VELVET REVOLVER
THE PLAYERS: Scott Weiland on vocals (Stone Temple Pilots), Slash and Dave Kushner on guitar (Guns N Roses, Wasted Youth respectively), Duff McKagan on bass (GNR) and Matt Sorum on drums (GNR).
THE STORY: The GNR guys got together with Kushner and were looking around for a singer. They auditioned a bunch of people, Weiland’s name came up, but he was still with STP at the time. Once they “broke up” he joined the band. The band put two CDs–Contraband and Libertad–before Weiland got back together with STP. The band claims to still exist, though they’re working on other projects.
OFFICIAL SITE: VelvetRevolver.com
The mid-2000s were a really interesting time for supergroups. Dave Grohl was running around recording albums with all kinds of different groups (not the solid definition of a supergroup in my opinion, but still interesting). Meanwhile, Chris Cornell from Soundgarden essentially took over for Zach Larocca in Rage Against the Machine, calling the result Audioslave and Scott Weiland joined a group of former Guns N Roses musicians. I haven’t listened to Audioslave yet, but I did pick up Velvet Revolver’s first record. My memory of Contraband wasn’t very positive, but when I gave the record another listen today I found myself generally liking it.

I wasn’t really a huge fan of either Stone Temple Pilots or Guns N Roses, but I’ve always had a lot of respect for Slash. He and the rest of the band do their thing and it’s pretty fun for the most part. Weiland does his usual vocal thing. He’s got a good voice for rock and roll, but doesn’t really do much for me. Overall, they’re a pretty good band, but I think I would like anything involving Slash (his most recent solo album with a series of different singers is awesome). I’ll be keeping this one in the collection/on the iPod now, but I don’t know how often I’ll go back to it.