There’s been quite a few notable passings in the last couple of days, not just Jim Bakker (cunt) but also Jeffrey Archer (cunt), Dennis Hastert (cunt), and Richard Morecroft (not a cunt, he was cool), and now one of old Hollywood’s last big figures, Eva Marie Saint, has shuffled off her own mortal coil at the pretty reasonable age of 102. I was amazed that her first TV role was in NINETEEN FORTY SEVEN—an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that, per IMDB, also starred John Carradine as Scrooge and David Carradine (only about eight years old or so) as the young Scrooge—and her last acting role appears to have been a podcast (a scripted comedy/drama series) just five years ago. What industry changes she must’ve seen over all those decades.
Category: [RIP]
Bakker kikks the bukket
God loved him so much that he made Jim humiliate himself through his later years by having to sell Bakker Buckets. (Why didn’t they call them Bakker Bukkets? Missed opportunity.)
Frankly, a Vic Berger video is a fitting tribute. When you look at his life, it’s impossible to feel sorry for him; maybe that time when Jerry Falwell kicked him out of PTL, but that was ultimately his own fault too. Tammy Faye deserved better.
RIP Cronos
Venom singer/bassist Conrad Lant, better known as Cronos, has died at the age of 63.
His band confirmed his death in a statement today (Tuesday, October 1). No cause of death has been given. […]
Born in London in 1963, Lant moved to Newcastle aged eight, where he joined Venom in 1978, during the burgeoning New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Inspired by the rough, DIY nature of punk rock, the trio – completed by guitarist Jeffrey ‘Mantas’ Dunn and drummer Tony ‘Abaddon’ Bray – brought a raw fury to the UK heavy metal scene, first heard on 1981’s controversial yet ultimately seminal debut album, Welcome To Hell, which UK music magazine Sounds hailed as “possibly the heaviest record ever allowed in the shops for public consumption.”
“I loved Motorhead,” Cronos said in 2019, “they were a huge inspiration, but I wanted to have the Black Sabbath satanic thing too, and Alice Cooper’s theatricality, and punk’s aggression. I wanted us to be evil.”
Recorded in six days, Venom’s second record, Black Metal, was released in November 1982, and received a five star review in Sounds from future Classic Rock editor Geoff Barton. The album’s title track became the band’s signature song, influencing the namesake extreme metal genre, featuring such bands as Mayhem, Emperor and Darkthrone.
A marvellously Neanderthal racket they did make, and still teenagers when they started making it. May he enjoy all the Newcastle Brown Ale in Hell that he can handle.
He could in fact be beaten
Ironically, given that all his bandmates in Rose Tattoo died of cancer, Angry Anderson appears to have passed from a heart attack instead, aged 79. What a curious and difficult man he was. I had no especial fondness for his music, but I kind of liked him, cos he did a ton of good work for charities in the 90s and seemed like an all-round good guy… until his turn to right-wing politics in the previous decade. What happened, Gaz? Cos something sure as hell happened to you to trash your record as badly as you did. I mean, Angry did a number of good things then suddenly turned weird about Muslims, and though he seemed to mellow a bit after doing SBS’ Go Back to Where You Came From and gained a bit of evident understanding, he then still slung his hook with the National party and Tone Abet’s policies… and then he moved even further right by standing for Australian Liberty Alliance. I don’t know how to appraise him in the end.
Max’s muesli
For someone who was apparently all over the late 60s art scene and a major part thereof, I’m surprised that I can’t remember ever having heard of Peter Max (who’s just left us aged 88) before now:
Max began his career in graphic design in the 1960s and his swirly, colorful, instantly recognizable designs epitomized the era’s “flower power” art. But thanks to his prolific output and fun, accessible style, Max’s work remained well known and popular well into the 21st century.
He described his own work as “always on the side of the peaceful nature. I don’t discuss in my paintings negative things, I don’t dwell on it in my mind and don’t dwell on it in my canvasses.”
Max was the official artist for the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the Indianapolis 500, the World Cup, the World Series and many other events. His art appeared on a Boeing 777 airplane and a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. His portrait subjects ranged from US presidents to Taylor Swift.
But in his first flush of success in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his mural-like tableaus of flowers, the cosmos and cartoonish figures – all in vivid colors such as turquoise, orange and neon green – seemed to be everywhere. Dorm room walls were plastered with his posters. Household furnishings such as clocks and bedspreads sported his designs.
He even created covers for the Manhattan Yellow Pages, a business phone directory distributed to millions of people. Max himself was featured on the cover of Life magazine in 1969, his trademark dark, bushy mustache framing a hearty grin. […]
By the 1960s, Max’s bold, unique style was a hit with ad agencies, publications, the corporate world and in pop culture, leading to a booming commercial business. “My work was really, I would say, almost exploited,” he said. “It was on mugs, it was on bedsheets, it was on dresses, it was on silks and scarves and ties – 70 product lines.”
