or looked at as a terrence trent d'arby/prince from purple rain wannabe?

southmpls said:

I don't think any artist/group from the Paisley Park Record Label days could have made it big.

They just didn't seem to be marketed correctly or had any real support. There was some great music to come out of that period, but only the hard core fans really were exposed to it.








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[Edited 1/24/08 11:58am]

Sowhat said:

I wasn't too impressed with Tony's album.

Who's Tony Lemans?

Illustrator said:

He was a Paisley Park Records artist.He had ties to Vanity and Lenny Kravitz.He released his debut album in the fall of 1989.Sadly,he died in 1992 (motorcycle accident).

SoulAlive said:

I believe he was engaged to vanitys sister, first signed artist at paisley park for around 7 million!
was in lenny kravitz's band romeo blue and prince had talked about doing a boy band(and movie?) called the coco boys with lenny, mickey free and lemans.

southmpls said:

Yeah, I ran a thread about this very thing awhile back. It was to be called The Dawn. P wasn't going to be in the film but he was to direct. It was to be another battle of the bands thang. (again?!)

SoulAlive said:

One of Tony's problems was that he had TOO many ties with P. Engaged to Vanity's sister? That right there is way out. Him and Georgio needed to stop trying to "get in" through Sheila (a Prince girl) and Vanity or Vanity's relative, (A Prince girl) when it was bad enough that their look and image and music echoed loudly that they were took over by Prince's own image and music. Just those things alone will keep u from being taken seriously from the industry and the general public alike. Lenny was smart. He broke free and did his own thing with Let Love Rule, dreaded his hair and jumped authentic. He had authentic influences (The Beatles, Sly, Jimi) which of course are the same as P BUT Lenny had a different spin on it. So his debut, which was smartly not on Paisley Park, was warmly received. He sidestepped that "Look at me ya'll, I'm the Second Coming of Prince!" shit and got his thing together. Getting an audience of his own.Many of whom may have not even dig Prince. Which is good. Get your own thing.

blackguitaristz said:

tho - Tony's first take on the album was poo-pooed by Prince. It was more like what Lenny (who was in the band with Tony) ended up doing. Prince essentially said no on wanted to hear that rock and roll stuff (funny huh?). I still think it sounded different enough from Prince given that the guys form Scritt Politti produced it- in other words decently, if glossily, produced. I think if it had not come out of PP it would have gotten more interest even as the final album came out.

Zannaloaf said:

True and I agree.

I think Tony had alot of potential. I saw some videos of him and he seemed he was very comfortable performing . I really liked his cd. It's just very sad his life ended too soon.