Melancholy echoes of previous threads …
According to Austin360.com: “Sky Saxon, founder of the brilliant ’60s garage band the Seeds, died Thursday morning at St. David’s Hospital.
“The newly minted Austinite, born Richard Marsh, was hospitalized Monday with what doctors suspected was an infection of the internal organs, but cause of death has not yet been released.
“Saxon fell ill last Thursday, but performed at Saturday at Antone’s with recent Austin collaborators Shapes Have Fangs. Sky’s wife Sabrina Saxon posted news of his passing on Facebook this morning: ‘Sky has passed over and YaHoWha is waiting for him at the gate. He will soon be home with his Father. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him here with us. More later. I’m sorry.’ ”
And closing the book on a subject in our “Sympathy for the ’70s” thread, Farrah Fawcett has passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 62. “Fawcett, who checked into a Los Angeles, California, hospital in early April, had been battling anal cancer on and off for three years.”
I love The Seeds and of course Sky’s voice, a few years before Iggy and The Stooges there was The Seeds belting out there brilliantly simple snarling fuzzy tunes with that hypnotic Wurlitzer piano….
Sky really never got his credit for some reason, maybe because he was more of a survivor than casuality of the 1960’s, or maybe because he was in an L.A. band not an Austin band, either way his sound paved the way for many to come soon after he and others 10,20 years or more later.
I alway wondered if The Morlocks submerge Alive record was a nod to The Seeds record Raw and Alive at Merlin’s Box, it sure does sound like it.
I am broke but I am trying to gather all my spare change together so I can get into see The Zeros gig tonight, so I can make sure they dedicate there song “Wild Weekend” to Sky, because we got THE SEEDS on the stereo…………………………. It’s gonna be a wild weekend and I just know it!
Breaking news: Michael Jackson was just rushed to the hospital after suffering a heart attack.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2009/06/25/michael-jackson-reportedly-suffers-cardiac-arrest.aspx
Let’s just hope it wasn’t a children’s hospital. Just sayin’.
Forgive the irreverence (may their souls find peace), but don’t you think a tough little one-act play could be made of the conversation between Farrah and Sky as they await processing on the other side?
Along similar lines, I recently heard (it could well be apocryphal) that Andre the Giant as a child was sometimes driven to school by a friendly neighbor: Samuel Beckett…
It looks like Michael Jackson just died too.
Wow! Troika! That is really unsettling. People in NY seem STUNNED.
… Between the ’80s thread and the “I don’t get it” thread, I feel somehow complicit. …
>>Wow! Troika! That is really unsettling. People in NY seem STUNNED.
Let’s not forget Ed McMahon, who passed away two days ago--that makes four celebrities.
Simon: Never heard the Samuel Becket/Andre the Giant story! (I’m having a hard time imagining what Andre the Giant looked like as a child. ) Now THAT would make a good screenplay.
I wrote a song called “Small Vegetables” that was thematically inspired in part by “Mr. Farmer” (along with Zappa’s “Call Any Vegetable”).
I like singing about vegetables — I really dug that Larry Halterman shared some with Sky Saxon.
The Beach Boys also have a song about Vegetables. It’s pretty horrible.
>>Simon: Never heard the Samuel Becket/Andre the Giant story! (I’m having a hard time imagining what Andre the Giant looked like as a child. ) Now THAT would make a good screenplay.
Ray: … Possibly by Samuel Beckett. Although I’m thinking more Ionesco.
I think the deaths-in-threes thing is more about our craving for trinities than an actual phenomenon, but on talk-radio today various people are trying to form threes of Farrah, Michael, and some third person (Carradine! McMahon!), conveniently ignoring any other candidate for inclusion. And nobody in society at large was going to pay much attention to old Sky Saxon, even before these two personalities of so much greater fame died.
Still, what a thing for three figures of such extraordinary iconic status for three different decades to die at once! I can’t
Let’s remember Michael BEFORE he became a monster:
Mr. Farmer let me harvest your crops . . .
You realize, of course, that the whole Saxon/Jackson lyrical possibilities are simply too easy … If anyone’s in the mood to pen a ballad …
MJ sure was a cute kid. Who remembers the Jackson 5 cartoons?
Aw Ray. I just posted that Seeds clip on my FB. Such a great song. I love the Seeds. I remember one of my first trips (haha. I said “trip!” perfect) — out to Off the Record on the number 15 bus. I bought the album Future by the Seeds. And a memory of Jeremiah Cornelius that sticks out in my head is him singing “Tripmaker” at the top of his lungs, doing a well practiced Sky Saxon impersonation.
That was during the time period that everyone seemed to develop a Texan accent.
One more clip . . .
>>I remember the lame comedian Yakov Smirnoff saying something like, “America--what a country. Look at Michael Jackson! Even a poor black boy from Gary, Indiana, can grow up to be a rich white lady!”
Damn you, Simon! You made me chuckle at a Yakov Smirnov joke — and immediately made me feel guilty about it!! LOL
Did Jeff Goldblum also die??
The twits on Twitter are going crazy with celebrity death rumors right now. Jeff Goldblum, Harrison Ford. Let’s settle down, people.
Breaking news: Jeff Goldblum not dead!
Crazy thought: Could Michael Jackson possibly be doing what’s known in industry circles as a “Leighton”??
While we ponder that, my daughter and I have been watching “Captain Eo” on YouTube:
Jesus christ, I thought Draby Crash got upstaged by John Lennon but this is…. Farrah and MJ….
My brother and I collected all the Charlies Angels trading cards so we could make the Farrah poster from the back sides of the cards, what a fox!
I always thought of MJ in an Elvis kind of way, now this is some real Elvis shit.
I am a fan of the young MJ and I do gotta say I “like Off the Wall”, but that were he lost me. He is free from his private hell now.
Was Farrah the first “fox”? I don’t recall that word used much before her.
Michael was FANTASTIC as a child performer!
My friend Helen Stickler wrote and directed the movie “Andre The Giant Has A Posse”. The OBEY stickers are still all over Providence after 20 years!
Helen also made an iconic skate-rat movie about a skater who became a murderer…I think?? Someone on CHE must know of this film and the skater in question.
Now that I’m getting old, Michael and Farrah both seem so young.
>>Jesus christ, I thought Draby Crash got upstaged by John Lennon but this is…. Farrah and MJ…
Dylan: I’m just hoping Walter Cronkite can hang in there a few days!
Gram Parsons’ death was upstaged by Jim Croce, who passed away the following day--September 19-20, 1973.
the sight of
an older man
draped
in a purple cape
hustling upstairs to a show
downtown
los angeles
sky saxon
smiles
for us all
as only a superhero can
Zeros show sold out-I lose!
Farrah was a hotty!I am having a daughter in 2 months and her name will be Farrah……….one Farrah passes,another comes into the world……
I wanna thank Ann Kopels. She went to the Zeros show and held the phone up so I could hear! They sounded great. Wow.
Now if someone could just DHL me some tacos from Lucha Libre, it’d be just like I was there!
A few crazy deaths.
MJ is like a crazy hero to so many here in England. I dont get it… I suppose the wierd attracts the fly? It will be a sad weekend on the radio here. As if English radio is not “BAD” enough.
R.I.P. Sky!
Steve Medico played me the Seeds when I was very young. I said WOW!
Funny thing about Farrah? I had a poster of her before I liked girls. Then when I was old enough to know what all the fuss was about, I had swapped it for a Jam poster?
Aint it the way?
Feel free to deride me, but did the Jackson 5 play their own instruments from the get-go? ‘Cause that guitar part on “I Want You Back” is awesome.
I really think they got help! They were just too good right from the start. IF that was all them ….WOW!
Kids do the darnedest things … Often when they’re being emotionally brutalized by monomaniacally ambitious stage-door parents.
Not sure if this answers your question, but this is from the legendary Motown audition they did in 1968--they’re no slouches as musicians. According to Wikipedia, Johnny Jackson (no relation) played drums and Ronnie Rancifer played keyboards. Tito played lead guitar, Jermaine played bass guitar, and Marlon and Michael played percussion. By the way, Michael is NINE years old here.
Nick & Tom,
I think we all said WOW!, when Steve M would turn us on to new things:)…
I don’t mean to sound callous — actually, I’m heading in kind of the opposite direction — but I can’t help but notice that our crowd seems much gentler about Farrah’s celebrity status than they have been about more current pop-culture creations.
In that spirit, I’ll gently suggest that Farrah Fawcett was not a major aesthetic innovator or even supremely talented … From what I’ve heard, this perfectly nice woman would have acknowledged that herself. She wasn’t a great actress … She was very pretty in a certain kind of way, and reasonably charismatic, and she was marketed expertly.
That iconic poster broke new ground for high-definition mammaries … The hair electrified a generation … Her teeth were wonderful … I think she tried hard to do some “serious” acting … And she sounds like she ended up being quite a decent person with admirable self-humor about her celebrity status and considerable courage about the disease that took her life.
But the fact that nobody here has savaged Farrah Fawcett — that we do seem to accept her as a significant little part of our group narrative — suggests that maybe there’s less hostility to the corporate celebrity machine when it’s tied to our own formative years and several decades removed.
If anyone was a corporate creation, it was the Farrah Fawcett of the mid-’70s. If we can feel a little love for her, maybe we can at least allow our 2009 counterparts their Miley Cyruses and Zak Ephrons and such.
Discuss?
Farrah had the kind of Nipples many boyhood dreams were made of
on the other hand..the whole child molestation/ change race and remanufature his face thing…is just f’n creepy
>>>did the Jackson 5 play their own instruments from the get-go? ‘Cause that guitar part on “I Want You Back” is awesome.
I’m pretty sure they didn’t play at all on their records when they were on Motown. I think they did play the instruments when they played live, but obviously they’d have been playing the parts the studio musicians came up with for the recordings… I doubt kids could have come up with that stuff. The bass line on I Want You Back is probably my favorite bass part on any song, ever. Every time I hear it, it makes me want to buy a bass just so I could learn to play it.
>>The bass line on I Want You Back is probably my favorite bass part on any song, ever. Every time I hear it, it makes me want to buy a bass just so I could learn to play it.
Dave: That’s so funny … I’ve totally been thinking about working it out this weekend. My one nod to Jacksonmania. 🙂
>>If anyone was a corporate creation, it was the Farrah Fawcett of the mid-’70s. If we can feel a little love for her, maybe we can at least allow our 2009 counterparts their Miley Cyruses and Zak Ephrons and such.
I don’t think she was a corporate creation… she was just a tv actress. Other than that one poster (which I admit was everywhere), I don’t remember ever hearing much about Farrah Fawcett. There wasn’t such a big deal made about celebrities back then… or if there was, I didn’t see it. Nowadays, that’s all you see… it’s totally obnoxious. Who cares about these people? Why do people want to hear about their lives all the time? I dont get it.
The bass line to “I want you back” (which as a bass player is required learning) was done by (who else?) James Jamerson. I plucked it out last night (without the classic footwork Tito did when he “bass synced” to it). James died in relative obscurity over 25 years ago. But was celebrated in “Standing in the Shadows of Motown”. Try to name a motown classic he didn’t play on. Here’s a link to some rare footage of “The Funk Machine” in action with another “gone too soon” Marvin Gaye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s
VERY nice blurb on Farrah, Matt. Nicest comment I’ve read on her so far.
I DO agree with Dave Ellison though….we DO hear too much about the quasi-celebrities now. Of course we should allow this generation their Miley Cyrus’, Justin Timberlakes, and Hannah Montanas. We just hear too much about them!
“Nowadays, that’s all you see… it’s totally obnoxious. Who cares about these people? Why do people want to hear about their lives all the time? I dont get it.”
Couldn’t agree with you more Dave!
Matthew, you’re probably right… it is all the media (especially the internet). For whatever reason, it seems like “celebrity gossip” is a much bigger thing than it used to be. There were always supermarket tabloids, but it always seemed to be understood that that was very lowbrow. Now it’s become an acceptable, normal thing…part of the Dumbassification of America, as Chuck D calls it.
And Dave … I agree with you 100 percent that celebrity for its own sake is way more ubiquitous now — and that pop culture is more ravenous in eating itself — and that the relatively primitive efforts of the ’60s and ’70s seem quaint and sort of benign to us compared with the rapacious 24/7 cycle of celebrity coverage you’ve got nowadays.
