Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

Awesome UK photographer Brian Griffin, so many incredible album covers and press shots in the 1980s in particular.

Ah he did the covers for the first four Echo & the Bunnymen albums, have always loved those

N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa writer and the first Indigenous writer to win the Pulitzer for Fiction, given for his novel House Made of Dawn. Great writer, love teaching his story “The Well.”

xp and the first four Depeche Mode ones too, wow!

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2024/jan/30/chita-rivera-broadway-star-dies-aged-91

Cool 2015 interview with Brian Griffin - gets into tech, advertising work, more album covers that everyone here knows.
https://davedye.com/2015/06/01/brian-griffin-interview/

That’s a great read. He seems like a spiky character. Some fantastic pictures, the one of Tony Benn made me guffaw.

chita!

Melinda Wilson, wife & manager to Brian

https://people.com/melinda-wilson-wife-of-beach-boys-brian-wilson-dead-8553386

https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/celebrity-news/local/sipho-hotstix-mabuse-pays-tribute-to-late-musical-genius-tony-cedras-02063ffd-3818-4150-855e-70ded6501707

Tony Cedras, who played accordion, keyboards and more with Hugh Masekela , and was part of Paul Simon’s band for years, has died at age 72

https://www.playbill.com/article/three-time-tony-winner-hinton-battle-dies-at-67

Stop animation wiz Mark Gustafson, 64.

And also Bruce Springsteen's mother Adele, 98.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-02-02/carl-weathers-dead-dies-rocky-apollo-creed-predator-mandalorian

Wow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDOffqDsV5Q

goddamn it ;_;

dude did everything
also played for the raiders

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfwSx10-8c

rip to the legend. what a charismatic screen presence.

i fuckin love him in those Rocky movies

Ah dang. The Mandalorian was a nice late highlight.

I've still never seen the first two Rocky movies, but he was great in The Predator and Action Jackson is a really underrated/unjustly forgotten 80s action movie.

Yeah I was tempted to post the infamous Predator gif itt but realized not everyone probably wanted to see that one.

Weathers and David Cross were a good comedy duo

i fuckin love him in those Rocky movies

^^^ RIP Carl

Dadjoke: apparently there are some things that even he couldn't weather

(Sorry; I preemptively denounce myself)

damn, RIP Action Jackson, hes been all over my screen in this interminable Gronk FanDuel ad campaign lately so he seemed spry.

loved him in everything

so deft as apollo creed, so good as a foil for arnies energy in predator, so gently funny even in slapstick or sendup in happy gilmore and arrested development, very few with that build and grace and lightness and variety and hes a big loss

hearing sketchy reports of Brother Wayne Kramer? Jeez I hope it's not true

oh no i hope not

oh please noooo

https://www.instagram.com/p/C23AQzQPeHR/

confirmed :(

MC5 guitar great Wayne Kramer has died at 75https://t.co/wYUshcRIa9

— Stereogum (@stereogum) February 2, 2024

From Insta:
Wayne S. Kramer
“PEACE BE WITH YOU” 🕊️
April 30, 1948 - February 2, 2024

Gutted... I saw him do an instore in San Francisco with John Sinclair and Steve Mackay; I was such a fanboy, I helped him load his amp back into his rental car

Extremely cool genuine dude, and his autobiography is a must-read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfDoUIh23Wg

Dennis Thompson is the only Five left

^ most thrilling rock song ever imo xp

America's greatest rock'n'roll band.. I'm glad he was able to get back into the ballrooms late in life, I didn't see MC50 but it's great that he was able to finally make a decent living playing in front of appreciative audiences

fuck RIP brother wayne

Carl Weathers was in the Herzog documentary I saw last night quite a bit (The Mandalorian). Didn't know he was in Close Encounters till I looked the previous title up.

saw wayne last year playing with pere ubu - they did a very, uh, shambolic cover of "kick out the jams". i wasn't expecting him so it was very cool to see him on stage, and he seemed in good health/spirits then. RIP

RIP Wayne ;_;

I worked for BOMP/Alive Records in the mid-1990s when they were releasing that series of sourced-from-bad-tapes MC5 and MC5-adjacent stuff. Much of material came from John Sinclair but Kramer would come by the offices to tacitly sign-off. Really nice guy - intense and super-driven. He had just moved to LA, re-connected with Mick Farren, and was playing gigs all over Los Angeles while working on what would be his first album for Epitaph, The Hard Stuff. Most often, the gigs would just be him and a drummer. Sometimes a sax player. Occasionally Farren would come up for a ten minute ramble while they backed him up. Every gig, regardless of how decrepit the punk bar was, was the Grande Ballroom in '68 - an all-out *performance*. LA in the 90s was awash in unemployed guitarists and a middle-age bald dude was wiping the floor with them with shows that were actually thrilling.

The MC5: A True Testimonial documentary is a must watch. I was lucky to be at the premiere for it at the Arclight. Back then most folks had never seen the Wayne State footage before, and on a giant screen at full volume it was as life-changing as Star Wars.

Christopher Priest

https://www.ninaallan.co.uk/?p=6855

https://variety.com/2024/music/news/wayne-kramer-dead-mc5-1235895922/?fbclid=IwAR2fOVSLp7WdiQnQYApIswFGjQmNKS1YPq080JP6uJLwKkzKoz9HPieLwDA

(Just another Kramer obit)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/don-murray-dead-bus-stop-1235813848/

Actor Don Murray, 94

Isabelle Thomas, documentary filmmaker and wife of Killers of the Flower Moon producer dies at 39, suicide.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/filmmaker-isabelle-thomas-wife-of-killers-of-the-flower-moon-producer-dies-of-multiple-injuries/ar-BB1hGIqU

Did A True Testimonial ever get an official release? Saw it back in the day at a press preview and it remains one of the most amazing experiences I ever had in a cinema. Never quite understood the conflicts that prevented its release, don't really understand why the filmmakers might have tried to rip Brother Wayne off, but you really shouldn't attempt to fuck with someone who has spent years in prison, they really do not play.

Just been reminded that it's Wayne playing guitar on the first Was Not Was album and on 'Wheel Me Out'

Steve Brown, who did an awful lot of music for British comedy shows, wrote a couple of musical, produced some award winning records and appeared on the other side of the performing fence as Glen Ponder in KMKYwAP.