Robert Palmer is dead

As I recall, Little Feat backs RP up on the "Sailin' Shoes-Hey Julia-Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley" medley on Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley, which used to be in fairly regular rotation on the classic rock station in Boston during the late 80s. Quite good, actually...

Or, indeed, smokers. Someone pointed out after John Entwistle died that everyone was saying "coke -> heart attack" but a lifetime of smoking ciggies brings much the same risks (I think I'm right in saying there's more risk of smokers dying prematurely of heart disease than of lung cancer).

I thought it was more like "coke + 2 hookers = heart attack."

Johnny Cash showed me what it was to have things to sing about
Warren Zevon taught me how to write good songs about them
Robert Palmer taught me how to make it sexy.

Who the fuck am I going to draw inspiration from now? (besides Turbonegro, of course)

I've heard that song "Love Can Run Faster" and it's really nice.

I can't believe this wasn't changed to a sultry, sulky Michael Douglas pose.

Powerstation were subdued in their imagery, and made no use of ionic columns or any of the neoclassic silhouettes that had become so integral to Duran Duran. Robert Palmer had a lot to do with that. He seemed like a refined British thug, something out of a pulp novel - Reggie Kray. Handsome, murderous, millionaire dandy. That is what he brought to the table. The Taylors were not the stars of Powerstation, even though they were the famous ones and the only reason little girls tuned in to see them on Friday Night Videos. They were merely the backup band. Robert Palmer was the showman, and in a subtle way that no one had done before. His style was minimalist, bare. He moved very little, but he sung huge.

The performers of the time were wearing hair that defied logic in length or shape, dayglo colors, brooches! Robert Palmer subverted all of that, by giving merely the white man his day. He said - Look. I am a white guy. What you see is what you get. He never apologized about it, and he wasn't made to. His voice was beautiful and authentic, a bluesman down deep. He made white alright! The films of the time, 'Wall Street' and 'Working Girl' - fetishized the white collar executive, giving them prime time on the popular culture scene, which is ironic, as they are still there, they always were there before, probably always will be there.

Robert Palmer enjoyed much success after Powerstation in his solo career, with his ushering in the 'all women are the same' concept in his music videos. The songs lyrically betray the visuals. In them he talks of his one special love whom he is addicted to, whom he finds simply irresistible, these three minute pop confections as confession to desire and enslavement to one woman, yet all the women - sometimes playing the instruments, sometimes just standing by looking disaffected, are dressed and made up exactly the same. They are all the same height, build, color, age, everything, so the effect is that he is surrounded by a Helmut Newton army. I think this messed up the entire generation of men I grew up with. Royally. But too bad for Robert Palmer. Rest In Peace white dude. You had a great voice, and you affected all of us more than you will ever know.

~Margaret Cho

Ummmm...wrong, Margaret. Try Tony Thompson.

That eulogy makes me want to push Margaret Cho over into a puddle of viscous filth. Robert Palmer deserves better.

whoa.

why?

exactly.

Who's going to tell amateurist about Michael Jackson?

Amateurist... I know it may surprise you and stuff, but.... you know..... John Lennon and Elvis Presley both died :(

http://mytakeontv.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/burn-notice.jpg

I had no idea either.

Did you just forgot...?

RIP

― amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, 27 September 2003 20:49

i was responding to the posts about coke, not to news of robert palmer's death.

geir, you have a leaden sense of humor.

hey, for what its worth, i completely forgot that he died. r.i.p. smooth crooner.

me too :(

honestly i had forgotten too.

wtf is up with this album cover

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ae/Robert_Palmer_Pride.jpg

It's coke.

I had just never heard about him dying in the first place. RIP big guy. ;_;

i just got a bunch of old terrible vinyl, which happens to me every so often as 'the guy with turntables'. a my fair lady cast recording, greek opera singers, french orchestral renditions of western scores... just all basically unredeemable. and wedged in there.. 'Clues' by Robert Palmer. sah-mokin!! i swear to god i thought i'd put it on at the wrong speed though, at first. no way those songs are that fast. but, well, no, they're that fast.

That's the one where he teamed up with Gary Numan on a couple of tracks. "Looking for Clues" has one of those pre-MTV videos with a off-white backdrop and cardboard props, along the same lines as Sparks' "Beat the Clock" and "Number One Song in Heaven":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92wCPfqyVbg

I don't know what kind of image he was going for. He looked slightly too old and slightly too well-fed to be a New Wave star. You had to be really thin to be a New Wave star. That's one of the reasons Talking Heads never invited Jocky Wilson into the band. He would have looked strange in that context.

The ancient Egyptian pharaohs were entombed along with their servants, so I like to imagine that somewhere in Switzerland there's a mausoleum with a skeleton dressed in a really sharp suit and some other skeletons - taller, thinner skeletons - dressed in 1980s minidresses, with fingernail scratchmarks on the door etc. It's a compelling mental image.

Palmer was the best fellow traveler.

XP - That song is remarkably like McCartney's 'Coming Up'

“Woke Up Laughing” is such a perfect little tune.

so this green gartside interview has some juicy robert palmer stories:

https://www.mixcloud.com/NTSRadio/trevor-jackson-green-gartside-29th-october-2019/