But I think the public’s sweet tooth for this stuff was there — certainly by the 1920s — and the entertainment industry was doing everything it could think of to feed it.
Sometimes big celebrities were working from old playbooks. The Beatles never forgave Brian Epstein for practically giving away the marketing rights to their image, and it sounds like that cost the band hundreds of millions of dollars … But those were different times, and the poor guy wasn’t prescient enough to understand how hungry those Boomers were going to get for tchotchkes.
Commercial entertainment had definitely gotten the formula down by the ’70s, though. Check out Wikipedia’s description of the Farrah phenom:
So her career peak amounts to one poster and one season on a TV show in 1976 … And yet until Michael Jackson beat it yesterday, she was top of the news — and most of us were at least a little wistful to hear it! 🙂
I’m just saying celebrity has always been a weird thing, and our taste for it is seasoned heavily by the age we were when the given celeb entered the public eye.
I heard Lee Majors bit the dust!
None of you saw “Logan’s Run”?
In addition to several other critically acclaimed movies, including “Between Two Women” and “Children of the Dust” with Sidney Poitier, Farrah starred in “The Burning Bed.” The movie is credited with increasing public awareness of domestic violence and was instrumental in changing legal policies and procedures. When I worked a hotline many callers referenced the movie and its star’s compelling performance. She worked for that cause for the remainder of her life.
>>In addition to several other critically acclaimed movies, including “Between Two Women” and “Children of the Dust” with Sidney Poitier, Farrah starred in “The Burning Bed.” The movie is credited with increasing public awareness of domestic violence and was instrumental in changing legal policies and procedures.
Robin: Absolutely a fair point … Much fairer than I was with the broad brush I applied. Mea culpa!
I know “The Burning Bed” was an important touchstone in the discourse about domestic violence, and I didn’t mean at all to dismiss Fawcett’s contributions there.
However, that was Farrah Fawcett reinventing herself after the white heat of notoriety had abated quite a bit. Those films weren’t the iconic images the Farrah retrospectives are based on, and they haven’t been the fuel for our pre-mortem discussion of Farrah Fawcett.
They were actually an admirable effort to leverage that status and to play against type … Which is why I’m extrapolating that she was really cool, since I obviously didn’t know her personally!
If her career had been those movies, I don’t think Farrah Fawcett be at the top of CNN. Hell, she wouldn’t even make the home page. The headlines are all “Charlie’s Angels” and that poster.
That’s not a reflection of the later films’ quality but of the nature of celebrity … And it’s another reason why I’m not so quick to assume that all of the current crop of media darlings have nothing more to offer than pretty faces and toned bodies. There’s likely talent and intelligence in there, too, and some of them may be able to wield at least a little of their star power in interesting new ways … Still might not be the lead lines in their obits, however.
Matt, I agree with most of what you’re saying. Clearly, commercial success has a lot to do with ability to sell stuff, which has a lot to do with one’s appeal to people who decide to buy something they don’t need because an advertisement told them to. And it’s easy to criticize someone for the face they show the media, to assume Miley Cyrus has the depth of a birdbath because one has no personal exposure to anything else. The fact is, I don’t know her and have no reason to assume she won’t be the next Amy Tan or Frida Kahlo. I have no reason to object to someone enjoying her innocent pop unless I imagine my personal preference for Respighi would win some kind of pointless personal taste arm wrestling match.
Several people posting here have said they know nothing about Farrah besides “Charlie’s Angels” and The Poster, in the same thread where people are disappointed about the media ignoring Sky Saxon. Not knowing about Farrah’s critically acclaimed movie acting or influence on domestic violence awareness and policy can’t be blamed entirely on The Media or America’s Poor Taste. Part of it is what you choose to attend to, what you assume a person has to offer. The woman did good work that mattered. It was accessible, well-known, and influential.
>>Part of it is what you choose to attend to, what you assume a person has to offer. The woman did good work that mattered. It was accessible, well-known, and influential.
Even leaving aside the last three adjectives … I often wonder about true one-hit wonders, especially ones whose one hit I don’t like.
Norm Greenbaum has been eating out (modestly) on “Spirit in the Sky” for almost 40 years. I find that song rather pesky and always found the ostentatious religiosity annoying. I read an interview with him … He sounds like a delightful fellow who freaked his Jewish parents out by playing a character in those lyrics — never was even Christian, let alone self-righteously so — and he’s written tons and tons of songs over the decades that he seems to think are far superior to this one.
Are they good? I have no idea — I only ever heard that one annoying earworm.
Part of the “I don’t get it” conundrum for me is figuring out how much I need to know before I can pass summary judgment. (Answer: generally a lot more than I get time for. Which is why I’m really reluctant to dismiss anybody’s contributions or potential.)
Interesting Matt -- I have the exact opposite problem. I am willing to easily and quickly dismiss anybody’s contribution or potential.
I think if you need convincing, (or more information), on an artist then they really have missed the mark. The things that have grabbed me have usually done so in an instant.
Anyone can LEARN to appreciate Schoenberg, with enough education, I guess…I was just grabbed by his music on first listen.
I don’t want to look for the good in Hannah Montana…nor the bad. I just know, for myself, what is quality and what is not. The popular music of today is god awful and I don’t believe it’s a generational thing since I, personally, love quality music from all cultures spanning…oh… 1500 years!
>>That script is amazing…is it available, good or bad?
Bruce: It’s linked from the words “the leaked script” in my post. Lewis refuses to discuss this movie, which was killed amid a legal dispute with the producers, and the only prints have been locked away for almost 40 years.
I also love the words Miley Cyrus and Frida Kahlo in the same sentence.
What hath god wrought??
>Another question, then: Is deeper always better?
No.
No.
I think the guilty pleasures thread has covered that.
>I personally am not convinced that you can judge the potential of any popular artist by a snippet…
Popular artists, or anyone. God, there are a lot of snippets in my life I’d hate to be limited by. Or little cues that evoke stereotypical expectations and perceptions.
I once had a beautiful blonde student with Farrah hair, trendy clothes, and a childlike wispy voice. Artsy kids used to make snarky asides about her intelligence and depth. Because of her appearance. Somehow the points she made in discussion were inaudible to them. She was top of the class and never got in anyone’s face about it. If the self-proclaimed intellectuals had redirected the effort spent condescending to her, their ideas might have been in competitive range.
You guys are so right…about judging people by their appearance and even by a brief glimpse of their talent, or the lack thereof.
Art ASKS to be judged…good art asks to be judged harshly.
At one point…I’m not even sure which thread or subject anymore…we were talking about art.
I don’t think the word DEEP can be defined universally. Some people think P Diddy is deep…each person owns a subjective measure of depth, and their own intellectual depth. To each his own.
To accept the proposition that all things have merit and quality is insane.
Entertainment that is “provided” for us is usually exploitative, misogynistic, of no particular quality, and dangerously mind-numbing.
I think it’s condescending to pretend to relate to the “Volk” when you aren’t.
In all Germanic languages, the variant of “folk” means “people” or something related to the people.
Very few of us here on CHE are related to the folk, (or people), used in the obvious context above.
I’ve never seen clear lines between elites and the rest of the world. If someone tried to draw a line with the extremes at either end I don’t know what proportions of people posting here would be categorized by which points in between. I do know at least one name that comes up regularly used to get parental orders to shoplift food for family dinners. An intelligent tasteful person. I remember an event that moved my family from straight-up poor to working class. My dad explained the random luck that allowed it. He told me it didn’t mean we were more elite or smarter or different in ways that counted with our value system. It only meant we were fortunate, and now in debt to the community we moved from.
Socioeconomics are the third rail in a lot of our interactions … We’ve been over this terrain before: Lots of kids with less were very anxious to front that they had more, and lots of kids who had more were desperate to demonstrate “cred.” A lot of our parents seem to have been nonconformists of one stripe or another, but … Very complex and sensitive topic, and definitely not one that lends itself to easy generalizations.
I’m an open book. Pretty comfortable financially — not at the top of the scale, but never really noticed. I feel very soft and sheltered compared to many here. Intellectually very privileged … Which had its own burdens, but cry me a river! I had a lot of advantages out of the gate and arguably squandered many before I got my shit together.
I would not say the same for a lot of the people here. I don’t think it’s right to romanticize deprivation — that would be patronizing in its own right. But I think folks who can do it for themselves in the face of adversity are pretty damn impressive … And in fact, I am consistently impressed with those friends.
Well this is the story of America…with the possible exceptions of the Fords, Gettys, Dukes, and Vanderbilts. We are ALL a generation or two removed from immigrants, depression, and poverty.
Do you wonder why your posts are only responded to by a very few people here on CHE?
It’s because they are so intentionally intellectual that most people
have no idea what you are talking about. I Love these posts, but come on, elitists??? I see a clear line of education and the intentional hard work that it takes to become so aware. Why is this a bad thing??
You are no more rooted in mass culture than Matt or myself and a couple others.
I’m not embarrassed to want to know more and feel things that take desire and effort.
You should tell us all a little about yourself…you sound like a cool chick.
Intellectual tenacity or too much time on one’s hands? 🙂
I’ve known most of the people who post here (and many who lurk) for the better part of three decades, and they do not miss a trick. Scary-smart, and not given to bullshit. I’d be foolish to assume there’s anything I could throw out that they can’t catch.
Whether they have the patience for it is another question entirely! 🙂
All that plus sincere volksy appreciation of Farrah’s gorgeous boobs. Guess those aren’t mutually exclusive.
Your humility is astounding Matt. Most people follow your posts…Robins posts…with some head scratching, and a visit to Wikipedia.
>>”I don’t think it’s right to romanticize deprivation”.
My point all along!! None of us have any business pretending to understand or be part of the “Hood”.
When you teach music in the inner-city the disdain is palpable for yuppies who drive hybrid cars, have 401K’s, and 100K+ jobs…yet claim to understand or relate to 50 cent and Snoop Dog. It’s very insulting…I’m told this frequently!
All I was saying earlier was that it’s not snobbish to be part of any culture or class if you care about your fellow man and are authentic.
I just don’t like posers who have a warm spot in their hearts for the dumbing down of music, art, and literature.
Ein Volk, ein Reich, zwei Brustwarzen! 🙂
I stopped reviewing baseball footage, listening to Dizzee Rascal, and praying to Jesus to scratch my head over your bewildering post, Matt. Are you implying Farrah has the only two Brustwarzen for Che Nation? Are you decreeing it as The Master here? Should there be a vote?
Der ist no vote! Mein fuhrer has spoken!
HEADLINE CHE CAFE (SD)
This just in:
Michael Jackson: Born in Gary Indiana
Jeffrey “Luck” Lucas: Born in Gary Indiana
-discuss-
uh…
“The Apostle”
Netflix
Farrah’s finest cinema performance.
c’mon
just try it once
beyond good, this was great cinema
trust me
swear
Patrick
I LOVE that movie, Pat. Farrah was indeed brilliant.
Jerry:
Karl Malden was also born in Gary, Indiana. Coincidence? I think not.
“The Apostle” was great. Danke for mentioning! Great as she was in “The Burning Bed,” “The Apostle” probably was her best.
Toby, thank you for the clarification. Matt’s Deep Thoughts can be so intimidating. They just fly over my little head. Usually I don’t even have a clue what Wikipedia entry might help. If only…if only I’d grown up with richer, paler kids, then I, too, could understand Deep Thoughts, maybe even cling to one or two of my own. I thank Karate Jesus that at least kind people like you will sometimes condescend to provide explanations.
In case you harbored any doubts: The fact that nipples are literally “breast warts” in German proves definitively that it’s the language of love.
>>My point all along!! None of us have any business pretending to understand or be part of the “Hood”.
Bruce: Many participants here have been quite generous about sharing the details of their backgrounds. (Not that self-disclosure is any kind of prerequisite for entry here!)
The stories are woven all through the blog — there are a few interesting ones here — and plenty of them involve food stamps, domestic violence, absentee parents, hunger and a whole litany of woes I assume would meet any yardstick of “street cred.”
I never tried to stand up to that measure, ’cause it would have been clownish. I was privileged, period. And I sure as hell don’t envy anyone those challenges … There’s nothing romantic to me about kids suffering … But I do respect them very much.
Confession: When I was 17, there was a period of about 10 minutes when I underestimated some of these peeps. ‘Cause I was so erudite, you know, and I’d met all these glittering intellectuals and Nobel Prize winners and stuff. I conflated an accident of birth with some kind of superiority.
