slick songwriting combos. Which sold them a bunch of records…and also made them pretty unhappy.

And so on that solo record, Hoffs enlists songwriters like Mark Linkous, David Baerwald, Charlotte Caffey of the Go Gos and Roger Manning of the Jellyfish. She also does ace covers of a Lightning Seeds song and “To Sir With Love” just because.

Donald Fagen, ‘New Frontier’

John Lennon, ‘God’

Since we’re not in the Music forum, I can also add:

image

Following the incredible success of his first book, In His Own Write, John Lennon’s second collection of stories, drawings and poems is just as witty, whimsical and wonderful as his debut. First published in 1965 it is now back in print, looking just as it did when it first appeared half a century ago.

CONTENTS

A Spaniard in the Works
The Fat Budgie
Snore Wife and some Several Dwarts
The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield
The Faulty Bagnose
We must not forget the General Erection
Benjaman Distasteful
The Wumberlog (or The Magic Dog)
Araminta Ditch
Cassandle
The National Health Cow
Readers Lettuce
Silly Norman
Mr. Boris Morris
Bernice’s Sheep
Last Will and Testicle
Our Dad
I Believe, Boot . . .

and

A Painting by Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) that is interesting.

Dreams In The Daytime Colored With Sunshine 1998 Collection.

And a Song that is interesting:

Song off the first Jeff Beck album after he left the Yardbirds (he got some pretty good talent on this Album, all around the Album and the Song are interesting):

Wings were completely underrated. AND they had a damned song about Supervillans!!?? Who else did that?? That is very cool (and interesting) in my book!

If pressed I’d go with Venus and Mars as their best album. It has a little bit of everything.