Rolling Obituary Thread 2024

Yes, "Barth, Barthes, Bartheleme" just rolls off the tongue too easily.

sot-weed factor is great (Giles goat-boy kinda dud and also racist)

I read all his other fiction in a couple of years in my 20s & enjoyed it all, honestly didn’t feel that different from burning through Stephen king, genial parochial yarn spinner (but smugger & more bourgeois) - he’s good at it tho imo, rip

Oh I loved loved loved Barthelme in my 20s. Still look back fondly on a couple of the novels and short stories. I definitely read Barth back then too. You can’t go to the bookstore that many times looking for used Barthelme and eventually succumb to curiosity about his shelf mate. Like finally buying a Beau Brummels album after umpteen checks on the Beatles bin.

Every time I hear the reading of "Game" on Selected Shorts I still laugh.

Michael Ward (guitarist for School of Fish, John Hiatt, The Wallflowers & Ben Harper) - age 57

Oh man, I absolutely LOVED School Of Fish's two albums as a teenager. Second album is still an occasionally thrilling attempt by a non-grunge act to pass themselves off as Mudhoney fans of long-standing, first album a fairly pearlescent if unsubstantial slab of psychedelic pop with crunchy guitars and soft acoustic heart.

xps
"He skewered the likes of Gervais when they still the old thing, not the new thing"

it's a tour de force is Comedians. I vaguely remember the part where Pryce does his performance art bit and is shouting Lou Macari from when I was a kid. Literally they don't make 'em like this anymore, not on UK tv anyway.

Playwright Christopher Durang, 75.

https://x.com/HESherman/status/1775510320573800828?s=20

RIP, I've seen local productions of a few of his plays. Pretty funny. They're ready-made for small local troupes.

Two legendary drummers in two days: Albert "Tootie" Heath yesterday, and Keith LeBlanc (of the Sugar Hill Records house band, Tackhead, a thousand sessions in the '80s and '90s) today...

damn keith leblanc was a legend. beyond his essential work with tackhead, sugar hill, and tommy boy, he also did a lot of the programming on pretty hate machine

RIP Keith

Love Heath's beat on this Herbie Hancock song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f8SbbdrEQg

Sad and unexpected to hear about Keith LeBlanc, I saw quite a few On-U Sound-related shows in the 90s and he was a complete fucking powerhouse every moment he was on stage. RIP.

Oh man, RIP Keith

oh wow, I just bought this 12” other week, RIP Keith

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

oh no. total hero. seen him play dozens of times. always on fire.

RIP for How To Be A Zillionaire alone

The guy's non-On-U catalog is amazing on its own: producing tracks for Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, playing on Annie Lennox's Diva, working on Ministry's Twitch... he was even on an R.E.M. record, I think.

oh didn't know about the ABC connection. That's a hell of a credit.

Man, I just learned about Louis Gossett Jr. last night. (I'm watching The Good Fight).

Happy to admit also that Barthleme-Barthes-Barth adjacency in the used bookstores was what happily lead me from Donald to all-time-favourite Roland. John I always found impenetrable. RIP nonetheless

People like to talk about how Woke SNL is a new thing...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKPi66Us27Q

loved flaherty as sam and lindsay weir's dad in freaks and geeks - funny but also warm

The scene where they’re listening to “Squeeze Box” - how many times have I quoted that

Giles Goat-Boy was supposedly part of the original inspiration for Pearlman’s Imaginos, which kind of makes me want to look at it again but…

Lynne Reid Banks, author of The Indian in the Cupboard, dies aged 94.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/05/lynne-reid-banks-indian-in-the-cupboard-author-dies

Michael Ward, guitarist for School of Fish, the Wallflowers and Ben Harper, 57.

Joe Kinnear

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/apr/07/joe-kinnear-former-tottenham-player-and-wimbledon-manager-dies-aged-77

first of all, which of you is judas?

is judas here?

when he was managing Luton his nickname was JFK because of his profuse effwording iirc

On 2 October 2008, Kinnear launched a verbal tirade at the Daily Mirror journalist Simon Bird, calling him a "cunt". He swore over 50 times in the first five minutes of the interview

got to admit I always had soft spot for Joe

Firehouse lead singer CJ Snare
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/c-j-snare-firehouse-dead/

.. i may be culpable in this somehow for shitalking them on the glam metal thread

he finally found the love of a lifetime

Whoa coincidence

Clarence “Frogman” Henry, the New Orleans musician whose signature croak helped him score a memorable Fifties novelty hit, “Ain’t Got No Home,” died Sunday, April 7. He was 87.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/clarence-frogman-henry-aint-got-no-home-dead-1235000874/

Other than Al “Carnival Time” Johnson, Frogman was pretty much the last of the 50s NO R&B performers.

wow, had no idea he was still around.

RIP.

Irma Thomas (first single 1959) is still kicking, as is Aaron Neville (first single 1960). But yeah, almost all of the wacky '50s NOLA Rock'n'Soul dudes are gone now.

RIP

Peter Higgs, who has a subatomic particle named after him

well at least having a sub-atomic particle named after him should provide his loved ones with a quantum of solace

bdum and tish

Patti Astor, nyc no wave scene maker Fun gallery owner no wave cinema actress etc.

Hmm, didn't know all this about Ed Piskor.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/arts/ed-piskor-dies-comics-hip-hop-family-tree.html

Yeah more than a few of the encomia over the past few days are a bit...I don't want to say tone-deaf, but.

I mean obviously it's sad he apparently took his own life. But seems like a bad situation all around. (I did like his work! At least the selections I've read from the Hip-Hop Family Tree.)

I don't envy anyone having to write his obituary tbh. There's actual grieving friends and family, there's his victims, there's the fact that the suicide letter was an explicit attack on said victims.

Patti Astor, nyc no wave scene maker Fun gallery owner no wave cinema actress etc.

Geez, I was at a movie Monday night in which she's interviewed a few times: Make Me Famous, a documentary on Edward Brezinski.

Goddard College

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-10/progressive-vermont-college-to-close-after-facing-insolvency