Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-07-01/rick-froberg-drive-like-jehu-hot-snakes-singer-dies

55. Fuck.

totally stunned. what the hell? he's younger than me!

Dunno his music but he was a talented illustrator. RIP

Dee-jay Dick Biondi:

First American disc jockey to play The Beatles, a full year before they came to the States. His Friday Night 50s Party on WJMK opened a huge world for me. RIP https://t.co/wshSFaWT1J

— McKie's Disc Jockey Show Lounge (@mckiesdjlounge) July 2, 2023

Apparently DC musician Mitch Parker has passed away. He was in Government Issue, Crippled Pilgrims, Tone, and Jets of NW (w/Neil Hagerty). I met him briefly thru work & he was super cool. RIP. This compilation is great: https://t.co/0uDlbELgQ0

— Marc Masters 🌵 (@Marcissist) July 2, 2023

I was just listening to crippled pilgrims yesterday - I owned their LP back in the mid 80s and that recent comp has been a great chance to appreciate them again. RIP.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/arts/music/coco-lee-dead.html

Chinese-American singer Coco Lee, died by suicide. I didn't love her music but she was inescapable if you grew up in Asia in the late 90s/early 00s. Sad to hear she hadn't been doing well

Simon DK from DiY ☹️

Faith is saddened to hear of the passing of Simon DK from the UK’s pioneering Nottingham-based DiY crew.

More than any other soundsystem, DiY bridged the gap between the free party scene and underground clubs, their nights were a byword for the true acid house spirit. pic.twitter.com/ABHSPH014g

— Faith Fanzine (@FaithFanzine) July 7, 2023

Hungarian pianist Jeno Jando, 71, who recorded massive swathes of the classical repertoire for the budget priced Naxos label. Always a reliable guide and sometimes much more than that - e.g. his recordings of Bartok and Brahms chamber music are wonderful.

Mikala Jones, 44

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/11/mikala-jones-surfer-death-accident-indonesia

Milan Kundera, 94.

I just read his essay «The Tragedy of Central Europe» the other day. RIP.

RIP. One of the reasons I first moved to Prague, and not completely a coincidence that my oldest is called Milan (though he isn't named after him)

Aw. I was into Kundera 30 years ago... laughter and forgetting / unbearable lightness were big then in my circle.

"It's abut chicks, right?"

Es muss sein.

Upon reflection I don't think I got as much out of those books as I should have. So much of the context is specifically Czech, specifically Eastern European, specifically Cold War-tastic, specific to a certain philosophical tradition. If you tried to view them just as human stories you would fail.

That's my memory anyway.

Oh wow I had no idea Kundera was still alive; like, it had never even occurred to me to check. RIP

One of the reasons I first moved to Prague

Was your experience similar to mine in that most locals seemed dismissive or outright hostile towards Kundera?

oh yeah, nobody had the slightest interest in him, not even literary types.

I think he had more influence on the psychogeography of the place for me, that and Too Loud A Solitude and Kafka's The Castle.

New wave: Bob Segarini.

https://www.torontomike.com/2023/07/bob-segarni-dead-at-77/

Proto new-age San Diego mystic Wilburn Burnette, along with his brother, in rather mysterious circumstances:

https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2023/07/10/brothers-ages-84-and-76-found-dead-in-blossom-valley-home-near-lakeside-identified/

Burchette's work is well worth the seeking out:

https://masterwilburnburchette.bandcamp.com/music

Will also relatedly recommend Bill Perrine's new book:

https://billingsgate.bigcartel.com/product/book-alien-territory-radical-experimental-irrelevant-music-in-1970s-san-diego-by-bill-perrine

I’ve just heard the very sad news that George Armstrong aka Alan Humphries passed away yesterday. RIP George. A true Grange Hill legend xxxx pic.twitter.com/6uGoeUWQ8x

— Grange Hill (@hill_grange) July 12, 2023

Former Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tour manager Sam Cutler.

https://www.noise11.com/news/former-rolling-stones-tour-manager-sam-cutler-has-died-aged-80-20230714

Sam was the first to utter the famous Stones concert intro, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World…The Rolling Stones!”. Sam told A Current Affair in Australia, “Mick walked offstage and gave me a dirty look and said ‘I want to speak to you’ and he said ‘we don’t want you to call us the greatest rock’n’roll band in the world it’s embarrassing’.”