I was disabused of that delusion very quickly as soon as they opened their mouths. And I never made that mistake again.
I’m with you — I have no business pretending first-hand understanding of any “‘hood” but my own comfortably middle-class one. But I don’t think my frame of reference defines everybody on the blog … Oh, no, no, no.
PS: Just to put waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too fine a point on it (’cause I can’t leave stuff like this alone) … I never considered myself inferior ’cause I hadn’t suffered those kinds of deprivation. I hate the brand of liberal guilt that puts other people’s hardships on a pedestal.
Hardship is hard, and I don’t wish it on myself or anyone else. It’s not “cred,” it’s not nice, and it’s certainly not enviable. It’s impressive to watch people rise up, though. That deserves my respect.
By Bruce’s reckoning, I should stop listening to artists like Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Johnson because they come from a different income bracket than my own, and therefore the tale told by their music is incomprehensible to me. Anyone else find this as ridiculous as I do?
I like 50 cent for reasons largely unrelated to his music, his work ethic and business acumen.
Back to the thread. Andy Hughes passed away. He was a member of a group called The Orb. I like The Orb. Here’s a little blurb about Hughes from Pitchfork. http://pitchfork.com/news/tag/The%20Orb/
one of their singles (I think Jah Wobble played bass on this)
from wikipedia,
“Blue Room” is a single by The Orb. It was released on 8 June 1992 on Big Life Records. Gallup, who compiled the UK singles chart, had recently decided that any release with more than 40 minutes of play would be classified as an album rather than single. The Orb thus decided to record a 39:57 version of “Blue Room” for a special release. “Blue Room” is the longest single to ever reach the UK charts[1], peaking at number 8.”
>Anyone else find this as ridiculous as I do?
When your brother supported himself working in a frozen yogurt shop and I was a grill cook, we used to get the super-cheap standing room only seats to watch Shakespeare at The Old Globe.
I remember hanging out in your front yard listening to salsa, “Sugar Hill Gang,” disco booming out of low riders and primer coated muscle cars that cruised by. Racoon-eyed girls’ ululations bent in late night Doppler effect. The shamelessly greasy enchiladas your first girlfriend’s mom made. Her dad always ate shirtless, showing the massive gory crucifixion tattooed across his chest. Gina loved the classic Greek plays and Beckett. Said it stung every time a teacher mispronounced her common Hispanic name. The message being that no girl that smart could come from her home or her people.
Oh, and thanks for introducing me to The Orb. I like good long songs.
Wow. Again, I am elevated by a Toby explanation. However, I am all confused! I thought we were either upper SES people who are smart enough to understand Matt, or working class stiffs who scratch our heads in awe. Which one are you faking, Mr. Lifehater?
I’m faking all of it. I’m an alien, come here to observe and report, waiting for the mothership. If you look super close you can find me on the cover of an ELO album.
And I mean it- shoot him! SHOOOOOOOT HIIIIIMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!
Shooting people is rude and so early to mid-nineties. Duel him. Muskets and rapiers at thirty places at dawn. And then we’ll all have mint shandies and enjoy croquet on the upper lawn.
>>Shooting people is rude and so early to mid-nineties.
Toby: You see? I’ve still been driving around Maplewood in what I insist is my “hoopty,” “busting” the occasional “cap” in the offending asses of my fellow citizens. (I hate jay walkers.) Thank you for the update — I can’t tell you how gauche I feel right now.
Paul: Thanks for the Orb! Can you send me their tax returns so I can render an opinion on this music? LOL
As I sed in my telegrom: I winn! I amm mostly goodur Wurking class guyz!
This has inspired me to write a new song- too old to bust a cap in yo’ ass.
Shout out to Paul Howland for mentioning the Orb.
Listening to Little Fluffy Clouds….
>>There is just something so pathetic about seeing middle-aged white people pretending to share the experience… and acting all gangsta!
OK, OK … I GET it! I’ll buy a damn belt.
Sheesh!
Bruce said: “you come to realize that when you co-opt kids music you take away their ONLY form of rebellion, in SOME instances. ”
There’s always the hair. 🙂
Just out of curiosity- what about black people playing golf?
Yo! Hold on! And skateboarding, and playing in punk bands?
Ha ha Matt -- Thank god someone here still has SOME sense of humor. What a serious group we have here now…and SO touchy!
AND everyone is in agreement…VERY scary!!
BTW, Matt, we can talk about this off-line, but if you can’t give me at least a small raise, or better job title, I’m going to quit CHE.
Or did we lose parts or Skateboarding, golfing and punk in exchange for co-opting and homogenizing rap?
Culture is culture- in the U.S. it’s always going to get watered down and marketed to the mindless hoards. It’s a historical fact. Rock and roll was based in black culture- white America co opted it. Punk, skateboarding and golf are so white it’s glaring- yet Tiger Woods became the reigning king (something I LOVE- every time I see golf on TV I’m astounded at how classist and white it is.)
Toby- I appreciate how smart you are. The mindless hoards are everywhere here, there, and…here.
I couldn’t care less about someones race…I just hate stupidity masked as intellectualism. Some people sho’ talk purty…
Bruce said: “The only point I was making about race, SES, class…whatever, was that, as an inner-city music teacher you come to realize that when you co-opt kids music you take away their ONLY form of rebellion, in SOME instances. That is what they articulate to us…if you care enough to listen.
I totally listen to, and play, music derived from the African-American experience probably as much, if not more, than anyone here! It’s my job!
There is just something so pathetic about seeing middle-aged white people pretending to share the experience… and acting all gangsta!”
You made it a black and white issue, dumas.
all this intelligent discussion is enough to draw a bit of a sigh from deep within.
not being sarcastic either.
I LOVE Dumas!
I made it a WHITE issue dumb ass…I LOVE calling you dumb ass TOBY. It’s so incorrect it’s titillating!
Please more from mancalledclay!!!
I believe Toby was likening Bruce to “Count of Monte Cristo” author Alexandre Dumas.
Per Wikipedia, “Dumas’ paternal grandparents were Marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman, and Général commissaire in the Artillery in the colony of Saint Domingue, now Haiti, and Marie-Cesette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean former slave.”
So in fact, the reappropriation of African ethnic identity within a European context is a deeply rooted tradition that culminated in Sky Saxon, Michael Jackson and Toni Braxton. And some other people who rhyme with them.
Hoyt Axton!
Don’t reed me all yer highfalutin words an stuff. I ment Greg Dumas- fromm chanel tenn.
the thing which separated the music we did some nearly 30 years ago from what the M JACKSON-machine (and all that emulated it) was simple: our music encouraged THOUGHT…it invited DISCUSSION……it required INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM.
everything was surface for the king….and unfortunately he was not happy with the package god and nature and his parents gave him and thusly allowed his vanity and insecurity whisk him away to a land from which he would never be able to return.
millions…..if not billions, cried, but not me….i’m sorry.
i’m happy he was released from his pain and his suffering and from us having to watch this charade which was the king of pop.
tv and music was never going to be a good match and i think mj pointed to this fact very early on for me.
so much for happy endings.
Ok, ok…I’ve gotta go read some books and stuff- the real smart kids are in the houzizzel.
Hi Clay- how very nice to hear from you again. Was hoping everything was cool since we last swapped notes.
Later- T
good to see you haven’t lost your touch toby~
if you ask me, the true king of pop was ALWAYS captain sensible……and if you haven’t got THE UNIVERSE OF GEOFFREY BROWN down like the back of your hand yet…..then by all means it’s never too late.
and yes…god bless the orb and long songs and short ones too.
🙂
The reason we’re having fun is that the real smart kids AREN’T in the houzizzel!
Matt always saves the thread day with his humor, and Toby is his Dick Smothers.
mancalledclay -- responded to you on another thread re: Bobby X.
Need to swap stories.
>As I sed in my telegrom: I winn! I amm mostly goodur Wurking class guyz!
Um…dude? Those werds were 2 hard 4 me to read. I asked Jesus 2 help. Then I gav up and wached some mor car racing. Matt, plez help me read hard werds from Toby. Hes all uppity now and I dont git him any more.
>captain sensible
Happy Talking, Talking Happy Talk!
About duelling Matt: He and I are already scheduled for a crying and rocking contest. I admit he is the reigning king. But I think I can take him. I’m bringing my A game, bro’ so step it up.
Does that cover the rapier thing? How bout nunchakas? Actually broken beer bottles reflect my heritage more. Whatchu say?
Fighting is so cliched. I like a nice bake off. I’m a heavyweight in the cupcake division (sprinkles are my trademark move!) and I make a mean bundt cake.
let me be the first to apply for a judge’s seat…..i love sparklies.
Man- if bake offs were the world’s form of dispute resolution things would be SOOO different.
Tomorrow morning I return to the Grad/Doc Program I left twenty years ago! I’m excited and nervous.
Any recent grad people??….
I hope I’m not the oldest kid in class!
>Man- if bake offs were the world’s form of dispute resolution things would be SOOO different.
I say it’s worth a try. Power to those who can bake a decent lemon meringue tart. And, they don’t call those delicious confections Napoleons for nothin’.
Hi Clay,
You were the teachers assistant in my Ceramics class at SCPA (how very appropriate). You made me an excellent tape cassette mix of killing joke and joy division, and I haven’t been the same since. thank you.
kristen~ it’s nice to hear i left a positive footprint in your path.
i was fairly convinced i knew you at one time (thinking it was scpa) but i couldn’t know for sure.
thank you~ for giving me this to go by.
what a difference one cassette can make!!!
clay, i was talking about you to kristen last week. how you were the favored teacher at scpa. how have you been??? (formerly mara)
I agree with Clay that poor Michael became a charade. What a talented CHILD though!
The Orb is pretty cool…never heard of them. Kind of sounds like a million other bands though.
I’d still LOVE to see or hear something new!
ava* i was probably favored since i was run out of scpa and all you had was this memory…..but thanks for retaining what you felt to be
good about me.
i left that job with a heavy heart, to say the least…..i loved that school in a very big way….that mix of kids was simply incredible.
i’d be lying if i said these last nearly 30 years have been easy….they haven’t been. but i’m surviving and i don’t feel too beat-down…actually quite the opposite at times.
i think people are struggling in general and my story took some fortunate turns…..none which i didn’t have to fight and work for , however.
i do know i’m glad to have found this site and happy to hear i am very possibly even welcome.
thanks for saying hi!
clay, we’ve all had a turn around the block with regard to heavy hearted times. it comes with the territory of being a thinking person, don’t you think? simple people seldom struggle in the same way. ignorance can be bliss for some.
(also: what do you mean “run out of scpa”? you can answer that privately through the forum messaging if you like. )
ava*i was about to post in the forum then realized i lack the permission to do so.
anyway…..i’ve got homework to do in the form of (yikes!!!) 800 injections posts which i simply MUST read!!
*reading some of your threads…it sounds like you’re happy and doing well…..and in my book that counts for more than all the money in the world.
>>i was about to post in the forum then realized i lack the permission to do so.
Clay (and other recent arrivals): Among the frustrating limitations in our online empire is the lack of single sign-in capabilities — so the blog and forums do require you to register separately.
Toby or I can give you access to the forums. Register, then drop me a line at cheunderground@gmail.com so I can switch you on.
clay, i am! life has been up and down, but mostly up. and i have an amazing little boy who keeps me grounded and lofty all at once. money or not we have a lot of fun.
sign up with toby or matthew, since the forum is a mellow spot to talk. i like it.
gee whiz…
try this…old people are lame. young people are hip.
old people trying to be hip suck just a little worse than white people trying to be black.
i just heard about a term called ‘wiggers’ all about white kids who are so damned hip-hop they embarrass everyone of all colors.
i’m sure this is all old news and if i pointed this out to my young friends at work (some of whom are still minors) then they’d laugh out loud at the nice old guy trying to connect or make a conversation or whatever.
so i don’t bother. i just talk about my kids. it’s easier and more honest.
so thanks for all you other old geezers out there. some of you grew up in the nastier parts of SD and walked to my house. some of you did not. as matt said i was cured of judging people on any terms except personal knowledge of behavior i witnessed a LONG time ago.
i love and respect all your electronic selves…
but for the record, paul is the funkiest ‘since aaron does not post.
now you understand my only che bias…
besides a disdain for the upper case
p.m. works
autodidact snobileckchual futhermucker
oh yeah, i’m really mourning Ed McMahon, and find no fellows in my grief
Robin…it’s nice you remember Dan here…I remember his gig at the yogurt place. Dan at that time was the plastic guy. Plastic glasses, plastic suit, plastic scooter and a plastic briefcase containing a plastic crossbow.
