I wish I were friends with Doyle.
Not necessarily because I want to hang out at the mall and get a slice of pizza with him and crank some old Van Halen tapes in the pickup truck on the way home (though that would of course be awesome). No I wish I were friends with Doyle because I wish I could tell him, “Doyle old pal, when I heard you were going to be forming your own band I was excited! However, when the Gorgeous Frankenstein record finally came out I was a bit disappointed. But it’s not too late, we can fix this, I swear!”
For those of you who don’t know, Doyle has become quite a good guitar player over the years. Maybe he can’t rip a Satriani style arpeggiated solo but who cares about that shit anyway? His strength lies in his ability to absolutely pummel the living crap outta that bat shaped guitar thing of his. Doyle on guitar is a fantastic foundation for putting together a great band. So what went wrong with Gorgeous Frankenstein?
Let’s start with the Record (or CD, or download, depending on your preference). OK, guitars sound great, but, is that a drum machine instead of a real live person on drums? And oh God that third rate Danzig impersonator of a singer is horrendous! Dare I even mention the lyrics? I’ll spare you. Well Ok here’s a snippet from one tune: “Fake tits and a feline stare—YEAH!” Yeah, really.
Then just to throw an even bigger monkey wrench into the works, they go on tour with a different singer. They get a guy who also plays bass and he sings with one of those Janet Jackson/Sammy Hagar headphone mic contraptions. They did get an actual drummer but he and the singer/bass player are also in some other semi popular band, so what the heck? Is this a real band even?
Since that first tour the drummer left and they replaced him with Dr. Chud (from the fake Misfits of the 1990’s). A step in the right direction for sure. There were rumors that Michale Graves (also formerly of the fake Misfits) would take over singing duties. Again, sounds like a good idea to me, keep the JJ/Hagar guy on bass and get a separate singer (think of the classic Misfits format of two giant guys on guitar and bass with a smaller guy singing). But no that never happened and the singer/bass player thing stuck. When I saw them live recently I noticed that he thankfully ditched the headphone mic but that leads me to another big problem.
In most bands the singer is the focal point. If you don’t believe me allow me to point out some examples: Bad Brains, Black Flag (with Henry), Stooges, fuck, even Led Zeppelin. But in this band it’s the guitar player (who doesn’t speak or sing back-ups or anything) and his wife who does sort of a stripper routine throughout the set, complete with pole (she also does not speak or sing but mouths along to the words of the songs). It’s just weird. Plus the songs themselves—they only did, I think, two songs from the record and one new original. The rest of the set was fake Misfits tunes and a couple of classic rock covers at the end. Huh? So it’s a fake Misfits cover band now? I’m sure Doyle and/or Chud probably wrote most of those songs but still, I thought this was supposed to be a new band.
Here’s what needs to be done: Stay off the road until you write and record a new full length album of good strong songs. Get a separate bass player and singer! Put the wife kind of towards the back of the stage by the drummer so she’s there if people want to check her out but she’s not too distracting otherwise. And please, no more ‘80’s style wireless headphone microphones! I was hoping it would go without saying, but I feel like I should say it anyway: Get someone who can write some good lyrics!
I love you man, and if I ever do run into you at a mall somewhere the slices are on me!