Also Mick: "Copywrite that phrase! NOW!"

Film critic Derek Malcolm https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/16/derek-malcolm-longtime-guardian-film-critic-dies-aged-91

Jane Birkin https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66216417

Right at that age, for my generation, where you think, wow, too young and then you think 76, not really that young I guess.

My first 'crush' thanks to that milk advert with John Junkin!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGVrL0OBHBg

RIP Derek Malcolm btw - I wish you'd stayed at the Guardian longer

RIP Derek and Jane

RIP Jane B

Aw, Jane. I first saw her in Daddy Nostalgie and went to see it twice so I could spend another hour in her presence.

some great stuff on Malcom's century of cinema 100. RIP

Jane B. Par Agnes V. encapsulates 1988 po-mo and haute couture in a way that makes me feel ironically sentimental for that era.

Nataniël Gomes, 47. The Dutch hairdresser who kept ordering his own combination of fries, shoarma, sambal, garlic sauce, etc so often 20-odd years ago that it got called "kapsalon" (hairdresser's) by the shoarma shop.

https://nos.nl/artikel/2483044-bedenker-van-de-kapsalon-op-47-jarige-leeftijd-overleden

Should have gone easy on all those sandwiches.

DJ Deeon, Chicago ghetto-house legend. Great producer. RIP.

At the respectable age of 87 and apparently active until the end: Spanish comic book artist and writer Francisco Ibáñez, most famous for his long running series Mortadelo y Filemón. He could get too stereotypical and offensive at times, most notably his drawings of people of colour were pretty awful, but I still cherish all issues which I could read in the Dutch translations as 'Paling & Ko', I've also come across new German prints (Clever & Smart) recently.
Always featuring delightful over-the-top, cartoonish violence. RIP!

Legendary super hacker Kevin Mitnick, 59, from pancreatic cancer
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/technology/kevin-mitnick-dead-hacker.html

Tony Bennett

Oh wow, thought he would never pass. RIP.

aw :(

a late career burst that lasted 30 years

I confess I have no strong impression of Bennett in his prime. I do not wish to speak ill of him but my main association with him is of late-career novelty duets and movie cameos. Dude seems to have had a talent for surviving and thriving and enjoying his work.

Amazing anecdote at the end of the NYT obit:

“I like the funny things in life that could only happen to me now,” he said. “Once, when I was singing Kurt Weill’s ‘Lost in the Stars’ in the Hollywood Bowl with Basie’s band and Buddy Rich on drums, a shooting star went falling through the sky right over my head and everyone was talking about it, and the next morning the phone rang and it was Ray Charles, who I’d never met, calling from New York. He said, ‘Hey, Tony, how’d you do that, man?’ and hung up.”

There is another story about Tony plucking the one out-of-tune string inside a piano from John Bunch in a Tony bio, let me see if I can find it. Althought then I asked somebody who had also played with him and he said "That was an accident. Tony has a savant quality about him, I guarantee you that was an accident.

Don't forget his painting. When you tour Louis Armstrong's home in Corona Queens you get to see a portrait Bennet painted and gifted.

We had a greatest hits compilation that my oldest and I listened to regularly. She used to sing along with "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." Tony had a quality to his voice that I'm not even sure how to describe. An ease in delivery, a world-weariness that was somehow still sweet and pure. RIP.

RIP Tony ;_;

hes obviously had a long tail but its worth noting (bennett made sure to note it himself tbf) that sinatra was on record as having bennett as the best singer around even in bennetts relatively early days