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Meanwhile, more on Dele -- so it turns out, much to my intrigued surprise and delight, that he had spent time in the US in the early 80s going to school in Syracuse. I've pulled together a few posts and comments I've seen and here's a summary I wrote up for an email:
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One thing that I’ve learned to my admitted delight over the past twenty hour hours in the rush of posts has been that he went to university here in the US in the early 1980s and, like me, was a college radio DJ, as well as a record store employee and musician. This was at Syracuse University, kinda smack dab in the middle of New York well away from both NYC and most anywhere else, a self-contained American college city in many ways. (I was living in upstate New York at the time, but not in the same area, being near Skidmore College instead, another noted school well away from NYC.) It’s a bunch of scattered memories so for those who knew him I thought I’d draw what I’ve seen together:
Gary Lucas, aka the Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley collaborator, said this in a Facebook comment: "He was also a terrific radio DJ. I first became aware of Dele while driving around Syracuse during trips home from college in the early 80's , and loved catching his sepulchral "This . Is. Dele. Fadele" ID coming over Syracuse University's WAER- FM radio station where he hosted a serious British postpunk show (AER is the same station where Lou Reed once had a show when he was a student there in the 60's titled "Excursions on a Wobbly Rail' after a Cecil Taylor piece). Don't know if Dele's show had a colorful name, but it was damn good. The guy knew his stuff.”
Alec Cumming said on his own page: "I was blessed to know him and work with him in Katsapi, our briefly-lived "industrial" band, which was silly and fun and brilliant and unlistenable all at the same time. (I was one of two bassists; the 1984 Syracuse punks loved us.) He was such a brilliant character, and so inspirational and on-point with what he wanted his music to be, and how it should evolve. He was really one of the coolest people I've ever known, and I'm so grateful I had a chance to make adventurous music with him.”
This band, BTW, was called Katsapi — there’s apparently photos floating around and if I see one I will share it, but I did discover a short review of them in Maximum RocknRoll, from issue 18, October 1984: ""KATSAPI are an experimental /industrial type band, complete with a rhythm section of trash cans, assorted metal cannisters, a drummer, and sometimes 2 bass players. Interesting "collective", they change everything from personnel to musicians every gig or so. Only band of its kind in Upstate N.Y.””
Another fellow from that scene, Scott Munroe, posted this on Alec’s page (it’s vaguely possible that this is an alternate name for Katsapi but it could also be its own thing): "Dele and I were friends during our last two years at Syracuse University. We were both class of 1984 - him in engineering and I in broadcast journalism. During our senior year, we formed this bizarre industrial band with some other friends called The Labour Party which was meant to mirror bands like Test Dept. and Einsturzende Neubauten. I’m sure there are photos and audio out there of us.
"I still remember Dele and myself somehow getting into an Echo and the Bunnymen concert in Rochester (or was it Buffalo?), New York thanks to guitarist Will Seargent, making a six minute din with The Labour Party during our “set” between bands at the Jabberwocky club on the SU campus, his rejection over his request to do a segment during black history month in February 1984 for campus radio station WAER-FM because “he wasn’t black enough” (i.e. because he wasn’t a black American, he was from Africa...my brain still comes to a screeching halt even now thinking about it) and our talks about about music, bands etc."
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 August 2020 21:50 (three years ago) link
A further comment from Alec Cumming just now in partial response: "Dele's show on WAER was fantastic!!! Especially when he'd do the late-night shift. All post-punk, early industrial, with a dollop of the Art of Noise (which he loved). He was the GREATEST GUY to hang out with, he was EXTREMELY opinionated, and I made fun of him for his NME obsession, but I just remember laughing a lot with him and being so impressed at his relentless drive, intelligence and creativity. My friends all thought I was insane playing music with him - he'd bang on trashcans and bumpers and such - but I loved the racket. I think I was in Kastsapi V.1, but the band soldiered on after I left town (August 1984). We were looked at in awe by Syracuse's punk scene, because there was nobody doing anything remotely close to what we were doing. (PS - Syracuse has always had a great local music scene.) I was thrilled he ended up at the NME, but also worried the year-in and year-out of music journalism would probably end up wearing him down, because he insisted music had to have ideals and be challenging and ethical and weird, constantly."
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 August 2020 21:53 (three years ago) link
i forget now if he told me this himself or someone else told me, but according to legend he one time seized the WAER- FM studio to solo-broadcast ALL of the TG live albs back-to-back
(this is abt 40 albs i think so the "ALL" seems in retrospect unlikely but there was def talk of a 24-hr blitz of the stuff lol)
(he was studying engineering, which somehow also seems pertinent)
― mark s, Saturday, 22 August 2020 11:24 (three years ago) link
three weeks pass...
nice spike jonze obit for dele, complete with some actual journalistic legwork: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/14/dele-fadele-remembered-nme
i'm glad it actually brings up the issue of why this news took so long to come out (and at least hints at the institutional crappiness of the music press in its treatment of freelancers)
and tbh i lolled at the cheeky way the entirely just and fair headline ("He was a groundbreaker and a visionary”) completes itself further down the copy: “He was a groundbreaker and a visionary. He was a black man writing about indie music!”
― mark s, Monday, 14 September 2020 13:52 (three years ago) link