He used to do target practice in the hallway at my pal Mike’s place. I believe we gave him a phone book to shoot at.
He was and is the only person to truly understand Kraftwerk and Devo in any real way, and looked great in plastic.
As I remember it the yogurt place was all plastic and had great light much like the milk bar in Clockwork Orange.
God bless you Danny wherever you are.
Plastrick
(pat, the wigger thing makes me cringe, too. and upper case seems so elitist considering all the hardworking lower case, right?)
ed mcmahon makes me sad, too. he was such a jovial guy.
I know this is ostensibly a place to mourn celebrity deaths, but I saw this recently and really enjoyed it. Michael Jackson was a dedicated student of some of the greats:
Saying that the Orb sounds like a lot of other bands is a little bit like saying that Charlie Christian sounds a lot like a lot of other jazz guitarists.
Pat- Mike Buckley? The only “performance artist” I ever admired? Dan’s in Portland and has a great blog, “Ride Theory” on Facebook. Would still look great in plastic if he chose.
>>the thing which separated the music we did some nearly 30 years ago from what the M JACKSON-machine (and all that emulated it) was simple: our music encouraged THOUGHT…it invited DISCUSSION……it required INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM. everything was surface for the king….and unfortunately he was not happy with the package god and nature and his parents gave him and thusly allowed his vanity and insecurity whisk him away to a land from which he would never be able to return.
Clay: I’m inclined in many ways to agree with you. But gauging depth is tricky. I certainly have no reason to disbelieve the authenticity of the emotional (or intellectual) connection the people thronging outside the Apollo Theater or around 2300 Jackson St. in Gary, Indiana, were experiencing.
I do think the man’s packaging became a trap for him. And beyond the period when they were the biggest cog in the Motown Machine, not something I had a personal connection with.
The personal heroes of my youth tended to be a bunch of adenoidal white guys with guitars and overtly “intellectual” lyrics. Could I honestly say it was all about the substance with no regard for the surface? I wouldn’t even try! I liked their sound, but I also emulated what I assumed was their core truths. But how do I know, really?
Listen, I know relativism can kill critical thought. And I admit I’m at constant risk here, ’cause I obviously carry a big streak of it. If you follow my logic too far, you’re left with a bland pudding in which everything is something to somebody and no judgments are possible.
I will concede I never connected emotionally with Michael Jackson as a solo artist — that “Thriller” video was fun at the time — and even disregarding the child-diddling charges, it sure looked like there was something profoundly wrong with the guy.
Nevertheless … I should probably buy “Off the Wall” for the first time in my life and listen to it end to end. Maybe even “Thriller” … Hell, biggest record of all time, and I never even heard the whole thing? Shame on me.
you neglected to buy THRILLER for a reason.
mainly because it is merely a cartoon-portrayal of what some of us knew to be music.
i think all things good were at some point derived of louie louie….
which was derived of beethoven’s ninth.
the eternal ode to joy.
save your money….save your shame…..don’t play their game.
>>save your money….save your shame…..don’t play their game.
OK, you’re probably right about buying in. How about if I just borrow it? 🙂
Which version of “Louie Louie”? Richard Berry’s original take was phenomenal. I remember arguing with a very eclectic African-American friend who thought the Kingsmen had degraded “Louie Louie” that they’d assimilated it … That them trying to do it in the original style would’ve been weak, but doing it all squawky was cool and the right approach for them.
Matt, c ‘mon what’s the fun of being middle-aged if you still care about cool, still cling to pride about your taste? If you want “Thriller,” put on your American Girl t-shirt, hold your head high and enjoy “Wanna Be Startin’ Something.”
MJ was one phenomenal dancer. I’ll never tire of watching footage. That move where he turns into a C with all the weight on his toe knuckles? Beautiful.
He really was a good dancer.
I dunno, Clay. I’ve been watching footage of people many of us would perceive as “authentic” feeling a lot of pain about this man. You don’t have to worry about me: I’m never going to be a major consumer of Jacksonia! But, but, but …
Fred Astaire gave the man his shoes for a reason.
No amount of packaging and advertising can account for his gracefulness.
Robin…yeah Mike Buckley. We were best friends in 7-9th grade and he kinda lived at my house for a while. One of the first. I remember he was studying music at UC and used to play a Chapman Stick.
He was also a pretty good trombone. Loved the bass clef.
Where’s he?
What’s Dan’s blog…you got a link?
Patrick Man
Super Hero
http://dannysland.blogspot.com/
If you haven’t seen the zine or Omnibus, check ’em out. Those Howlands can write.
I have no idea where Mike is. Met him a few times at Dan’s place in Hillcrest, and at UCSD when we were both there, saw him in a couple of recitals. I doubt he’d remember me. I remember he was a hell of a conversationalist and intense presence. Paul or Dan might know.
I cite again the incident in which I believe a young Dan Howland blew my 12-year-old mind one fateful afternoon at the Ken.
I don’t know if we ever met again (if this was indeed him), but I credit him with sowing seeds of punk in my skull.
That was him.
>>That was him.
Robin: Well, so now you know who’s responsible! 🙂
He’ll be so proud. He introduced me to The Cramps, Laurie Anderson, Dead Kennedys, and X. He has the curmudgeon persona close to perfection now. But still can’t control the tendency to break out in an exuberant grin.
>>”save your money….save your shame…..don’t play their game.”
Well said Clay…the kid could sing and dance but PLEASE…the beginning of the end.
Ther’ve been an awful lot of pixels on here lately dedicated to the idea of “cred”. I suspect that a lot of people are trying to keep their punk rock cred intact and it’s blinding them to some good stuff.
“Off The Wall” is a really good album, one of my co-workers was bumping it at work yesterday. Give it a listen. It ain’t gonna turn you in to a pumpkin I promise. Seriously, to those who subscribe to the “golden age of music” theory, they really don’t make records like this these days (certainly not big pop records), Rhythm Section, Horns, Strings, Vocalist. Produced by the mighty Quincy Jones (whose list of credits is longer than my arm and includes Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Lesley Gore, Sidney Lumet, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Dinah Washington, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Duke Ellington, Gene Krupa, Ray Charles and Count Basie).
Aside from Mr. Jackson there’s some serious talent on display here, including Paul McCartney and Louis Johnson.
This ain’t the stuff that’s dumbing down music folks.
>>”Off The Wall” is a really good album, one of my co-workers was bumping it at work yesterday. Give it a listen. It ain’t gonna turn you in to a pumpkin I promise.
OK, change of plans — I will buy “Off the Wall.” Blanket could probably use the residuals anyway, poor kid. :-/
Think I’ll give it a spin too…thanks Paul!
Well stated, Paul, as usual. What gave us “cred” at 18 looks pretty silly at 48. I think it’s a defense mechanism, anyway, to say that new music is terrible. There is so much good music constantly being produced (along with literature, film, art) that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with. One result of the information revolution has been the fact that it has made creativity possible for millions of people who in the past had no access to it. (Read Virginia Woolf’s essay on “Shakespeare’s Sister for a great perspective upon how class and gender have played roles in the development of “genius”). More power is in the hands of the people now. So while--as I stated earlier in this thread--I don’t see any major artistic revolutions out there, the masses have some pretty good tools at their disposal, and it’s making the entrenched powers very nervous (look at the reaction to file sharing, and blogging for example).
I work with kids who, for the most part, have had no access to music lessons, art or classical dance classes. With a simple computer they can create “beats” and learn to produce complete recordings. Their art is created with pencils, ball point pens and spray cans. Is this any less valid a form of expression than Stravinsky? When I hear older, more experienced musicians put down what young people are doing, it sounds all too familiar. Our parents heard it about their music, their parents heard it, too.
The bottom line is that what makes most of us respond to a piece of music is our emotional connection to it, not our intellectual dissection of it. Young people are making music grounded in their own experiences and cultural reference points. They do not expect--nor do they really care if-- older people appreciate it.
By the way, Matt--I’m not a big Thriller fan, I much prefer Off the Wall. But you have to have heard it already. I was living in a self-induced coma for most of the eighties but Thriller was inescapable. SEVEN of the songs on the album were huge hits: “The Girl Is Mine,”
“Billie Jean,””Beat It,””Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,””Human Nature,””P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” and “Thriller.”
I also think we have to look at MJ as not just an artist or a creepy--perhaps even dangerous--eccentric with a chimp on one shoulder and McCauley Culkin on the other. He was a cultural phenomenon. He absolutely dominated the charts in a way that hadn’t been seen since perhaps the Bee Gees in the late seventies.
>>By the way, Matt--I’m not a big Thriller fan, I much prefer Off the Wall. But you have to have heard it already.
Ray: I’m actually curious to listen to both of these through as albums. I got hit with a lot of Michael Jackson singles, but I never really tried listening to the whole magilla! (Not sure that form was ever the focus of the effort, but they are consistently cited as albums, so it seems fair to give them a real listen like that.)
okay…first of all…what’s a chart?
second….matt: you got the time…..go do the crime…..watching people cry over false idols….mostly plastic at that…on tv all day would suggest a bit much time on your hands.
BUT>off the wall…if you just GOT to.
and if you’re feeling really perverted find the Dangerous live dance you-tube video. i can guarantee anybody here i’ve spent as much or more hours dancing to so-called rhythmic music….which is one of the reasons i got out of the punk scene…..because baby that just ain’t dancing.
i managed/produced a rap unit for 4 years (91-95…they played with boys-2-men all that)….point being i do not hate all dance music.
there’s ome i have very deep affection for.
….there were some intriguing moves…..especially the very little steppy-step ones midway through…..but there was something diabolical in that video.
creepy to say the least.
the lip-synching was incredible….how his voice would be effected to sound one way and then the next which is okay…..but it was so very contrived and ENACTED…..
and without soul.
but it was the scarecrow who dominated the very essence of it all.
it was like you could peel him.
like i said….if you’re feeling perverted.
i think i’ll watch a nice quiet foreign film with human beings in it that live actual lives and have to learn to accept who they are and don’t ask for statues of themselves to be erected and then floated down major english waterways to honor what they’ve done to help the world’s children while he failed to pay his landscapers and florists….and agents
etc.
the king is dead.
monarchy sucks…do the math.
>>and if you’re feeling really perverted find the Dangerous live dance you-tube video.
That was pretty nifty. It’s definitely got a little “diabolical” quality, as Clay said, but I thought it was a nice, mild frisson of freaky. I like the dance moves … Definitely extremely rehearsed … Is that bad? I don’t think I grew hair on my palms.
I find it kind of … sweet … to think that my integrity is somehow in the balance here! Clay, my goodness, the assortment of human-scale foreign films I’ve consumed in my 44 years far outweighs any number of Michael Jackson performances I could cram at this stage. I don’t see this reshaping my DNA, honest. 🙂
However, if I do get cat’s eyes like that “Thriller” finale, I’ll be sure to tell you all.
PS: And yeah, Michael Jackson did seem very creepy, and his finances were ridiculous, and he likely did do yucky stuff with kids and skated, and the disparity of wealth on this planet is appalling. Not sure how I weigh all that against a dance routine … If I said I’d rather hang out with Gene Kelly, does that help?
you mean the guy who did “singing in the rain”?
perhaps fosse but he’s dead too.
I LOVE him…always will.
god bless him and pippin.
i’m not here to question your sincerity….nor your integrity….and i’ll be quick to confess that i like you matt (REALLY)….but i will ask…..when the supremacist who you let into your apartment started cheezing about how his being in this VERY ACTIVE nazi organization was a way for him to co-opt their intentions into something else….something of his own making? did you offer him a beer?
now THAT would’ve been sweet.
what i’m getting at is that there is a zombie-element in ALL humanity….be you white-rich or trailer-hitch, jew, black, mujahdeen,
tamil, indonesian….somali, sunni, cantonese, whatever.
and it’s really okay…..even necessary to try to understand the other guy….and even show respect.
but to bow and buy his shit and smile about it (sincerely) because all we know how to do is bow and buy shit and smile about it (sincerely)……24/7….
well, that’s another story.
as is aerosmith.
i would love to share some of our favorite films (foreign and domestic) once our traditional period of mourning is behind us.
i would also love to share some opinions as to what some actually worthwhile modern sell-out commercial music that i enjoy is….in hopes of learning more about what people here are digging.
i’m here to learn….so yes…..i do listen.
i’m all ears.
