PHENOMENON OF THE BOY
BIO
Phenomenon Of The Boy was the solo rock outlet for Tony Salomone.
Tony has been writing songs under this moniker for over a decade and has had many limited album releases along the way.
The two most notable releases were And That Was The Winter I Went Insane which came out in 2001
and This Ain't Hip Hop which was released in 2003.
Following the release of This Ain't Hip Hop, Tony's previous band, Petony, went on hiatus and so Tony took POTB on the road.
The live version of Phenomenon Of The Boy existed from 2003 until 2005, when Tony's ADD lead him to focus on his new band
The Haunches.
COMPLETE LIST OF ALBUMS
The Albert Street Monorail was released in 1998.
This was an album of 18 songs that lasted less than 27 minutes.
It had a lot of good ideas on it that I recorded to tape.
Then I tried to digitize some of the tracks and re-recorded the rest on a computer. This was a bad idea. The end result is not good.
20 copies were made and given away. No more will be made.
If anything, I'll post some of the original tape versions which sounded superior and were way more messed/interesting.
Call In The Radio Rock Brigade was released in 1999. This was also a mash of many short songs with very little focus and varying quality. The songs actually came out a bit closer to what I hoped and the good moments are very good. The bad moments are very bad.
That Was The Winter I Went Insane was released in 2001. Only 11 songs and thy were actually flushed out properly and not intentionally recorded crappily. This is the first album that I made that I can listen to today without cringing with a couple of exceptions. In retrospect, if I had a real drummer on this album I think I would like it very much.
This Ain't Hip Hop was released in 2003. Lo-fi crunchy and thick, this was a lot different than the previous record but I was pretty happy with it. I did a lot more digital processing on this one so even though I was a lot better with the old gear by now, I was still a n00b with the digital stuff and this album came out a little muddier than I'd like, but I think it fits.
There was one more album which was 75% done before it was completely lost. I learned a valuable lesson: don't story anything digital without a backup. It's sad but maybe for the best. By the time I was finishing this POTB was way down on the priority list and the album was taking forever. At the same time, the songs were very much in the same vein as This Ain't Hip Hop except I finally recorded with live drums. Maybe some day in the future...for now those songs will live in the memories of those who saw us live, since these songs comprised about half of a typical live set.
Call In The Radio Rock Brigade was released in 1999. This was also a mash of many short songs with very little focus and varying quality. The songs actually came out a bit closer to what I hoped and the good moments are very good. The bad moments are very bad.
That Was The Winter I Went Insane was released in 2001. Only 11 songs and thy were actually flushed out properly and not intentionally recorded crappily. This is the first album that I made that I can listen to today without cringing with a couple of exceptions. In retrospect, if I had a real drummer on this album I think I would like it very much.
This Ain't Hip Hop was released in 2003. Lo-fi crunchy and thick, this was a lot different than the previous record but I was pretty happy with it. I did a lot more digital processing on this one so even though I was a lot better with the old gear by now, I was still a n00b with the digital stuff and this album came out a little muddier than I'd like, but I think it fits.
There was one more album which was 75% done before it was completely lost. I learned a valuable lesson: don't story anything digital without a backup. It's sad but maybe for the best. By the time I was finishing this POTB was way down on the priority list and the album was taking forever. At the same time, the songs were very much in the same vein as This Ain't Hip Hop except I finally recorded with live drums. Maybe some day in the future...for now those songs will live in the memories of those who saw us live, since these songs comprised about half of a typical live set.
LIVE
The original Phenomenon Of The Boy lineup was Brett Westdorp on bass, Ismael Du Croix on guitar, Joe Labrie on drums and myself on guitar and vocals.
Brett was in Petony and my first band ever, The Foaming Savages.
Ismael is really named Ryan and he was in another band on Dadmobile Records
called the Young Madrids.
Joe was previously in a few bands, the most recent being Palooka, from Yummy Records in St. Catharines. He also drummed for Petony a few times.
Ismael eventually moved away and was replaced by Nik Tymoszewicz from The Higher Ups.
Geoff yunker drummed for us once when Joe got the shitpukes.
Haunches Todd drummed for us in our last show ever, a Nirvana tribute at the Starlight for the launch of Jason Schneider's book "3,000 Miles".
For the record, we played "Very Ape" and "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter".
We played several other covers that people asked me about. I will post some recordings. Our favourites were Pavement's "Flux=Rad" and "Forklift", and Primal Scream's "Accelerator". We also did a cover of Pearl Jam's "Lukin" so Ismael could sing at his last show.
We played several other covers that people asked me about. I will post some recordings. Our favourites were Pavement's "Flux=Rad" and "Forklift", and Primal Scream's "Accelerator". We also did a cover of Pearl Jam's "Lukin" so Ismael could sing at his last show.