[I would like to point out that I named the article I posted about the Platter "Society For The Prevention Of Totally Unwarranted Solo Albums And Side Projects" BEFORE I saw that Cheese had used the Anti Solo Album Project theme. Great minds think alike... unfortunately, so do mediocre ones.]
TISM member gone solo Jock Cheese explains the principles behind his Anti Solo Album Project.
Jock Cheese forms the "Anti Solo Album Project" or ASAP. The side project to stop side projects as soon as possible, before they get released. As an active part of ASAP Jock Cheese has been approaching members of other bands explaining that he had a terribly introspective and personally disturbing time of it when writing and recording the Jock Cheese Platter, and that he has been advising against similar moves to members of Midnight Oil and the Bee Gees. Just two of the latest candidates that might end up producing solo works of any kind.
The disgraceful products of people who, for whatever reason, think that they may have grown personally or artistically, and geel the need to branch forth from the initially healthy and doubtless worthwhile union of themselves and their comrades are categorized as follows from bad to reprehensible.
Category A: The Solo Album
ASAP's response: Bad.
Who the hell do you think you are breaking the convention of a group of friends that got together under a common bond of social awareness, political viewpoints, sexual orientation or just taking the same drugs?
What do you think is to be gained by your breaking out in this way? Fame? Wealth?
Come off it.
Unless you're the total engine room of the band and you're also the lead singer as well, you haven't got a hope of transferring any of the good will or kudos from the friendly union you leave behind to the self-centred and almost certainly indulgent platform you're creating.
Category B: The Solo EP.
ASAP's response: Getting worse than bad.
This is much worse than the Solo Album, in as much as you're admitting from the onset that you on your own can't come up with enough material to fill an album, and therefore have talked the CD label into releasing an EP, which will be doomed to fail anyway due to the fact that full album CDs don't sell well enough these days anyway let alone a piece of plastic with only four or five songs on it.
Category C: The Book.
ASAP's response: Starting to really smell.
What did you join or form a band for in the first place? Sex? Drugs? The music? Fun and freebies? What ever it was, to then go and try crossing over into the literary world coming from where you have been is an obvious "LOSER" sign hanging around your neck in as much as you're then stating that you were shithouse at music in the first place.
If you weren't, you'd have released a solo album or worse yet a solo EP and you'd still be in the doghouse (no offense to dogs), see categories A and B.
What are you going to do? Start subscribing to book clubs and essay pools on the Internet sitting around your study in your smoking jacket at your laptop?
Let's look at what you are leaving behind. You come from an all night rave after a gig, waking up in the well-stocked hotel room with little sleep next to a new sexual partner you've obtained in the last nine hours whose name you can't quite remember, and by the way that doesn't matter in the slightest, still buzzing from the volume and substances the night before. You then go stumbling through the airport with your best friends laughing at the commuters as you go, to a seat you haven't paid for which will whisk you off the the next four star pad for a night of similar hedonism.
You're going to trade this for boring hors d'oevres and chardonnay book launches and an editor breathing down your neck for your next instalment. You must be nuts!
Who the hell do you think you are now? Nick Cave? Jesus wept!
Category D: The Film
ASAP's response: Completely and totally reprehensible
Film is different to almost every other form of artist expression especially music and indeed the music industry. The film industry is made up of sensitive, well educated thoughtful people who just about all started out wanting to shed light on the human condition or to help repressed minorities through documentaries and social expose pieces, and end up having families and working in features, theatre, television, advertising agencies and other such forks of the artistic tree which all have their merits to one degree or another.
You who are in a band and are thinking of making and releasing a film come to this industry from the dirtiest and most shallow pond of all. A tadpole like yourself rarely grows a strong enough pair of legs to kick your way out of the mud in which your artistic career was formed.
Someone once explained it to me this way: The entertainment industry is like a big casino. Motion pictures are the back room baccarat tables for the millionaires with the $10,000 gold chips. Television is the $100 table for the yuppies, theatre is the $25 table, and the record biz is the $2 table, essentially for the bargain shopper.
Get real! You're a musician. You have bargain bin dust all over you. Don't think then you can go try and cross mediums in an affront [sic] to branch out as an individual. You'll end up at best on the $25 dollar table, or worse yet, a yuppie.
"Most solo projects are appalling, but mine is quite good."