Matt -- I find it kind of sweet that your integrity is somehow in the balance here!
I’ve been waiting for you to stumble for so long. (I don’t know how to put a smiley face here!)
Clay you ARE the new Bruce Injection. (That’s supposed to be a compliment…others will see it differently).
Damn, how do I put smiley faces here so people stop getting bruised?????????
my favorite album by a black male performer is:
REMMY ONGALA & ORCHESTRE SUPER MATIMILA> songs for the poor man
so what are we doing here anyway?
Clay: If the American Front’s product was dance routines, I could either buy it or not. Dressing up like Nazis and hanging out with my roommates? Hey, knock yourself out! I’ve known enough conceptual artists who use shocking iconography that it seemed pretty dull, frankly. Nazi Bob and Boyd Rice playing dress-up — whoo, pretty scary!
I grew up around William Burroughs and Kathy Acker and a lot of other people known for deploying intense imagery … I don’t actually rattle that easily if some kid puts on a silly armband.
It’s when the AF actually started killing people that the performance really fell flat for me!
By the same token, if that “Dangerous” dance routine actually killed anybody — gosh, I’ll definitely avoid it in the future!
Otherwise, I’ll smile about it (sincerely). 🙂
Clay said: “i’m not here to question your sincerity….nor your integrity….and i’ll be quick to confess that i like you matt (REALLY)….but i will ask…..when the supremacist who you let into your apartment started cheezing about how his being in this VERY ACTIVE nazi organization was a way for him to co-opt their intentions into something else….something of his own making? did you offer him a beer?”
That’s one thing I found neat about the SD punk scene pre-1983 is that NOBODY told anyone who to hate. It seemed to be a matter of principle that if you told us to hate blacks we’d go out and find some and bring them into the fold, if you told us anything, we’d rebel. That changed later, but for a time it was a very independent group, almost to the point of futility in some instances. I knew people who seemed racist, but it was their racism- not anyone elses- and as far as I can remember they never tried to organize it or pull anyone into it- it was just their bag. (and later at least one of them had a black girlfriend, which makes their dislike sort of circumspect.)
As a kid I found racism to be like snorting coke. I mean- what self respecting punk wanted to do what cops were doing? May as well listen to country. 😉
Oh yeah- 2 other things. Bruce- have you been living in a cave? one of these: : with one of these: ) = one of these: 🙂
Dork. 😉
And I don’t have a favorite album or song by a black artists- there’s too many good ones. If I did though it’d probably be Seu Jorge’s Life Aquatic Soundtrack. Probably. I love that album very much.
Or Miles Davis or Coltrane or Yothu Yindi (if they count?) or Hugh Masekela or Bad Brains or Poly Styrene (would she count?) or the Specials (Do they count?) or the English Beat or Bob Marley (does he count?) Steel Pulse, Third World, Black Uhuru, Desmond Dekkar, Mighty Diamonds, Isreal Vibes, Don Carlos and Gold- I totally forgot reggae. And then there’s NWA and Snoop and Dre- the older stuff from that genre that I tend to like (though I guess it will never be my faves.)
Geez- yah- Bob Marley’s first three for me is like that Seu Jorge. And a couple later ones (Natty dread was pretty alright. Damn.) You see my dilemma? Too many artists to pick just one, and technically Bob is as white as he is black.
Thin Lizzy. Another black performer? I’m confused!!! Am I Scotch Irish and Swedish or American? Am I native American? I was born there! Is my son Hawaiian? He’s for certain 100% scotch-irish/swedish/chinese/filipino.
I have a hard time with this shit. 😉
what i like about you sir is your extreme intelligence, your graciousness, and your undying sense of humor.
but where i come from i see poor hard-working people (NOT william burroughs) having their brains programmed to accept garbage and consume it and desensitized to that which is grotesque and diabolical.
i.e. saw lll and IRAQ.
perhaps you are above all that.
but i’m down HERE and it saddens me when the intellectual elite
(of that which you are rightfully able to stake your claim)
not only struggles to understand and explain it…but perhaps even dance to and embrace it.
in the long run i always go with my gut.
my television remains OFF.
going on about 12 years now.
poodles crying…sheep off to war…etc.
singing in the rain.
hugh masakella doing STRAWBERRIES…..
no day is ever bad when i hear that!
i won’t even allow cable to run into my television…..the temptation to watch it would be too burdensome.
Bruce, if by “Clay you ARE the new Bruce Injection.”, you are referring to posting hyperbolic absurdities masquerading as challenging discourse, then you are in fact correct. 🙂
i thought i was supposed to be watching a nice quiet foreign film…NO?
Damn Toby -- see why we need you!!
I have been living in a cave. 🙂 did this work??
Racism sucks and is definitely for cops.
Natty Dread…lots of sunny beach days listening to that. Rastaman Vibration is killa too.
Your ethnicity boggles the mind!
Paul -- I can’t be insulted but you should be nice to Clay!
how about challenging discourse masquerading as hyperschmolic absmurfities?
I put a smiley.
Smileys mean never having to say I’m sorry. 😉
but what if i am?
I’m more bothered by the actual content of the art and the intended audience. Like the movie “up” for instance. A kids movie about a childless violent old man who befriends a young boy, together they battle a very bitter old man to the death, steal his airship and live happily ever after.
Smileys aside…I would never refer to any of this fun Che shit as challenging discourse.
Does that mean it isn’t?
Toby -- please ‘splain last post…getting sleepy…must know everything…ill with consciousness.
does anyone have a mop?
I remember when it was…hasn’t been since we have to be so careful with everyone’s feelings.
“Does that mean it isn’t?” , some of it is.
If I have to explain it to you….. 🙂
everything is a challenge and everything is a breeze…..the challenges become breezes once they are behind us…..painful as that might be…it’s also quite reassuring at times.
Oh Clay…you are the Lao-Tzu, (maybe Wayne Dyer), of CHE!
i mean as much as one might try to savor a moment……
it does pass.
anyway~that wasn’t meant as a reference to anything by stephen sondheim….though it probably SHOULD HAVE BEEN>
we need to get this back to the seeds and sky saxxon/////
sky saxon was (last I heard) mostly a self-involved “lead” singer (perhaps that’s a bit redundant) at times able to carry a tune and at (most) other times merely OBSESSED with liberating the local canine conscripts from animal control/extermination facilities.
zo
(I swear I just heard a bark in the night…can I get a WITNESS?!)
I posit the following for consideration and proof:
1. Kraftwerk were blacker than most of us here ’cause they ripped Chuck Berry at least 3 generations removed and still made major DMarks ’cause it was funky
2. MJ was a damned GENIUS but he dug his own grave, over which I would happily dance whilst wearing white socks. I will and he will not turn over, but rather SPIN in that grave.
3. Clay is nothing more than dirt+water+pressure and an integral part of all soil…despite not wanting clay in your shoes, you depend on it so don’t toss it out without consideration.
4. I still have my original copy of “Off The Wall” and it’s all worn out, so I’m either more shameless or more closeted than all y’all.
5. Nothing’s been more surreal in my life (and it’s been quite a ride) than having early 80s mod fashion and dance confused by the locals at my SE SD high school for cutting edge Michael Jackson fandom: black pants, overdressed, white socks, love of R&B of a past era, loafers and the shameless need to pop and lock
on the bus ride home when “Rappers Delight” came out over 92 Star 5 (All the Way Live)
6. My fat self being able to re-live a little bit of this last week while the kids at work actually really MOURN this guy is like a freakin’ time machine.
7. Injections are mostly good, but sometimes hurt, and other times lead to habits you mostly don’t brag about.
8. Matthew’s a Jew, so he’s disqualified, but his wife must SURELY be a saint for putting up with all of us.
9. I am certainly anathema for having just typed that.
10. Robin’s memories make me want more.
Decinough
Patrick Works
somnambulant weirdo
: mad : = 😡
[Sorry! Our perennial glitch in this outdated blog software turned off commenting on all posts, dammit. I have to go back and switch ’em back on. Grrrrr.]
>>but i’m down HERE and it saddens me when the intellectual elite
(of that which you are rightfully able to stake your claim)
not only struggles to understand and explain it…but perhaps even dance to and embrace it.
Clay: Funny thing … Any time someone talks about how he’s “down here,” it seems to conclude by asserting his superior grasp of a subject!
Nobody ever says, “Hello! Sorry to bother you … But I’m ‘down here,’ so I don’t actually understand what’s going on. You appear to be a card-carrying member of the intellectual elite — can you explain it to me?”
Or, “Help!! I’m ‘down here’!! Can somebody please bring a rope or drop a sandwich in?” (People probably do say that occasionally, but not to me. There aren’t too many giant holes where I live. Which might be because I’m a member of the intellectual elite and all.)
Where’s “down here,” Clay? If I’m not down there, I haven’t noticed! But if I’m not down there, I’d like to join you — because then I’d be qualified to pass judgment on the poor brainwashed masses.
>>sky saxon was (last I heard) mostly a self-involved “lead” singer (perhaps that’s a bit redundant) at times able to carry a tune and at (most) other times merely OBSESSED with liberating the local canine conscripts from animal control/extermination facilities.
Patrick: Oh, wow … There was some story about Sky Saxon and the dog pound across from the Spirit, wasn’t there?
And yeah, I second Nancy for sainthood! (You noticed the stigmata?? She tries to cover them with foundation, but … ) 🙂
“Frisson of freaky” is my new favorite dance tune.
“Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt” is my favorite album by white people. Everyone grooved to it at the hypothermia shelter last December.
My favorite album by a Native American is Swil Kanim “Works for the People.”
My favorite album by a black person is “Leontyne Price: Arias from Verdi and Puccini.” The stripper in the apartment behind us introduced me to it. She liked for me to keep her company while she sewed her own elaborate costumes. She had a gorgeous, heart-breaking voice, loved to sing along with Leontyne. I can still hear her “Piangi? Perche?”
Anyone who digs Kraftwerk owes it to themselves to check out italian disco. Kraftwerk has stated that they got a lot of most of their musical inspiration from dancing to music in nightclubs, a method I use and endorse, as opposed to at home listening sessions. I’m not sure who zoomed who, but Donna Summer’s Giorgio Moroder produced “I Feel Love” sounds an awful lot like Kraftwerk’s “Metropolis” and the former dropped a year earlier than the latter. Luddites and lovers of the “Golden Age” of disco (when backing tracks were created by a rhythm section and an orchestra) take note, “I Feel Love” is credited as being the first disco song to have a completely synthesized backing track (no live instruments). Another Kraftwerkian note of interest (to me at least), they credit their music teacher for inspiring them by telling them “It’s better to play 3 notes that you have composed yourself, than to learn a piece that has already been written”.
Bruce Injection.
Love any information about Kraftwerk.
Love Giorgio Moroder…he even worked with my obscure, weird fav band Sparks.
>>“It’s better to play 3 notes that you have composed yourself, than to learn a piece that has already been written”.
Strange advice from a music teacher, but certainly worked well with Kraftwerk!
Thanks Paul.
Patrick -- no.7 is certainly thought provoking! No.8 does remind us that there must be a saint behind Matt!
>“It’s better to play 3 notes that you have composed yourself, than to learn a piece that has already been written”.
Good quote. One I’ve wrestled with for awhile. Jean-Pierre Rampal made a similar comment. And he doesn’t compose. I love to play, don’t do much composition. It’s very hard for me. I’m better at applying myself to learning other people’s songs. Then I figured out that if no one played anyone else’s music, then Vivaldi, Beethoven, et al. are really dead. The music teacher is onto something important. But learning a piece that’s already been written is still worthwhile.
Most definitely Robin. I’m glad that people do both.
Bruce, Sparks are good ! I’m afraid the only tune of theirs I can name is “Tsui Hark” which features the Producer/Director (one of my favorites) speaking about himself. My brother is a real Sparks fan and the Kraftwerk expert of the family.
“Gator”, isn’t it, the movie about the tragic fall of that skater. Gator is his nickname I believe.
Paul…yeah I think you’re right about Gator. My friend Helen made a film about him, but I haven’t spoken to her in years.
He ended up in jail for murder…if it’s the right guy.
Try youtube Sparks “No.1 Song In Heaven”…nice Giorgio Moroder piece!!
