Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

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.

Oh what a shame. Who can forget his memorable onscreen sacking?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bZnwgTqkb8

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.

The way I understand it (and this is all from--possibly faulty--memory) is that it got hamstrung the way a lot of independently financed music docs do: because of the high cost of music clearances for proper theatrical & home media distribution, particularly when you don't have a distributor in place to handle those things in the first place. The filmmakers tried to work around this by asking surviving band members to make them full partners in the group's LLC, so they could ostensibly make it easier to clear the publishing rights and possibly ease negotiations with Warner Music by representing the group for clearances on the recordings.

This is why Kramer balked, because he and the rest of the band didn't want to give up any of their hard fought-for rights to people they felt didn't have the sweat equity to do so on a deal that up till then had worked on handshakes. This all also happened at the figurative 11th hour too, as a DVD release had already been prepared and put up for preorder on major sites (a seriously naive move on the filmmakers part, and one that ultimately allowed for serious bootlegging, as promos of the final authored disc leaked and have been ripped ever since).

So the movie went into limbo, occasionally surfacing here and there, but it seems like Kramer seriously washed his hands of the whole deal.

I managed to grab it when it appeared on youtube or vimeo a few years ago, don't think it's up any more

I bought a DVD-R of it at a record show 10+ years ago. It was freaky because it was a full rip of the intended release disc, with menus & all the extras (which IIRC were surviving performance clips you see on YouTube: that great '70 Tartar Field footage, a local TV performance of "American Ruse", and the Beat Club "KOTJ").

https://archive.org/details/mc-5-a-true-testimonial-disc-1

https://archive.org/details/mc-5-a-true-testimonial-disc-2

Aston ‘Family Man’ Barrett of the upsetters/wailer passed

wailers

was all over those keith hudson records too

RIP

Believe he was a big-time studio musician before The Wailers and maybe after.

RIP. My condolences to his 41 children.

RIP Aston Barrett

RIP. My condolences to his 41 children.

Actually no, he was known as Family Man before he'd fathered any children.

Couldn't call him 'Family Planning' obvs.

I see that Christopher Priest along with David Langford recently wrote the Guardian obit for David D.G. Compton so RIP to him too.

^ most thrilling rock song ever imo xp

― blazin' squab (NickB), Friday, 2 February 2024 21:44 bookmarkflaglink

the 1968 single version definitely is, the version on Back In The USA is a little tame by comparison

Just noticed that Carlos Lyra passed away in late December, don’t think it was remarked upon yet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/23/arts/music/carlos-lyra-dead.html

Not an obit but an interview and long overview from May of last year:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/16/bossa-nova-pioneer-carlos-lyra-at-90-we-wrote-songs-about-our-reality-the-beach-sun-and-love-stories

Barry John - not long after JPR Williams too.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/feb/04/barry-john-welsh-rugby-legend-and-british-and-irish-lions-great-dies-at-79

Ian Lavender

Oh no, genuinely sad at this.

He was the last one left, no?

Yup.

The curse of Dad's Army strikes again.

I wonder if there's a particular Dad's Army clip news programmes will run to mark his passing?

Michael Jayston, according to Colin Baker.

I was literally watching Trial Of A Time Lord during lunch today

very much enjoyed his reading of tinker tailor on a driving holiday lately, rip

Great voice. RIP.

His finest moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQ4n_XOgjs

As far as I'm aware neither Ian Lavender or Michael Jayston were in Harry Potter so I can read their obituaries without doing my nut in.