Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

don't really know her history but just watched her introduce and sign off on the Damned's classic and vary chaotic OGWT appearance in 79, Smash It Up and I Just Can't Be Happy Today. She took it all in stride with a sense of humor.

just had a midlife crisis upon realizing that the midpoint between the Beatles forming and now is...Incunabula

Oof I remember when Incunabula came out

just watched her introduce and sign off on the Damned's classic and vary chaotic OGWT

i'm pretty sure this was the first time i ever encountered her. also probably why I Just Can't Be Happy Today remains my favourite Damned song.

Longtime fave of mine

Captain Sensible talks about it here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5-IkuEq-8c

Dear oh dear - that looked a bit contrived by the Damned and not very interestingly done. This could have done with a bit of Bob Harris's famous tutting.

Just dipping into the 24 hr plus Annie Nightingale Request Show playlist on Spotify. Someone has done a very good job with this , especially at the 'front end' of the list.

I wonder how many regular listeners she took with her to the 'Chil Out zone'. At the time, in 1994, the shift to the 'Chill Out Zone' felt a bit of a perplexing headlong embrace of acid, house, techno and EDM and exclusion of everything else.

She lost me as a listener at that point, certainly.

Tom Shales, TV critic for the Washington Post

Forgot he'd won a Pulitzer!

Damn, he was kind of one of those weird household names

Forgot about his SNL and ESPN books too. (Though I have to wonder what they'd look like more in recent years and with different perspectives.)

Cordell Jackson, rockabilly pioneer and Moon Records founder:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/obituaries/cordell-jackson-overlooked.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NU0.nXVW.6ItmzCeXUNDp&smid=url-share

Re: Shales, I think he did a good job and deserves his rest. But I do wonder how many people will have the specific job description "TV critic" in our current fractured media landscape, let alone its future.

They've been replaced by recappers

Cordell Jackson died in 2004. (Saw her live in the mid 90s, she tore it up.)

! very sorry. Was in the Times newsletter today, obviously for the 20th anniversary. Good article, thanks to Tav Falco (and Alex Chilton) for making me aware of her long ago.

Peter Crombie, "Crazy Joe Davola" from Seinfeld

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/peter-crombie-dead-seinfeld-1235871063/

Was in the Times newsletter today, obviously for the 20th anniversary.

As noted at the top of the article, it's part of their Overlooked series of obits for people who never received one when they died. Lots of super-interesting stories.

Different thing but: In the olden days (by which I mean 1980), there was a whole thing where year-end magazines and newspapers were laid out and printed before the year ended.

So if you died on December 29 or thereabouts, you didn't make it into a year-in-review issue, but by the time the next year-in-review issue was being planned, your death was already old news.

Then there are the people whose deaths were overshadowed by the death of a more famous person on the same day. Cf. Sheryl Crow singing about "the day Aldous Huxley died." I am not gonna unabashedly stan for Crow's entire oeuvre, but that line has some panache.

Groucho Marx, for example. Died 2 days after Elvis.

Not the same day, but the Elvis death was news for a full week.

Peter Crombie, "Crazy Joe Davola" from Seinfeld

https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/peter-crombie-dead-seinfeld-1235871063/

oh damn. I just posted in the Seinfeld thread about how this dude was so good that it actually changed the tone of the show during his scenes. idk if anyone else on the show was able to do that. I was pretty stunned that he never really appeared in anything else.

But I do wonder how many people will have the specific job description "TV critic" in our current fractured media landscape, let alone its future.

Aren't TV critics more common and read more in the post-Sopranos era than when Shales first came to prominence in the '70s and '80s? He was the only one I knew then; I could name a few now.

Loved Shales’ SNL book.

Joyce Randolph - "Trixie" on The Honeymooners, 99

RIP Jo-El Sonnier Louisiana Cajun and country musician from what sounds like a heart attack

https://kpel965.com/louisiana-cajun-country-music-artist-jo-el-sonnier-dead/

Took Richard Thompson high up into the US Country charts!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k7m5yVTGsc

Groucho Marx, for example. Died 2 days after Elvis.

There was a massive fuss! My grandfather knew him a bit when young, so that might have some effect on my memories.

