Bono: Gosh I’m so bored with being in the worlds biggest band with number one albums and touring stadiums across the world. I don’t know what I should do Chris Blackwell my label boss. Maybe I’ll retire and start an ostrich farm.
Chris Blackwell: Hmmm that is awful Bono Vox. I will see what I can do.
Sometime later.
Bring Bring.
Brian Eno: Hi Bono, completely unrelated to your boredom with being a globetrotting megaselling rock star and getting a panicked phonecall from Chris who’s worried about his mortgage, how does working with me on a collection of ambientish soundtracks for imaginary films sound?
Bono: Gosh Brian that sounds great. I’ll bring me mates. They’ll love it. Just one thing – can I sing about Elvis?
Brian (sigh).
I mean I’m not saying that a soundtrack album for imaginary films in which the drummer doesn’t drum, there’s a guest spot from an opera star, and it’s produced by Brian Eno isn’t without merit as an idea – but it screams Vanity Project. Let’s have your best Vanity Projects. Very different from the Solo Project – meet the real me at last – the Vanity album is perhaps dead already. A relic of eras in which artists could be sent off to Compass Point for a few months as a small price for keeping the cash cow on the road. Here’s some criteria:
A degree of prior success so that a Vanity Project can be written off against proceeds from the next stadium-eating monster.
Indulgence. Get the drummer not to drum. Get an opera star for a guest spot. Work that rolodex baby! Fake names, spoof liner notes, ‘edgy producer’ – quintessential VP
Inesentialness. I mean would it feature in anyone’s best U2 albums, anyone’s best Eno albums, anyone’s best imaginary soundtrack albums even. Still better than No Line On The Horizon though.
Bono: Chris, Bono here, I’ve got a great idea – Passengers Vol 2……Chris?…………Chris?
I might be alone in thinking that U2 should do Passengers more often. Anyway, here’s MaxQ…
Nah, I agree. ‘Miss Sarajevo’ is a great record. One of Bono’s best.
Nail hit hilariously on the head head again! No vanity for HMHB.
Then again, Brian has done some wonderful stuff. Like My life in the bush of ghosts with David Byrne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWQdKkk4Xr0
“Nail hit hilariously on the head head… ”
Not really. For a start, Chris Blackwell had nothing to do with Island Records at the time (he had sold the company nearly a decade ago). The Passengers album is great. As is “No Line On The Horizon”.
(Gets Leopard-print coat)
David Byrne and Fatboy Slim collaborating on an album about Imelda Marcos.
Should have called it ‘Shoe gazing’.
Dare I say it…
Anyone appearing with an orchestra or quartet. I’m looking at you Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, etc.
Leave it.
“Hey – I’ve got some left over Barenaked Ladies songs, you’ve just split The Lilac Time – whaddya say we put an album together!? What to call it though…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanity_Project
It’s not bad, actually, if you like BNL songs that weren’t quite good enough to be on their albums.
meta Vanity Project gold! Certain people have VP written all over them – Eno obvs, Steven Duffy another
I remember the country singer Garth Brooks created an alter-ego called Chris Gaines in an attempt to offer a “rockier” version of himself. i think it was part of some failed shot at a movie. It tanked, left his fans confused and made many think him and evan bigger cock. That said the video to the song Lost In Your Love has the bonus feature of looking and sounding like the first release from Derek Zoolander
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfmzfx_chris-gaines-lost-in-your-love_music
Green Day have had a couple of side projects
Foxboro Hot Tubs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsGkJhl5wks
The Network
Does this count – Pat Boone goes metal. Also mental.
Not suggesting that what it intended to do, or did do, was not in any way valid, but as a Business Model it was somewhat lacking in coherence:
http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t490/Rigid_Digit/49cb7b84-b04a-439c-b52e-87f10aa0118e_zpsljubae3a.jpg
Surely, the original Vanity Project?
It never happened, but one famous rock star once mused on the idea of performing a collection of his acoustic numbers with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
He also talked of creating a musical version of Jack The Ripper
Prog had its fair share of Vanity Projects -Rick Wakeman was guilty of at least 2. Then there was Bo Hanssen with his Lord of the Rings opus.
Sufjan Stevens also set off with the intention of writing an album around each of the USA states – having only done 3 he has a long way to go.
Then there are The Guillemots – around 3 years ago they released Hello Land a splendid album with the proclamation that it would be the first of 4 albums relesad that year – one for each season. We are still waiting – their website has had no updates for a very long time and there seems to be no activity whatsoever. Have they gone for good?
The four solo LPs by each member of Kiss.
Bass player John taylor went off to sturm und drang with Power Station while his fellow Durannies formed spin-off arty farty outfit Arcadia. Sting, Grace Jones, Dave Gilmour and Herbie Hancock all guested on their album So Red The Rose while William s Boroughs appears in the video to lead single Election Day.
Vanity project much?
‘Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka’ (catchy title).
Probably falls down in that Brian had already died by its release date.
Like the Bono comment above, I definitely value this over the Stones stuff at the time (yes, the Sticky Fingers/ Exile sludge).
Be nice if someone at Rolling Stones Towers might think to reissue etc. etc.