Eyes – “Nobody Said It Was Easy” (1990) – 7″ Single (The Jeff Scott Soto Series – Bonus Edition)

For this edition of the Jeff Scott Soto Series, we are going to look at a 7″ Single I found from the band Eyes. This single I found is really cool in my book. It is a Scandinavian release of the band’s single “Nobody Said It Was Easy” off their 1990 debut album ‘Eyes’. The album was off the Curb Records label, but that was in the U.S. For this release we get Sonet Grammofon AB and I love how the label on the record looks with the Sonet logo on it. I can’t imagine there are a ton of these out there as they were an obscure band, but thanks to Discogs, I now have a copy. I doubt I’ll ever see one out it in the wild here in the U.S.

The song was obviously released as a single, but I don’t think it ever charted anywhere which is a shame. The B-Side of the vinyl is also from the debut album and is called “Start Livin'”. I don’t have any back stories to the songs as information on the band Eyes is really hard to come by. Maybe if I ever get to sit down with Jeff, I can ask him about them.

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Eyes – ‘Eyes’ (1990) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)

By 1990, Jeff Scott Soto was basically a journeyman as a singer. He would take any job as long as he could sing. He went from Panther, to Yngwie, to Kuni, to Kryst the Conqueror and now we have the band Eyes. Jeff wasn’t the original lead singer, that belonged to James Christian who left the band to go join this little band named House of Lords…probably a smart move on his part as House of Lords did way better than Eyes. Which is a shame because this album is a lost classic of the late 80’s Hard Rock sound. Think Bon Jovi, Danger Danger, Firehouse and any other band from that time period.

The biggest problem this album had was only timing and the fact there were 100’s of bands out there that were all the same. These guys had the sound as they had the rock anthems, they had the ballads and oh my god…they had the hair!! They weren’t on a major label which probably got them lost in the shuffle. They were on Curb Records which back in those days was not a rock label. Without the major label push, they fell to the wayside and were overlooked by most…heck, I didn’t discover them until sometime after the 2000’s began.

The band consisted of Jeff Scott Soto on vocals, Steven Dougherty on guitar, Aldy Damian on drums and Jimmy O’Shea on bass. From what I can find, it looks like Jimmy only played bass on two of the songs as the rest were played by a name I told you to remember from an earlier review…Marcel Jacobs. Marcel didn’t join the band as he was busy with another band at the time which we will discuss very soon. The album came out some time in 1990 as a specific date can’t be found on the web anywhere for its actually release. And as I said, it didn’t go anywhere but as you are about to find out, it still kick some major ass!!

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