Category: [Music]

RIP David Johansen

I’ve seen stories online recently about David Johansen, the last of the New York Dolls, being super-ill with cancer, as he apparently had been for a number of years. With news just coming through of his passing, it obviously looks like he was even more ill than I realised he was… Alas. That band’s all gone now apart from their fill-ins from the later period of the band and their resurgence in the oughts, but we still have the music. Fuck Whispering Bob Harris for calling this “mock rock”:

Relight my Fyre

So you may remember a couple of years ago that the clown behind Fyre Festival was threatening to do it again? He’s making good on that threat, apparently:

For the morbidly curious and/or easily fooled music fan with anywhere from $1,400 to $1.1 million to spare, tickets for Fyre Festival II are on sale now.
Billy McFarland, the convicted fraudster behind the infamous first Fyre Festival, finally revealed the details for his grand second attempt, which will apparently take place May 30 to June 2 on Isla Mujeres in Mexico. The announcement Monday, Feb. 24, came with the all-caps header on social media: “Fyre Festival 2 is Real” — which is the kind of tag line that might have people asking a lot of questions already answered by the “Fyre Festival 2 is Real” tag line.
“I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again,” McFarland said, pointing out the obvious, in a statement. “But I feel I’d be crazy not to do it again. After years of reflection and now thoughtful planning, the new team and I have amazing plans for Fyre 2. The adventure seekers who trust the vision and take the leap will help make history.”

I don’t think anyone thinks Billy is crazy; a convicted fraud and scammer who should’ve been banned from ever doing this bullshit again, yes, but not crazy. The only crazy people here are the one who’ll spend money on this (cos you know someone will) expecting it to work this time. None of my questions from my previous post about where the money from this is coming from and why isn’t he using it to clear his existing debt first have been answered, obviously, and there is apparently a new question about whether or not Billy will even be able to go himself cos even he’s not sure he’s legally allowed to leave the US. Still, if all else fails as it probably will, Mushroom Cock will probably get Billy a job in tourism or something similar; grift recognises grift…

Give the drummers some

Memorial notices go out today to two kind of disparate figures behind the drum kit…

Rick Buckler from The Jam, who I’ve never really considered a particularly favourite band as such but goddamn there are some mighty singles in that discography. I’ve always liked this one, the only single written by all three of the band, and apparently it peaked at #4 on the UK chart so it was a reasonable hit; I always thought it had a sound kind of bordering on early goth, particularly when you hear the drums, and on listening to it again before posting this I could definitely imagine Killing Joke in that era doing this. I suppose at least Paul Weller will never be asked again about getting the band back together now…

And then Jamie Muir from King Crimson, pictured here in a photo grabbed from Bill Bruford’s FB (John Wetton’s not in it for some reason); he wasn’t so much a drummer as an all-purpose percussionist for whom drums were just part of a panoply of things he could hit. Crimson was an infamously unstable band many of whose members were kind of short-lived, and Muir’s departure from the band would be notably abrupt after his own brief tenure, but that tenure would be influential as well. Unfortunately Beat-Club don’t let you embed their YT videos, so you’ll just have to click here to see him in action.

Also, as Bill Bruford notes, Muir met Jon Anderson from Yes at Bruford’s wedding in 1973, a conversation which led to Muir suggesting Anderson read Autobiography of a Yogi, which means he was inadvertently responsible for this:

Now I wanna be your god?

So here’s me browsing through some pictures I’ve downloaded to pick some out for the Important Images department, and I come across this:

Hmmmmmm, says I. I don’t know what the squiggly graphic is, nor who the young lady might be, but that male character at bottom right looks oddly like Iggy Pop…

..and that would be, evidently, because it IS Iggy Pop. I don’t know why but I was put in mind of this photoshoot of this early 1971 incarnation of the band, with messrs S. Asheton, Recca, R. Asheton and Williamson lurking menacingly behind Mr. Osterberg who appears to be attempting jazz hands but can’t get quite get them upright. Wonder how he ended up on the cover of this thing? Did the illustrator somehow see this particular photo and think Iggy looked like he was doing some sort of magical gesture or something? Cos I know Iggy was experimenting with a bunch of things at that time, but I never thought the occult was one of them…

RIP Mike Ratledge

RIP Mike Ratledge, composer and keyboardist primarily for Soft Machine, who has left us at the age of 81. Ratledge possessed one of the more formidable bits of rock’n’roll facial hair—albeit I think he may have been trumped on that front by his later Softs bandmate Karl Jenkins—and I will confess to being amused that the Instagram post where I got the above picture also included this one of the early band where he wears neither the ‘tache nor the shades that he was otherwise known for:

Young master Wyatt’s scrappy facial hair here barely hints at his own future beards, of course

A couple of musical examples, then. Any of the first three albums are good value, but I have always held this up as their masterpiece:

And here’s him plus fellow Softs Hugh Hopper and Robert Wyatt guesting for Syd Barrett:

The world isn’t suffering enough, apparently

Putin revives Soviet-era rival to Eurovision after Russia banned from contest

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a revival of the Soviet-era alternative to the Eurovision Song Contest, Intervision, which he claimed will counter the decadence of modern Western culture.
Mr Putin signed the decree on Monday, ordering the Intervision Song Contest be held in Moscow this year.
China, Cuba, Brazil and former Soviet republics such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Belarus are expected to take part.
The original Intervision was launched in the 1960s as the USSR’s alternative to Eurovision. […]
“The contest will be open for participation of all countries that wish to do so,” the planning documents said.
“Artists may not perform songs that call for violence, humiliate the honour and dignity of society, and it is required that political themes in the lyrics are completely excluded.”
Participants must “respect cultural, ethical and religious traditions of other peoples of the world”.

So basically it’s Eurovision but even more useless. Just what the world was needing. Can’t say I’m not at least slightly confused about Brazil being among the expected participants, though, given it was never a Soviet or communist state back then… the complete opposite, indeed, with the military dictatorship of the 60s using the threat of communism taking over like it did in Cuba to justify taking Brazil over themselves. Whatever, I suppose Ukraine is just glad to know it won’t be invited…

The final show (until the next one)?

OOOOH. I’m not particularly thrilled by some of the support acts (so much for Slayer breaking up, too, eh), but if I were able to travel at all I’d be sorely tempted by this. One more go round—avowed “final” shows don’t always turn out that way, do they?—but this time with Bill Ward back in the saddle? Oh my. I’m assuming this means everyone is actually fit for the task, given Bill’s health got in the way of the reformation and tours around 13 and Ozzy hasn’t been a picture of health himself either (though those spinal injuries seem to have been dealt with), and I have a more than sneaking suspicion this could wind up being a slightly sad display of four old blokes pushing a once-great thing beyond the point where they should’ve let it rest… but goddamn, if I were in any position to go to this thing, I absolutely would.

So long Marianne

RIP Marianne Faithfull. Given the life she lived from the late 60s into the 80s, I wonder if she ever imagined she’d eventually live long enough to just die of old age… albeit old age with quite a lot of health complications along the way and not just from the many years of substance abuse. But certainly when she did bounce back from all that, she not only survived but evidently thrived. It was a hell of a life.