Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

Vince Power, promoter of festivals and owner of many London gig venues, 76.

karl wallinger of world party and the waterboys, 66

oh RIP

Oh wow!

oh bummer, RIP

didn't realise he was from money - Karl Edmond De Vere Wallinger no less. One of his first bands was with two future members of the Alarm, they were called Quasimodo.

Wow, shame!

(xp) An Old Carthusian in fact!

just like Genesis and ugh, Jonathan King

Whole of the Moon, Dancing With The Moonlight Knight, Everyone's Gone To The Moon, hmmm

...and oddly the school crest shows three crescent moons:

https://www.heraldry-wiki.com/heraldrywiki/images/e/e1/Charterhouseschool.jpg

RIP Tyrone Williams, lifelong Detroit resident, brilliant scholar, and phenomenal experimental language worker. I read with him in 2015, before I had a proper book or anything, and he was kind, gracious, and very funny. Won’t soon forget him and his work.

Wow now word that Eric Carmen has died.

https://www.ericcarmen.com/

noooooooooo ;_;

I guess he's gone ... all the way (R.I.P.)

Just saw that. What wild career peaks. It is here where I recount my wikipedia find that "Hungry Eyes" was written by Franke Previte and John DeNicola, who also wrote "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" and, I presume, got really rich. Anyway, "Hungry Eyes" was first recorded by New Jersey band Franke and the Knockouts, who soon after hired one Tico Torres. And the rest, as they say, is (forgotten) history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHqkja5GPxk

Dude had a great varied career, for sure. He also wrote two hits for Shaun Cassidy: “That’s Rock N Roll”, and “Hey Deanie”

No longer turning that radio up or losing control, RIP

oh he's still doing those things . . . in heaven

I didn't know he wrote "Hey Deanie"! My sister had that album, I heard it a lot.

lol just listened to it now, Shaun Cassidy was a terrible singer. So I put on the Eric Carmen version instead, much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aphab0R1yE

how dare u

also funfact: Joan Jett ended up with his rad white Gibson Melody Maker guitar from his time in the Raspberries

i like this one from his first solo album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EOiFYIEQyI

My hero, sort of. Still can’t sing any of his songs though, too high. RIP.

I love this, from the link James Redd posted above.

How does a song like Hungry Eyes, a giant hit that’s so perfect for your sort of lounge-y style … how did you not write that one?

Jimmy Ienner, the Raspberry producer who also produced my first album, called me up one day. I hadn’t actually talked to him in probably 10 years. Jimmy said, “I’m working on this film called Dirty Dancing with RCA Records and I think that you ought to sing this one song.” I said, “Do you have a demo?” and he said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Well send me the demo, I’ll take a listen to it.” Normally don’t do other people’s songs, but I listened to this song and he says, “The director loves this song …” and that said to me Jimmy owns the publishing.

There you go.

It turns out he had signed this band called Franke and the Knockouts back in the 1970s or ’80s to his Millennium label, and Franke and a guy named John DeNicola had written both I’ve Had The Time of My Life and Hungry Eyes. Once Jimmy said, “No, no, no, the director loves it,” I thought about how I could rearrange it and add some spunk. The demo kind-of sounded like Air Supply with John Bonham on drums.

You’ve got to let me use that quote. Come on Eric. That’s a great one.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it turns out one of my very best friends played drums on the demo. His name is Tommy Allen and he’s actually the guy who mixed the new album Pop Art. He and his brother used to own a record store in Syracuse, I think, or somewhere in that area, and his mom even used to send me postcards, and it was like if you weren’t a Raspberries fan, Tommy wouldn’t be friends with you. I told Jimmy, “Okay, I will do it if I can produce it.” I hired a bass player and a guitar player and I went into a local studio in Beachwood, Ohio on a shoestring budget. In about five days we recorded, sang and mixed the whole thing, and off it went to Jimmy in New York. The next thing I knew the movie had come out, and a month or two later I got a platinum plaque in the mail.

Oh, the link's actually on the Raspberries thread: https://observer.com/2017/08/eric-carmen-raspberries-pop-art-live-interview/

lol that’s great

“the director loves this one”

Oh, the link's actually on the Raspberries thread: https://observer.com/2017/08/eric-carmen-raspberries-pop-art-live-interview🕸/

Eerie: earlier tonight, not knowing this (and because it includes a Donovan song, connecting it to something I'm doing), I rewatched To Die For, which uses "All by Myself."

It’s in that same interview, I slightly misquoted, but only very slightly.

I feel like a curmudgeon saying this but I don’t like “All By Myself” nearly as much as his Raspberries stuff.

...and you'd feel like curmudgeon if you said you prefer "Stand Up In It" to either.

Re: Karl Wallinger, this excellent MOJO piece says that he was at Charterhouse on a scholarship: https://www.mojo4music.com/articles/stories/karl-wallinger-remembered/

Nice, thanks

Carmen's credited with producing "Hungry Eyes" himself, though, not that it makes a difference (I've never disliked it).

Damn, RIP Karl Wallinger :((

Vince Power

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/11/vince-power-concert-and-festival-promoter-dies-aged-76

Mentioned briefly upthread, although the announcement was buried beneath worthier deceased. My comment on this guy: no comment.

Indeed.

Carmen and Wallinger, jammin' in heaven

There's a fair argument to be made that Madness might not have reformed or recorded their post-reunion albums - including The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, perhaps their best album - without Power inviting them to perform their Madstock festival in 1992.

I saw some of the best gigs of my life at Mean Fiddler venues during the '90s. I don't really care if Power was a bad person.

Regarding Vince Power, the Times and Telegraph have sightly differing accounts of a Madstock festival incident in Finsbury Park, London. Both obits agree that a bag-carrying member of his staff was mugged while holding the band's fee in cash. Both obits agree that Vince rushed around collecting cash from stall holders and calling in favours to be able to hand Madness their fee in cash and cheques, and happily the festive was able to go on

But in the Times its £250,000 and in the Telegraph £25,000. Just how much did it cost to hire Madness to headline a festival at that time?

This was in 2000 by the way, so the equivalent amounts today would be around £450,000 and £45,000.

Madstock was a great show. Sadly I turned away from watching for a second and missed the Morrissey orange juice moment.

RIP Pete Rodriguez, born in 1932, a Puerto Rican American raised in the Bronx whose bugaloo piano playing on “I like it like that “ has inspired many, including Cardi B and Bad Bunny and others who have covered it or sampled it or adapted it

Aw man, that's a shame.

"I Like It Like That" is an all timer.

Paul Alexander, polio survivor in iron lung for over 70 years, dies at 78 after Covid diagnosis

https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-alexander-polio-survivor-iron-172415147.html

Marcello Gandini, designer of the Lamborghini Miura, Countach, & Diablo, along with the Lancia Stratos and Ferrari 308 GT4, dead at 85
https://www.thedrive.com/news/marcello-gandini-legendary-lamborghini-miura-and-countach-designer-dead-at-85