“Stoked: the Rise and Fall of Gator” (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271211/
Ray -- thanks for the confirmation and link. Helen also made “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”, and “Queen Mercy”. She was a cool RISD chick when I knew her.
Thought I’d post this to…Giorgio Moroder…meet “Sparks”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL4SwVCMw38&feature=related
Paul,
“Hyperbolic absurdities?”
Heh!
That’s both in my own idiom, and cannily descriptive, thereof!
Thank you Tsui Hark
Another seven degrees of Che. When Owen Neider, Dierk and I were running around in 83 we crossed paths with (and drank with, and ran amuck with) Gator many times. Mark Rogowski aka Gator Mark Anthony.
Paul, you’ve managed to challenge me for years while always being very considerate. One never seemed to interfere with the other. Plus you made my mom’s old beater guitar sound mean sliding an empty glass coke bottle up and down the neck.
Wow! You knew Gator?? It seems like the degrees of separation diminish all the time.
You were in SD partying with Gator and I was in RI partying with his eventual biographer….weird.
On a separate note. I wish you CHE cats were in my Advanced Studies: Philosophical Foundations in Music Education class I’m taking. Believe it or not, after 3 days, I’M the big mouth!! It’s the professor and I mixing it up and 7 other students barely there.::):
check out Senor Coconut’s album-tribute to Kraftwerk….one might think a latin salsa-bossa-merengue tribute would be a sacrilege joke….
but it really is beautiful……just to highlight the sublime nature of those melodies and rhythms from within a wholly different musical context….
i have MAN MACHINE on regular rotation and COMPUTER LOVE is
heavenly as it is zany….quite breathtaking once you quit laughing.
Thanks for the tip Clay. Still love Man Machine… and Trans Europe Express.
Have to post more MORODER/SPARKS. We ALL need a little moroder now and then! 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc_x2-rCFWI
This is the No1 Song In Heaven
Why are you hearing it now you ask
Maybe you’re closer to here than you imagined
Maybe you’re closer to here than you want to be. haha
Bruce said: “On a separate note. I wish you CHE cats were in my Advanced Studies: Philosophical Foundations in Music Education class I’m taking. Believe it or not, after 3 days, I’M the big mouth!! It’s the professor and I mixing it up and 7 other students barely there.::):”
?????
Bruce said: “Wow! You knew Gator?? It seems like the degrees of separation diminish all the time.”
Well- I wouldn’t say “knew” gator- we crossed paths a lot. I think most everyone knew who most everyone else was. Tony Hawk, Mike Macgill, Steve Steadham, Gator, Neil Blender, Reese Simpson, Owen Neider- There was a lot of talent around North County at that time setting benchmarks in history books, and pretty much all of them overlapped into the punk scene at least at some point around 82-83ish. I was drunk so much I was constantly surprised at who seemed to know me a lot better than I remembered. I know Greg Pertle and Hellpig (Greg Mccaimbridge- North County punk and skater) knew some of those guys a lot better than I did.
It’s kind of interesting how easily the Billy Mays bio could be retooled as a standard rock-star biography:
He was kind of the MTV chart-topper of tchotkes … Just replace some of the words with “synthesizer,” “sing,” “hairdo,” “cocaine” and “moonwalk,” and this could be a “Behind the Music” feature.
This just in….Karl Malden dead.
Sitting here at my desk at work, I exclaimed, “Karl Malden died!” Not a single person in earshot knew who I was talking about.
Damn puppies.
Let’s hope Billy Mays doesn’t trump Karl Malden!!!
karl malden. that makes me damn sad. but at least he was 97.
Personally….I never leave home without him.
Patrick Works
All About Petrified Hollywood
K Now…if we have to really address the death (or dearth) of Karl (or Carls, since Mr. Perkins has also past within the lifespan of the Che Blog)
How indeed would all y’all follow this notion:
Rock of Ages vs. Nose of Noses…
Richard Nixon, Karl Malden, MICHAEL JACKSON, Paul Simon,
Pete Townshend, Albert Einstein, Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante,
Cyrano de Bergerac, Ringo Starr,
May I ask the assembled masses (here)?
Who has the schnozz of schnozzes?
Patrick Works
irish plunker so thus lipless and noseless amateur
Gnarley. I just got word that Mike Woods is gone, two days ago in Texas. Waiting for details.
I think it’s safe to say “Legendary bad guy”, good guy to have your back when the shit hits the fan. Mixed feelings but we had some good times way back.
Being a fiction aficionado, it’s funny one of the first things that crossed my mind was “I guess the mice can come out of their holes”. 😉
Another funny thought (after thinking about who’s on here and remembering that some of them were historically none too fond of the man) was “feel free to take pot shots but remember- nothing has been confirmed.” 🙂
Karl Malden: Another son of Gary, Indiana.
Jeff, buddy: Take care of yourself!
RE Mike Woods: Twenty-some years is a long time, and people do change — or make a conscious effort to listen to their better angels. I’ve seen it here, and if he is indeed dead, I’m sorry we never heard from Mr. Woods when it was possible.
Another of the SD bogeymen who never harmed me, although he did some structural damage to my friends. Whether or not the reports of his death are greatly exaggerated, I’d like to know more about the routes he took after 1987.
unquestionably, it was the durante nose which always had the most inescapable effect on me.
as for mike woods, i remember always maintaining a certain “reverence”
for the man as i was well-aware how eratic things could get in his presence. even after being informed that i was allowed to relax, it somehow seemed unwise. if his journey has indeed met it’s end…..i only hope the damage left behind can provide us pause and some clue as to the pain and injustice which some of us are faced with and not always able to overcome….thusly reflected in our treatment of others.
Apropos only of mortality, I’ve been looking for a spot to share this odd little feeling …
At the end of my tenure with MacWEEK — after the magazine shut down and I was left to steward the brand on a shoestring online — I worked briefly for a guy named Stan Flack … My age, Canadian newspaper sales guy turned Web entrepreneur whose company had been bought for a nice sum by mine.
And when I quit in January 2000 (and he was starting to experience his own differences with senior management), we got together for a drink. And I asked him how he was doing, and he answered wryly, “Every day above ground is a good day!”
Total platitude, right? I’m sure it’s been said a million times, but never to me. And somehow … That throwaway line just stuck in my head.
And every time things have seemed really shitty, I have to admit I’ve said that silly little slogan to myself: Every day above ground is a good day! Sometimes it’s been like a little mantra … I must have said it thousands of times this past decade. (Never out loud, though — always in my head. I’m still just a little too uptight about my verbal skillz to say something that trite, eh?)
Anyway, I was catching up with some old colleagues a couple of weeks ago, and I asked if they knew what Stan was up to, since he’d kinda dropped off the radar. Turned out he died in 2008 at the age of 43.
Wow — it hit me like a ton of bricks, actually. We weren’t great pals, and I hadn’t spoken to him in years … But that damn chirpy little platitude, man: Every day above ground is a good day.
It actually is a good day! Shit. Thanks, Stan.
amen, matthew.
someone said something about Kraftwork being funky, um yeah they influenced africa bambaataa…….. the sun ra of Hip Hop, other kratwork influenced early hip hoppers , LA Dream Team, World Class Wrecking Crew(Dr. Dre pre NWA, leather and lance ala prince look), Egyptian Lover…. Yeah I know a bit about dis music…. I am so old and hip it hurts, all the kids in my part SE SD ask where they can get some of my type of male pattern baldness, I just laugh, silly youngsters, you can’t buy this look you earn it.
Audio 5000 G!
Toby, did you get any of the details about Mike Woods?
Nope. Still waiting. Have patience my son. 😉
Allen Klein died.
can we say…THAT BASTARD!?!?!?
but on a different note…i’m attempting to interject a little spice into THE FORUM with a new thread.
here’s a quote from the first story:
“We’re Western girls trying to be Japanese girls, trying to be Western -- it seems like a funny circle to go around.”
Is that the junior senator from Minnesota behind John Belushi?
Drake Levin of Paul Revere & the Raiders.
I’d like to see a revival of corny band names!
Drake Levin was a brilliant guitarist. Here he is on a perfect single, “Just Like Me,” from 1965, double tracked:
Apropos the subject that Matt? started on this thread, or some other one, regarding whether or not we should be concerned about a celebrities personal life, agenda, etc…
I just finished a great article “Daniel Barenboim conducts Wagner in Israel”.
Barenboim , born and raised in Israel, led the visiting Berlin Orchestra in a concert in Jerusalem in 2001. As an encore he conducted Wagners “Overture” to Tristan, which led to many people walking out, boos from the audience and condemnation from Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Moshe Katsav, and others.
There has been a ban on playing Wagner in Israel since the formation of the state and an informal ban on Wagner in the Jewish community since 1938 Kristallnacht.
This brings up the question about the life of the artist, timely with the passing of Michael jackson.
Richard Wagner was a champion of Germanic superiority, a librettist of the Original “Ring”, an anti-semite, and one of the most brilliant composers of the Romantic era.
Although his music was used by Hitler as a propaganda tool, his involvement with the holocaust is minimal since he was dead. He may have been a racist, and worse, but again, should these things be considered when listening to and studying his art??
I would hate to deny any Jewish student of music the opportunity to study the absolutely brilliant harmony, orchestration, and instrumentation that he basically invented.
It’s a long way to go, but after this week hearing everyone talk about how great Michael was with very limited mention of the accusations of being a pedophile it seems that the question of an artists personal life and the art itself is still relevant and un-answered.
was there this kind of great outpouring of grief over jackson in israel?
anyone remember this?
“It is sad that Jackson is infected with classically stereotypical ideas of Jews as all-powerful, money-grabbing and manipulative.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1132475611341&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
i can’t see eminem living here but i could imagine it serving as a scientology retreat.
http://wordsinyourmouth.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/michael-jackson-lashes-out-jews-stole-neverland/
I think Michael Jackson also allegedly made disparaging remarks about African-Americans … I can’t Google it up now, but it was something unpleasant.
Call me Mr. Sensitive, but I suspect Mr. Jackson was a rather conflicted and unhappy man!
Something I read about the Michael Jackson memorial really rubbed me the wrong way, and I’m still trying to figure out why:
“The Rev. Al Sharpton … got the loudest applause … when he said he wanted Jackson’s three children to know that there ‘was nothing strange about your daddy.’
“‘It was strange what he had to deal with, but he dealt with it.’ ”
That just seems so … Wilfully ignorant, maybe? I’m totally leaving aside the criminal accusations, which were dismissed in a court of law. And I wouldn’t expect a memorial service to dwell on someone’s oddities, and I don’t begrudge anyone’s sorrow at the guy’s passing, especially his kids.
But to claim there was “nothing strange” about Michael Jackson — I mean, even if you idolized him, any honest observer would have to admit there was something … unconventional? About the man. Just a little?
This seems like the kind of facilitation that turned the guy into such a strange pariah in life. … Oh! I wrote “strange.” Sorry, Rev. Sharpton.
i think they shoulda had mickey mouse deliver that eulogy.
Before “In Living Color” jumped the shark completely, they did a sketch lampooning Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” video. IIRC, the first verse went,
I’ve been a pop star since the age of 10,
I wrote a love song to a rat named Ben,
I play with little animals and stay out with Macauley all night;
[Something, something something, something]
Won’t you tell me if I’m black or white?
Then whatever Wayans was imitating Jackson does the whole routine from the video, jumping on a car and kicking the crap out of it, until a cop comes up and arrests him. “Michael” turns to the camera and says in that little voice, “Oh! I guess I’m black!”
I also want to point out that I myself am rather strange. This photo from the Encinitas Pannikin basement ca. 1985 was recently uncovered, and I believe it makes the point well:
OK, here’s that Jackson skit:
Robin said: “I’ve been to several funerals. None of the eulogists ever felt compelled to mention that the deceased was not strange.”
My funeral is still in the planning stages. Brace yourself. Strange may come up.
Okay- I have a friend who thought it was a great idea for she and her hubby to get super stoned before a decidedly Irish-Catholic funeral, and then the priest spoke exactly like Elmer Fudd. “We awe hewe to wemember Wobbewt, who was a bewuvvid fweind to many…..” She said it was just embarrassing how many times she had to stifle outright hysterics.