Peter Crombie, "Crazy Joe Davola" from Seinfeld
https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/peter-crombie-dead-seinfeld-1235871063/

oh damn. I just posted in the Seinfeld thread about how this dude was so good that it actually changed the tone of the show during his scenes. idk if anyone else on the show was able to do that. I was pretty stunned that he never really appeared in anything else.

just hung up from talking with my niece and we agreed how incredible he was and perfectly casted. Maybe the greatest/ our fave non-regular on Sein. am deeply/maybe irrationally saddened, RIP

xpost

I'd read a book / watch a documentary / whatever about the casting of Seinfeld. They never missed.

Crombie was indeed great. Not sure where you draw your line re: the definition of "non-regular" but I'd rank it:

1. David Puddy
2. Frank Costanza
3. Newman
4. J. Peterman

with Davola not far behind. Which is no insult ... that list is a Murderer's Row of side characters.

Most impeccably cast (casted?) sitcom - maybe show - ever.

Not that anyone asked, but my own personal favorite celebrity death trilogy was Miles Davis / Klaus Barbie / Dr. Seuss. September 1991.

I'd read a book / watch a documentary / whatever about the casting of Seinfeld.

Read this a few years ago; very good, and lots about the casting, as I remember it.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Seinfeldia/Jennifer-Keishin-Armstrong/9781476756110

Howard Waldrop, American sf writer of note. After Terry Bisson’s passing, this is a hard month on this front! (Seek out Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens.”)

RIP. Pretty famous story, haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Same with other guy actually/pvmic

Fact mix

Our first mix of 2024 will be the last mix of this series in its current form. After 16 years of mixes, Fact’s pioneering music program will no longer continue in its current iteration.

— 180.Fact (@180fact) January 16, 2024

I missed this one, Georgina Hale. Great, quirky (and sexy) British actress.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/10/georgina-hale-obituary

T-Bag!

Peter Schickele

https://wapo.st/3tWqUkj

RIP, person I thought was already

AKA PDQ Bach---haven't heard it, but really liked the idea of his album about the NPR station that was proudly "All Pachebel, All The Time." Think this was after Eno covered the "Canon" on Discreet Music, a teen choral version was the theme of Redford-directed Ordinary People, and it went on and on---in the late 80s or early 90s, a rapper sampled it, and why the fuck not, But Kyle Gann took a class taught by Peter S., said he was a rainy day at best--reminding me of what somebody else said about Donald Barthelme, and I think it was Thurber who wrote about what dark or gray miserable bastards so many humorists are. Maybe it's true of comedians as well, having to be funny.

Pachelbel, excuse me! And Eno recorded Variations on:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Pache%3Bbel+Brian+Eno&oq=Pache%3Bbel+Brian+Eno&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l3.22601j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6d711571,vid:nPesTx4yb3g,st:0

The PDQ Bach stuff was amusing, but I also loved Schickele Mix, a radio show where he could just ramble on about whatever music he wanted to talk about.

He introduced me to this fabulous song about dust mites by Heywood Banks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG0e6KOIZAI

"“Recognise the faces but can’t place the names?” Among the list of Britain’s top 10 great unsung television character actors that followed was Georgina Hale."

...

"This article was amended on 10 January 2024 to change a picture that did not show Georgina Hale."

Hale was a good Alma Mahler too

Brilliant dhrupad singer Amelia Cuni:

Blank Forms is deeply saddened by the death of Amelia Cuni (1958–2024), vocalist, composer, writer, teacher, well-known as one of the greatest contemporary Western proponents of dhrupad singing. More here: https://t.co/UZcxrIRjzl pic.twitter.com/c5Sgh6crTY

— Blank Forms (@BlankForms) January 17, 2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEKShVBmQr8

Aw, I love Amelia Cuni... she wasn't very old, either!

Juan Mendez aka Silent Servent. Way too young.

https://ra.co/news/80120?fbclid=IwAR3UTHIIGS3JYsnaBVfbnQ-TNNH8QXi2cntJ1IaCXOUBz-6tDdg2VU6YaeY_aem_AbfBjSE8TJBieOgzmOh05CatAjiAVXQ6Lqvi5Ch2KdUxyVg9C9NgeIcHIMtWTqJO21U

Ah wow :( Rest In Peace. Chatted with him once a couple of years back - nice guy.