DJ Food has a bunch of Peter Max art at his blog, in which he describes Max as pushing himself as a brand and being “arguably better at it than Warhol”, which is quite an accolade in its way. And yet I still don’t remember ever hearing of him before now, and of the Max art on the DJ Food blog the only one I even vaguely recall seeing before is the Evergreen magazine cover (probably on Tumblr years ago). Anyway, John Coulthart has been reposting an assortment of Max-related stuff over on BS…
…and THIS, I must say, is what has me interested. Cos not only did he get his art on the packaging, he’s credited with “developing” the product itself, whatever that might mean. I don’t know what he actually had to do with that side of things, but I kind of love the idea of it anyway. Maybe Campbell’s should’ve got Warhol to do something like this for them…
And it’s good night from him too
Yeah, Tim Curry’s checked out too. I saw a number of people say Death got the wrong 80 year old when the news of Dolly’s passing broke, and I couldn’t disgree with that, and now they’re saying it again of him and I still can’t disagree with it. Death’s got one more chance to get it right or else I’m giving the job to someone else who will…
…And she’s gone
RIP Johnny Young
In memoriam Australian music’s other great Dutch import (Harry Vanda being the first, obviously), aged only 79. I say “only” cos I was talking about his passing with Joe, my housemate, and Joe said he’d thought he’d have been older. And though 79 is a good innings, I knew what he meant Johnny Young was just… always there, wasn’t he? He was a TV show host in Perth by 1965 when he was just 18. Young Talent Time was there for nearly two decades after that. He was a fixture of the industry. One of those fixtures.. And now he’s… one of those former fixtures of the sort we probably won’t ever see again.
Speaking of fixtures, here’s another one:
The legendary Brian Henderson introducing Russell Morris doing “The Oom-mow-mamow-mow Song“, Australia’s finest (if belated) contribution to the psychedelic music scene, and probably also Johnny Young’s finest contribution to music. Apparently he actually wrote this thing with Ronnie Burns in mind, and frankly I can’t imagine that working; instead, Molly Meldrum heard Young himself playing it, demanded he give it to Russell Morris (one of Molly’s clients at the time), and then overproduced it into immortality. And let’s not forget John’s own big hit as a performer, one of those fantastic short sharp pop hits in which the mid-60s abounded:
RIP William Edgar Oddle
Well, this is fucking abysmal news.
The writer, comedian and conservationist Bill Oddie has died aged 85. Having come to prominence with the comedy group The Goodies, Oddie later established himself as an authority on wildlife, presenting television series including the BBC’s Springwatch and Autumnwatch.
Oddie’s agent paid tribute to his “intelligence and wit”. In a statement, David Foster said: “It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of Bill Oddie, the country’s best-loved birder. Bill was a multitalented celebrity – wildlife presenter, broadcaster, comedian, writer, songwriter, musician and conservationist. Yet it was never fame that he valued.
“Instead he encouraged us to respect and protect the environment. He taught us the wonder of it. He protested, lobbied and campaigned for it. He led the way and people of all ages and backgrounds responded to his call. And such a massive contribution to conservation will never be forgotten.”
FUCK. Well, there goes another part of my childhood out of the world. Like most Australian children of a certain age, I grew up on the Goodies (so glad that I got to see them live on their 2005 tour); I still think “Earthanasia” might be the funniest half hour of comedy TV by anyone ever, and Bill’s music with Mike Gibbs was always a major part of the show’s success.
RIP Dr. Grant
Actor Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park, dies
Actor Sam Neill, who starred in My Brilliant Career and Jurassic Park, has died aged 78.
A post made to his social media account on Monday afternoon said he had died in Sydney “surrounded by his family”.
“The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free,” the statement, posted to Instagram, said. […]
In 2023, Neill revealed he had been diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, in early 2022.
He entered remission later that year after a rare anti-cancer drug worked, but needed ongoing infusion treatment.
He announced in April he was cancer-free.
The actor was also knighted in 2022, becoming Sir Sam Neill.
“I said I didn’t want the title for 10 or 12 years,” he said in 2023.
“Then when I thought I was dying a couple of years ago I thought, ‘Oh bugger it, I may as well go out with the title,’ so I changed my mind.”
A damn shame. I’ve seen far more people grieve for him than I have for that Lindsey Graham fellow; Sam seems to have been one of the good guys of his industry, and that’s always a bad thing to lose. I’m guessing that cancer and the treatment for same did him no favours and probably took a few years off him, but at least he was free of it before the end.
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