Rolling Obituary Thread 2022

gord lewis, guitarist of teenage head, apparently murdered by his own son

indeed: https://exclaim.ca/music/article/teenage_heads_gord_lewis_reportedly_found_dead_in_homicide

Pogues bass player, Darryl Hunt.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/aug/09/the-pogues-bassist-darryl-hunt-dies-aged-72

Raymond Briggs :(

RIP. My favourite quote from him - "Travel narrows the mind"

Can you imagine releasing this as a kids picture book in the 1980s?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rq2tkepYHM

really thought Briggs was already dead

Oh no! There was a good episode of Backlisted about him quite recently: https://www.backlisted.fm/episodes/159-raymond-briggs-fungus-the-bogeyman

I once interviewed him on the phone about When The Wind Blows -- not as a journalist, but as a student journalist, writing my dissertation -- which was nice of him.

I told him how much WTWB had scared me as a kid, and he laughed and said "Great! It was supposed to." He told me he'd read a news story about boarding school kids who fainted after reading it, and "I was really proud of that".

I remember that the film had a distinctive style - like the Paddington Bear cartoons it had animated two-dimensional cut-out figures in little three-dimensional sets. Except that Paddington was a stop-motion bear and the characters in Blows were also cartoons.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bSyt4tYd7nY/hqdefault.jpg

Years later I remember watching Threads and thinking about the parallels between the two. Threads also has an elderly couple who survive the nuclear exchange, but they aren't out in the countryside, so without spoiling anything their fate is... I mean, they have the same ultimate fate as the people in Raymond Briggs' book, but they get there by a different route.

Can you imagine releasing this as a kids picture book in the 1980s?

― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, August 10, 2022 8:58 AM

I was just wondering who drew that one today. In highschool I met a really serious looking kid who showed me that book in the library and he was laughing hysterically at most of the pages

Gene LeBell Dies: Stuntman, Actor And Wrestling Legend Who Fought Bruce Lee & Chuck Norris Onscreen Was 89

One of my favorite anecdotes period. R.I.P. https://t.co/C5J62dYF28 pic.twitter.com/MX7R0hxgQk

— Vikram Murthi (@fauxbeatpoet) August 10, 2022

Never heard of him, but I like this guy.

RIP Judo Gene ... choking out Seagal was one of his less significant accomplishments

https://blackbeltmag.com/judo-gene-lebell-passes-away

Avant-garde/out-jazz cellist Abdul Wadud (born Ronald DeVaughn; R&B singer Raheem DeVaughn is his son). Best known for his collaborations with saxophonist Julius Hemphill. An amazing player and a real visionary in terms of expanding the cello's role in jazz.

his playing on those Hemphill albums was a massive part of what makes them so great.

Absolutely. And the two trio albums he did with James Newton and Anthony Davis in the '80s are brilliant.

Sempé, of a million charming New Yorker covers and Mr. Summer’s Story, a book I love that he did with Patrick Süsskind.

Le dessinateur Jean-Jacques Sempé, co-créateur du "Petit Nicolas", est mort à l'âge de 89 ans
👉 https://t.co/Fmp0F1VBiX via @BFMTV pic.twitter.com/0FtWAInf4l

— Jérôme Lachasse (@J_Lachasse) August 11, 2022

Had no idea about Raheem being Wadud’s son!

Sam Gooden, founding member of the Impressions soul group, dies at 87 https://t.co/gbZ3KusXSg

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 12, 2022

Abdul Wadud, cellist with Julius Hemphill's jazz band and many others. Was 75

Wadud's son r'n'b singer Raheem DeVaughn posted about his father on IG

https://www.instagram.com/reel/ChH9jhdlJAR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Anne Heche

Confirmed that Anne Heche has passed

Sad ending

I liked her in the things I saw, but didn't realize she did so many movies:https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/12/anne-heche-death-actor-dies-week-after-car-crash-aged-53

I'm a big fan of her and her work and I'm really upset

Terrible. RIP Anne.

Had no idea she was only 53. For some reason I thought she was older. She was really a good actress; if she didn't do so much high-profile "wacky antics"-type stuff (much of it apparently rooted in childhood trauma) she'd be much better thought of, like, Laura Linney-level, I think.

Yeah, lots of joeks at her expense back in the day, like with Britney and Anna Nicole Smith.

Rosie O'Donnell just now apologized.