That imagery sticks with me. Though I saw the highlights of MJs funeral, which was such a complete crock of shit media event it’s unbelievable. I’m sorry- in the house I grew up in the Jackson 5 were a joke- like the Partridge family and Sha Na Na. They just were not considered a valid act- they were vegas. I have never found anything around MJ interesting enough to get my attention. He had lots of money and was a gifted dancer (and assumably choreographer) and was highly promoted and marketed, and so LOTs of people know about him. I’ve been changing the station on my radio every time this is mentioned since about the second day after he died solely because it means nothing to me, and think this media circus is a joke and we should all be asking when we went to war with afghanistan.
>>in the house I grew up in the Jackson 5 were a joke- like the Partridge family and Sha Na Na.
Toby, buddy: C’mon. I’ll tolerate a lot, but have a little respect … Until you’ve personally put on gold lame and faced down 500,000 muddy hippies, I don’t think you can truly judge Sha Na Na!
Yay Toby!! Whoever posted that Moonwalk video really took the wind out of the sails. He really did steal EVERY cool dance move!
Sha Na Na at Woodstock reference…we do get around here don’t we??
I worked at Burger King in Providence for a short time and one night Bowzer came in…one of my only brushes with greatness!!
(By the end, Bowser was mainlining powerful animal tranquilizers to relieve the constant pain in his lower jaw and right bicep. Life on ’70s variety shows was brutal and often short … )
Okay- I have to admit that I had no idea- zero- that Sha Na Na were at Woodstock. You guys rule.
Toby -- have YOU been living in a cave:)
Why my smiley face no work??
Bad billing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDxaLLwyr6I
Next, Toby will tell us he’s never heard of the Captain & Tennille’s “lost performance” at Altamont. (I’m still haunted by the footage of that guy getting beaten with pool cues during “Muskrat Love.”)
These kids…probably doesn’t even know that The Injections played with John Denver. You should hear Lou Skum sing Annies Song!
Sha Na Na at Woodstock was covered quite extensively on another thread a while back--I remember posting a video of them doing a lighting-fast version of “At the Hop.”
immortality thusly assured……
http://www.anorak.co.uk/celebrities/216639.html
Yikes! This is what Michael Jackson was taking??
“Propofol is a short-acting, intravenous, nonbarbiturate sedative agent used for the induction of general anesthesia for adults and children, maintenance of general anesthesia, and sedation in medical contexts, such as intensive care unit (ICU) sedation for intubated, mechanically ventilated adults, and in procedures such as colonoscopy and endoscopy, as well as in dental surgery.”
Oh, yeah. Nothing strange.
matt: >>Dylan: I’m just hoping Walter Cronkite can hang in there a few days!
well..he seems to have done just that.
that man’s image and voice, when i was a kid…more than probably any other, was like a father or grandfather to me….to us all.
RIP~ walter cronkite.
Walter Cronkite dead.
Bill Maher: America is Michael Jackson. Discuss.
In a July 26 appreciation of Frank McCourt, a columnist for the Grand Rapids Press quotes a student who called him “the Lou Reed of high school English.”
Having perused the Press over the years, I’m stunned at the casual deployment of Lou Reed as a yardstick. When did this happen??
When McCourt started wearing badass black shades and pencil jeans to class and led the class in singing “Sweet Jane” as a chorale.
I wasn’t sure of the connection, and then I remembered McCourt’s poem:
Jameson.
It’s my wife, and it’s my life.
When I think “mentor,” I don’t think Lou Reed.
When it comes to nourishing hungry young minds, I’d say he falls more into the “cantankerous old butthead” category. Occasionally he’s been known to ask a youngster to poop on a glass plate, but I think that’s the extent of his educational efforts.
Merce Cunningham, the “Sgt. Pepper’s” of modern dance.
Lou is probably a synonym for “cool” for that writer. I doubt he thought through the metaphor as deeply as you have, Matthew.
>>I doubt he thought through the metaphor as deeply as you have, Matthew.
Robin: Not to mention the thing with the plate!
I meant the Press columnist hadn’t considered the limited parallels between Reed and McCourt.
I think Lou thought through the plate thing. I think he is still laughing now. Behind cool shades. I wonder if the kid who did it brags about it? Or hangs his head in shame? Does my beloved Laurie hate when anyone tells that story?
>>I wonder if the kid who did it brags about it? Or hangs his head in shame?
Robin: I don’t think this particular kid obliged … It was a hilarious/poignant account in “Please Kill Me,” the Legs McNeil book on NY punk.
Here in the woods, I don’t have access to the source material, but as I recall this young man was at a club (Max’s Kansas City??) with a producer who worked with Reed when Lou joined them.
The kid was all excited about the prospect of talking arts and letters with his literary hero. Instead, Lou kind of sneered at him; called him “David Cassidy”; then invited him back to his place, where he had a glass plate all ready. Yikes!
(N.b.: While this tale had the ring of truth, who knows if Lou Reed REALLY wanted someone to load his plate, or if he just wanted to appall this youngster?)
Here’s the description of the incident:
http://books.google.com/books?id=mkG7Y6_J7pUC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=lou+reed+shit+plate&source=bl&ots=jmK4_jAqdd&sig=KJV6LKv6iyJst-J2WxbvMWOljPk&hl=en&ei=toRuSufFPIG6NeeXoOQC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2
Don’t know if this is true or not, but Lou Reed is still a pompous, pretentious ass.
so true but he did help sway our perceptions as to what music might emote and sound and feel like…not only personally but as a culture and i believe this spans more than one generation thus far.
seen lou a couple times but it was Roxy Theatre LA circa 77 (?) my brother nicked the glass of whiskey (scotch?) reed was sipping onstage….bro claiming he was gonna keep the glass and its contents on his mantle forever. i think we were coming down the pike about del mar when i decided it was much wiser and funner to simply drink the stuff. of course kirk got the glass.
>>Don’t know if this is true or not, but Lou Reed is still a pompous, pretentious ass.
Ray: Amen … And I also completely concur with Clay’s assessment of the guy’s importance to music I care about.
Just to make it clear, I don’t mind at all what two consenting adults may choose to get up to with a glass plate. I just don’t like people being derisive and mean. (Although that may constitute foreplay in this situation.)
I almost find the “David Cassidy” jeers creepier than the plate!
I like Clay’s whiskey-glass story. If your brother had pooped in it and returned it to the stage, it would have had a nice circularity. The audience giving back to the artiste, as it were. 🙂
I used to think he was just boring and over-rated. Now I think he’s a boring over-rated jerk. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to dissociate him from that story. I agree, the David Cassidy abuse is the most repugnant. Which is saying something considering the rest.
>>I used to think he was just boring and over-rated. Now I think he’s a boring over-rated jerk.
Robin: I agree he’s overrated in the sense that NO human being should be worshipped. And a jerk in the sense that he apparently abuses the honor he receives instead of recognizing that it’s more than ANYONE deserves.
Gratitude would seem to be the appropriate response, no matter how talented you are.
Well said, as always, Boy Wonder.
I met Christopher Parkening, the only artist who has ever brought me to tears with the sheer beauty of his performance. College boys whoop and whirl their shirts for his rendition of Ravel’s “Empress of the Pagodas.” I shook his hand and thanked him for the joy his music has brought me, told him how he’d inspired me to work harder at music. He was so grateful and humble that I left even more inspired. If that’s Parkening’s response…
BTW, I recognize that the nature of celebrity means many more people feel they have a personal stake in you than you have in them. This fundamental imbalance can get enervating, especially since some “fans” are presumptuous jerks who abuse the relationship. BUT … No defense for prima-donna plate-spinning.
>the nature of celebrity means many more people feel they have a personal stake in you than you have in them
But there is no fame without fans.
>>But there is no fame without fans.
Absolutely. But the object of the fandom deserves a little control of the interaction, too. Respect and gratitude work both ways … I wish everyone lots of Robins and no Mark David Chapmans. 🙂
Mais bien sur. I was thinking “stake” as in investment, not lethal weapon pounded through the heart.
Corazon Aquino, the Lou Reed of Filipina political leaders.
merce cunningham (1919-2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/01/arts/dance/20090803-merce-graphic.html
John Hughes.
sigh~ my children and i grew up on those films.
Willy DeVille …
i saw mink histories ago….the man lived to entertain.
also:
RIP my nephew KC died last night in a most dramatic and much-witnessed truck accident…..he joins his father/my brother who died 9 month ago to the full moon.
>>RIP my nephew KC died last night in a most dramatic and much-witnessed truck accident…..he joins his father/my brother who died 9 month ago to the full moon.
Oh, Clay: I am so sorry.
I’m so, so sorry Clay. Are you OK?
my mom has buried so many men in her life it’s crazy.
i’m definitely going to try not to be one of them.
it’s especially hard when they’re younger than you…..and in her case (and every other mom out there)…somehow magically derived from within you.
thanks for the condolences.
Take care of yourself. Hugs to you and your mom from here. Please share good memories if it will help.
Les Paul!!
Oh no!! Same week as Eunice Shriver….both legends.
TED KENNEDY. Shit. No surprise, but … Shit.
A huge loss up here in RI, where his son Patrick is our congressman.
Both Kennedys have helped keep LNG ships and ports out of Narragansett Bay and that is HUGE to us. They’ve also been responsible for providing low/no cost heating fuel to the needy for years.
Who will replace??
Ellie Greenwich (Be My Baby, Leader of the Pack, Da Doo Ron Ron, etc.) died today also.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112264404
(And Dominick Dunne.)
Tammy Pollard asked a provocative question on Facebook: whether we’re at a tipping point where we start losing our collective memory of the ’60s.
Of course, those little losses occur on a small scale every day — and finally culminate in the sort of terminal point I commemorated in a recent post on the passing of the last British combat soldier of WWI — but I know what she’s getting at. And it does provoke both wist and rue.
does anyone remember blue cheer?
This guy did not have a lot of luck.
PS: When Jim Carroll sang that “G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten,” the closet magician in me envisioned these guys getting poisoned by bad magic tricks. (A “gimmick” is the hidden mechanism in magic parlance.)
VERY important to keep your gimmick clean, or that finger chopper can do some real damage, man.
being a diabetic and someone who was hounded by drug addicts in the past for my syringes…understands all too well about gimmicks
which brings up the problem…do you provide clean syringes to something that turns your stomach?
or do you let them pass around diseases and such?
>>do you provide clean syringes to something that turns your stomach?
MadMike: Oooooh, I’m strongly on the clean-syringe side of that discussion. What goes around comes around — both karma and diseases.
Totally can see why that would suck for you, though! Just another small example of why being a junkie makes people no fun to be around.
Generalisimo Francisco Franco is STILL dead.
No syringes involved that I know of.
Patrick
it’s one thing having to use syringes to stay alive…
quite another to do it by choice..for something that I’m sure at one time must have been pleasurable…then turned to neccessity
my opinion today??
choices..some people have them..like the choice to do drugs intravenously…
and some dont..like the choice to not use a syringe for a type 1 diabetic
I understand where your coming from on the whole Karma thing Matt
but
my own experiences and the reality of it is…that Karma had nothing to do with it
>>I in fact did my insulin..before I noticed blood in the syringe..something diabetics dont do…is draw blood into their syringes
MadMike: That’s just foul. Sorry, man!
I was actually thinking more about public-health policy than your own personal situation. You were very generous, and yeah, that’s no kind of thanks. :-/
>>”Generalisimo Francisco Franco is STILL dead.
Hilarious Patrick…and now we know how old we are!!
>> I understand where your coming from on the whole Karma thing Matt but my own experiences and the reality of it is…that Karma had nothing to do with it
MadMike: No, no — I totally agree. I read the “you” as “we” … Should communities provide clean needles or just deal with the health consequences and attendant human misery?
The personal “you,” on the other hand … You went above and beyond, sounds like, and got mistreated in the process.
I’m really sorry! And sorry I was too busy pulling out my public-policy soapbox to absorb what you were actually saying.
I agree with you as far as public policy goes Matt,
but…from my own personal experiences..it’s a tough call
you would think there would be better ways to help people deal with addictions than to enable them to continue on with them…
OK, now this is just wrong:
‘Laugh-In’ original Henry Gibson dies
Gibson’s breakthrough came in 1968 when he was cast as a member of the original ensemble of NBC’s top-rated “Laugh-In,” on which he performed for three seasons. Each week, a giant flower in his hand, he recited a signature poem, introducing them with the catch phrase that became his signature: “A Poem, by Henry Gibson.”
