Rolling Obituary Thread: 2021

Toby Slater, of Britpop band Catch (who were victims of a cut-away from their video playing on ITV to news of Diana, POW’s death). He later became a leader in organising queer spaces in London and was just 42.

Margaret Atwood, 88 - just announced by her Canadian publishers.

Nope nope nope sorry, hoax, please delete. Attwood safe.

Morphine Drummer Billy Conway Dead at 65 (cancer)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/morphine-billy-conway-dead-1274065/

shit :(

Oh damn.

Morphine played one of the greatest gigs I've ever seen. I'm sure I'm not alone in having uttered that phrase.

i was listening to them recently & got so verklempt just thinking about how much was lost with Sandman’s suicide, the “could’ve” beens of the music yet to come

such a great, great fucking band

suicide? erk, i meant heart attack.
weird typo

Morphine was so good that the show I saw right after his death was also incredible.

i’d believe it!

Sally Ann Howes, "Truly Scrumptious", 91

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/22/sally-ann-howes-obituary

ah, just watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with the kids over Thanksgiving, and in looking her up, marveled that the two leads were both still living.

cristiano ornaldo (darraghmac) wrote this on thread Blue Saturday on board I Love Everything on 23-Feb-2019

im sure ive posted it a dozen times but the quintessential blue saturday poem for me is kinsella:

The day dawns, with scent of must and rain,
Of opened soil, dark trees, dry bedroom air.
Under the fading lamp, half dressed - my brain
Idling on some compulsive fantasy -
I towel my shaven jaw and stop, and stare,
Riveted by a dark exhausted eye,
A dry downturning mouth.

It seems again that it is time to learn,
In this untiring, crumbling place of growth
To which, for the time being, I return.
Now plainly in the mirror of my soul
I read that I have looked my last on youth
And little more; for they are not made whole
That reach the age of Christ.

Below my window the wakening trees,
Hacked clean for better bearing, stand defaced
Suffering their brute necessities;
And how should the flesh not quail, that span for span
Is mutilated more? In slow distaste
I fold my towel with what grace I can,
Not young, and not renewable, but man.

RIP Thomas Kinsella

I see on the Lethal Amounts fb page that Meg Brazill of Los Microwaves and Baby Buddha has passed.

yeah, David Microwave is a member of the No Wave facebook group and posted it there.

Robin Le Mesurier, son of John and Hattie and a fairly accomplished backing musician - Rod Stewart's guitarist for much of the 80s, Johnny Hallyday's right hand man from the early 90s onwards, and most crucially Wellington in Mike Batt's earliest lineups of the Wombles.

Quite a CV! RIP RLM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t52GYAl8xjg

That was nice. I think they caught my favourite George Segal moment, laughing at Elliott Gould's one-armed piccolo player joke in California Split. I guess they have a rule about using film clips only, never TV--not sure Ed Asner and Gavin MacLeod are remembered for their film work.

Hilton Als saying on on his Instagram feed that Joan Didion has passed away. Hoping it’s not true, or premature.

RIP to Joan Didion, whose influence is incalculable https://t.co/2evvmT0OuC

— "Afraid of Krampus" Lingus (@aklingus) December 23, 2021

This is where I saw it…

NYT has obit

Crazy it’s in the same week as Babitz.

Fill-in-the-blank better watch her back.

:(

Among the more important writers on a personal level. R.I.P.

god, this sucks. wasn’t really ready for this. rip joan.

It appears that Farrah Abraham's review of Slouching Towards Bethlehem (which was as hilarious as you'd expect) has vanished from the internet. Oh, well.

Didion definitely on my short list of personal favorite writers, the clarity of her writing is just about unmatched. (Even when I don’t fully agree with or share her point of view.)

Yeah, she was a very good writer on a sentence-by-sentence level even if I never gave the tiniest fuck about How Things Used To Be In California. (To quote someone I follow on Twitter, Never again will you see this outpouring of love and compassion for a Goldwater voter who blamed the hippies and Black Panthers for everything wrong in America.)

Which is why her writing after 1984 >>>>>>>>>> before.

Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions -- her most incisive work, style honed and mastered.

And the Year Of Magical Thinking. A wonderful book.

unperson:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190330160727/https://penthousemagazine.com/joan-didion-is-a-gin-drinking-bore-who-writes-convoluted-books/

I still stan for My Teenage Dream Ended the album, btw.

This turned into a day of rereading.

That Didion review is almost bad enough to be an edgy ILX post

Lol

"They never consider the future. They only think about drinking and drugs."

My life in a nutshell

Otm

The would be edgy ilxor takes are coming thick and fast on twitter.

Joan Didion made no secret of her small-c conservatism, which was, and will remain, the thing that made her worth reading She could see what sentimental leftists could not. Most sentimental leftists loved her, without noticing that she eviscerated them in every piece

— Kevin Power (@KevPow3) December 23, 2021

can we give it a day or so before posting these stupid “hot takes”

it’d be nice to have more than hour to be in my feelings

yeah srsly

feeling gratitude toward her for writing slouching towards bethlehem, which i happened to read right at the moment in my life when i most needed it, and that’s kinda where I’m content to leave it for now

i only got acquainted with her in the last few years & i was so blown away, like i was honestly left breathless by her writing, i cannot explain it. and a wee bit thrilled to learn she was from Sacramento.

VG otm

I'm sure the 'personal essay' existed before JD, but she pretty much owns the genre, at least in the english language

can we give it a day or so before posting these stupid “hot takes”

it’d be nice to have more than hour to be in my feelings

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, 23 December 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Ok. You've got 18 hours.

Joeks! I will take it to the Didion thread.

Like sands through the hourglass...

Just remembering that she also wrote The Panic in Needle Park screenplay with her husband

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xwwccJQ9_s