Wrecking Crew session guitarist Bill Pitman (who was 102):

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/arts/music/bill-pitman-dead.html

Wow, RIP. Hadn't know he was that old.

Played on some big shit:
Pitman became an in-demand guitarist in the ’60s, and he played on some of the era’s most enduring songs: Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers In The Night,” Elvis Presley’s “Blue Hawaii,” Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” the Ronette’s “Be My Baby,” the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” He played the ukulele on “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” the Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid soundtrack song that won an Academy Award.

Pitman also performed on the soundtracks for countless films and television shows. Among them: M*A*S*H, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Dirty Dancing, Goodfellas, I Love Lucy, Bonanza, The Sonny And Cher Comedy Hour, Star Trek...

Spinning the Ronettes b-side “Tedesco and Pitman” in remembrance

Pitman was #1 on a website listing the "100 Oldest musicians". That title now goes to the still-living 101 year-old Mervin Shiner.

BBC News - Darius Danesh: Pop idol and West End star dies aged 41
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-62564721

What?!

Christ. RIP. I liked him back in those primal days of reality pop tv - a little odd, ridiculous, a different era's good looks, a knowing air sometimes.

Yeah, that's a shocker. RIP.

yeh that sucks, rip
thoughts for the family x

Wolfgang Petersen, who rode his acclaimed German-language film “Das Boot” into a career directing Hollywood blockbusters such as “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Force One,” “The Perfect Storm” and “Troy,” has died. He was 81.https://t.co/rqJHzNn5vX

— Variety (@Variety) August 16, 2022

dang, RIP, was just wearing my promotional bucket hat for his 2006 remake Poseidon at Six Flags this weekend.

Couple of great movies, couple of kitsch classics, couple of camp classics, handful of garbage. Kind of epitomized the trajectory of so many non-English speaking directors who go Hollywood, but to be honest the only German film of his I've seen is Das Boot.

Diane Luckey aka Q Lazzarus of "Goodbye Horses"

https://www.stereogum.com/2196708/goodbye-horses-singer-q-lazzarus-has-reportedly-died/news/

Fuller obit here, with the news that there will be a documentary and retrospective album next year:

https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/25644374/diane-luckey/neptune/new-jersey/jackson-funeral-home

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/17/1118090168/hanae-mori-a-designer-for-japans-films-working-women-and-an-empress-dies

Designer Hanae Mori, 96

didn't know about that Q Lazarus movie, the director Eva Aridjis is an old friend from NY in the early 00s. Really cool to hear.

She just posted this on facebook:

"Now that her obituary has been published and the news of Q’s tragic and untimely passing is public, I just want to say how grateful I am to have met Q three years ago and to have been entrusted by her to help tell her incredible story. Over the past three years Q became one of my closest friends and we were in touch almost daily, sometimes to talk about the film or her music, but mostly just to talk about our personal lives and everyday matters. She used to come over and we’d sit in my living room eating Middle Eastern food, listening to records and having drinks and cigarettes. She loved my daughter Josephine- she said it was when she saw a picture of her that she decided she could trust me- and she always insisted on picking up my elderly parents at the airport when they arrived from Mexico, on bringing me medicine if I was sick, and on cooking for me and my crew when we filmed at her house. She was simply one of the most generous people I have ever encountered, and a wonderful story teller with a great sense of humor. She had an amazing sense of style all her own, and turned heads and lit up the room wherever she went. Despite having had a very hard life, she was not jaded at all. On the contrary- she was full of enthusiasm, passion and humor. Q had one of those life forces that you simply can’t imagine being extinguished or ceasing to exist, because it was so vital and radiant and exuberant.
In addition to being a wonderful person, mother and friend, Q was of course an incredibly talented singer and songwriter who never got her due. It is truly tragic that, when she finally does, she will not be here to see it happen. But I like to think that she will and that, as she sang in Goodbye Horses, “I’m flying over you". I am heartbroken knowing I will never see her again and I am devastated for her family. I am also now more determined than ever to get her incredible story and amazing music out into the world. RIP beautiful Q, thank you so much for everything you shared with me and taught me 💔✨🌹 💛"

ah fuck what a sadness :(

Mr Veg and I were talking this morning about how if you leave one song behind, make it this: a vast, beautiful song that always sounds like it’s from some ~other time~

even when it was new it sounded like maybe it had bled over from an alternate universe, yknow?

<3 RIP

Josephine Tewson, British sitcom great.