Hello AGAIN…I keep finding new stuff here…I just did an interview this morning with an author thats doing a jim carroll biography…thought I would toss it on here for you…I bet none of you knew that the stripper in the film Basketball Diaries was my manager at the time…I don’t know, there’s something strangely romantic about the idea…but anyway, here you go:
1 and 2. My first impression of Jim was how quiet he was, and he had the most beautiful translucent skin, and I felt that he had a fear of talking to people until he got onstage, where he seemed the most comfortable in letting his demons out. It’s not easy talking about heroin when you’ve been there and back especially to people you don’t know…so I didn’t talk to him much the first time we performed. He seemed very jumpy and edgy and nervous like a deer in the headlights of a car.
3,. Her name is Akiko Ashley and she is on my FB. I will send her your info as well. She told me some great stories mostly about Leonardo and the rest of the kids trying to pick up on her! But she also spent some time with Jim, when I did the show with him after the film came out and I told him Akiko was my manager he about fell to the floor,…and immediately we sat and talked for about half an hour…he really respected her so much!
5. I really can’t answer that question because I don’t know.
6. I think that the main difference in the 90’s was that he seemed a bit more comfortable with his fame, I think he purposefully built walls around him to protect himself, but as I said once I told him about Akiko, the walls came down. It probably gave him something else to talk about other than drugs.
7. He seemed very generous and brutally honest …its all there in his work
I hope this helps.
Gary Heffern
—--Original Message—--
Sent: Mon, Oct 5, 2009 7:38 pm
Subject: interview
Thank you very much for your answer, Gary.
I warmly thank you for letting me interview you. It is an honour to speak with you.
Here in Italy, Jim’s music and work as a writer is not well known, or it is known in an incomplete and inaccurate way.
Forgive my English, which is awful. I hope my words will be understandable.
Now, the questions. If you think some of these are indelicate, forgive me. My interest is due to the will of understanding deeply an artist who helped me finding my way in life, and being satisfied of what I do.
1)When you met Jim for the first time? And what was your first impression of him?
2) I know you are a great musician too, and you sometimes perfomed with Jim. What do you remember of those shows? Do you have some interesting memory you want to share?
3) Your manager at the time was the stripper in the film Basketball Diaries. What she told you about Jim? can you give me her mil contact?
5) How did Jim live his new rockstar-life? What was is attitude towards fame?
6) You and Jim loose contact after Catholic Boy Tour but you met each other again in the 90s. What was Jim like in that period? Had he changed?
7) What was Jim like as a person?
My parents spent time with Jim Carroll at a very weird moment — at a Naropa Institute poetry gathering in Boulder, his first trip to Colorado after Columbine.
Some reactionary citizens of the state had decided to hold “The Basketball Diaries” responsible for inspiring those kids to shoot up the school — and there were some threats that if Jim came to Colorado, he wouldn’t leave.
So it was (I believe) the first Disembodied Poetics conference with a significant FBI presence … to ensure grown-up gun nuts didn’t use as target practice the guy they blamed for prompting youthful gun nuts to use their peers as target practice. Pretty twisted, huh?
I loved what marilyn manson said when interviewed for bowling for columbine sorry don’t have time to cut and paste it…if you can find it please do so. Everybody looks for blame in the wrong places…why look to yourself, when you can blame the media, or a book, or whatever…this is the first I’ve heard about this with Jim…it’s pretty pathetic…when I saw Michael Moore on that tour he handed his oscar to the audience and passed it around the room…there were police everywhere and sheriffs on each side of the stage…and they hated him.
Clay:This is a very late response,but I love Blue Cheer.Dickie Peterson is still at it and pretty much has carried on constantly with that band from the beginning,along with one of the earlier drummers and a newer guitar player who really “gets it”.They play mostly their early songs but have also continued to create new music in the ensuing years.I saw them at the Casbah a few years back and they were great,the bass was so loud it felt like bathing in a pulsing mud pudding.Right up there with seeing Link Wray,although I would rate Link a little higher for sure.If you like that early Blue Cheer sound,Randy Holden who was on their third,”New and Improved”,and was a member of The Sons of Adam(feathered fish on pebbles volume one,written by Arthur Lee)and the Other Half,maybe california’s very best band of the psychedelic 66/67 timeframe besides Love,that is,had a solo album after his time in Blue Cheer,”Population II” that was just him on guitar with a drummer.Songs of 6 to 9 minutes in length,this was definitely the blueprint for a lot of super heavy music that was to follow,especially the Melvins,Sleep,Om,the Sons of Otis,Ufomammut and others.Too bad he’s not with the new Blue Cheer.Find them in my myspace friends for tour info.
wow bobby…thanks for that insight and update.
why is that link wray and blue cheer seem to fit so comfortably within the same sentence?
and how is that you neglected to share any of this encyclopedic sense of bobby lane when you and i met?
Captain Lou Albano dies at 76
American wrestler and entertainer Captain Lou Albano, known for his outrageous declarations and unruly hair, has died. He was 76.
The pro wrestler, who was part of the 1980s World Wrestling Federation sensation Wrestlemania, was at home under hospice care in New York before his death on Wednesday morning, reports MTV.
Also, while most here on the blog probably already know this, it should be mentioned that Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer passed away two days ago:
Blue Cheer’s Dickie Peterson remembered
Albano.
Pie-splattered comedian Soupy Sales dies at 83
By DAVID N. GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Oct 23, 12:19 AM PDT
Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, has died. He was 83.
Sales died Thursday night at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.
At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and ’60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.
“If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would have recognized him as much as Soupy,” Usher said.
Wow.I didn’t know about Dickie Petersons death until just now reading Kevin’s comment.I feel really lucky that I got to see them,I think it was on their last or next to last tour.
L’ethnologue Claude Lévi-Strauss est mort
Archéologue des totems et des mythes, musicien de l’esprit, l’anthropologue, père du structuralisme, est mort dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche à l’âge de 100 ans.
Wow! …à l’âge de 100 ans.
I wanna know if they’re refunding tickets for his comeback lecture tour …
The late great Steven “Jesse”Bernstein was to play guitar on Bald Tires In The Rain. He killed himself a few days before the session. My old friend Marty Jourard was recording the sessions, and had offered to pay to get Jesse’s guitar out of the pawn shop as he told me he had hocked it for some morphine… he never used slang he always used that word morphine. I still have the piece of paper with his phone number of the hotel he was staying at. The first show I did in Seattle Susan Silver helped put it on at the 911 Gallery and it was with Dave Alvin, Jesse, The Walkabouts and I remember it was he first time I met Scott McCaughey…there must have been maybe 30 people total, and everybody went into tears when Jesse did “Face”. We did a bunch of shows together. And the reason I wanted him to play guitar was because it was something that he wasn’t known for, and i was trying to get my friends to do exactly that. John Doe, Victoria Williams, Country Dick Montana and Mojo Nixon all did artwork and drawings for the booklet…and Victoria did the painting on the cover…and gave it to me. Jesse was so inspiring to me as a writer, and just hanging out and talking with him at Virginia Inn was always inspiring. I remember someone sending him money either Burroughs, or Bukowski and being hugely impressed by that. At Jesse’s wake at the Weathered Wall, I read “Face”. I miss him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY8rZYp_4_4
Kim Peek, the Inspiration for “Rain Man,” Dies at 58
This harshes my mellow a bit, but I’m glad his father outlived him … It was a looming worry how he’d function without his dad.
Oh, no! Gumby!
Freya von Moltke, 98; took part in the Nazi resistance
NORWICH, Vt. -- Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the Nazi resistance in World War II, died Friday. She was 98.
Mrs. von Moltke, who was born in Germany but had lived in Vermont since 1960, was suffering from a recent viral infection, her son Helmuth told the Lebanon Valley News newspaper.
In her writings after the war, Mrs. von Moltke described her life in the resistance with her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who cofounded the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and was executed for his activities.
Wow! The antithesis of Leni Reifenstahl.
Why do so many cool people go to Vermont?? Von Moyke, Solzhenitsyn, Helen and Scott Nearing….??
Rowland S Howard, the guitarist of the Birthday party and Crime and the city Solution died on Dec 29th. He had a reverb drenched attack on that guitar that really gave the songs some bite (Nick Cave’s lyrics were the other sharp object in their arsenal). Never saw him play live. Crime…played a gig in mission valley in 1987/88 (?”), but Rowland was out already. I only recognized Mick Harvey on drums….Anyone else enjoy the “spy Jazz” fretwork of Mr Howard??
Sorry to hear that news about Roland Howard. The Birthday Party “Prayers On Fire” was often the continuous spin soundtrack to many novels, even made CHS homework more fun…
The tracks grabbed ya by the ears and transported ya someplace crazy cool…another great find from the PB Licorice Pizza import bin.
Amazing guitar work. ‘Nick the Stripper’ and ‘Cry’ come to mind immediately.
Knack Lead Singer Doug Fieger Dies of Cancer
Corey Haim: Poor bastard.
He’s the latest example of this weird celebrity culture where some minor celeb gains new notoriety as a punchline because of his/her problems. Then the person dies, and there’s a wave of piety.
ALEX CHILTON?!? Goddamit.
I loved that irreverent song Chilton had about the Dalai Lama, but here’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD9mCp8SifM
I got Frank Gutch, of Scratchin’ the Surface fame (and a prime mover behind the first Adams Avenue Theater show), to write about Chilton and Big Star:
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-03-18/decibel-san-diego-music/rip-alex-chilton-songwriter-remembered-as-more-than-cult-sensation
Thanks Mikel. Gutch is identified as running Scratchin’ the Surface, the Mission Hills record store of the 70’s. Was that store located somewhere near Goldfinch and University? When I was 12 or 13 a customer there recommended the cool looking album my friend was holding as one of the best records ever. We thought he was tricking us, but Scott bought the record anyway. It was Dark Side of the Moon. The owner was playing James Chance one day. He felt the jazziness of it saved it from the punkiness of it.
Paul: Yes, on Goldfinch between University and Robinson.
Strange image:
American Soul Legend Solomon Burke Dies in the Netherlands at 70
The legendary soul, gospel, country and crossover singer Solomon Burke died October 10th of 2010 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. He was 70 years old.
An American soul and country music pioneer, Solomon Burke is regarded by many aficionados as one of the best soul singers of all time. He was born on March 21, 1940, in Philadelphia. By the age of seven he was known as the “Wonder Boy Preacher.”
Very soon after the death of his grandmother, Burke found himself recording at age 14 for the independent Apollo label, where his first song ever, “Christmas Presents From Heaven,” became a million selling gospel hit. This success attracted R&B producers Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler who got him a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1960, where Burke released several albums that merged gospel with pop and secular R&B.
Don Van Vliet … !!
Wow! Capatin had MS…I never knew. He was a pioneer
Owsley Stanley, Artisan of Acid, Is Dead at 76
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/us/15stanley.html?src=recg
One of the more, um, _colorful_ obits you’ll read.
…and the song/video celebrating Owsley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylr2D4Pwn58
Bruce. Thanks for the Kid Charlemagne.
I’m at a place where I’d rather hear AOR jazz/soul over three-chord, I-IV-V stuff, any time.
@ Jeremiah…yeah…pretty much done with I-IV-V and pentatonics too…except maybe Charlie Christian!
Gil Scott Heron
really gonna miss ya
@ you Lou.
“Down some deadend streets, there ain’t no turning back…”
What a waste. I really loved her.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/23/amy-winehouse-dead-singer_n_907753.html#s314557&title=Rehab
Paul,
Really horrible. I was waiting for something great from Amy.
“I told you I was trouble
Yeah, you know I’m no good…”
She was extremely talented and very young …
For a sense of relative chronology, I looked to my personal history: The week Amy Winehouse was born (Sept. 14, 1983), many of us were at the Headquarters watching Manual Scan, the Answers, the Trebels, the Odds and assorted other bands. Very strange how much older 27 seemed in those days.
Does anyone have information about the passing of Bob Sinclair, founder of San Diego’s Pannikin coffeehouse chain?
Report from Barista.com: “… Bob Sinclair, who started Pannikin in San Diego, died Saturday of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. Raise a toast to Bob, R.I.P., who brought fresh roasted coffee to many!”
On This Day, September 16, 1977: T-Rex singer killed in car smash.
I didn’t know Gloria Jones (Tainted Love) was his girlfriend, or that she was the driver. Well. The Mini Cooper is back…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/16/newsid_2519000/2519173.stm
…You’re built like a car, You got a hubcap, diamond-star halo…