Category: [RIP]

RIP uncle Doug

Doug Mulray has left us. I was one of those who actually watched the infamous Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos show when it half-aired, and I still remember it going to an ad break around the halfway point, and then we got the Channel 9 station ID, an apology about a “technical problem” and an episode of Cheers suddenly coming on instead… I mean, the program was hardly subtle but neither was Kerry Packer’s response to it; to be honest I remember almost nothing of the program, but I remember what happened to it, Kerry ensured its immortality… and despite giving an order to hide the tape so it would never be seen again, it was in fact found in the Nine archive about fifteen years later and actually broadcast in full, except they edited some of Doug’s comments rather than the animals fucking; remarkable how that was considered OK by 2008 but Doug’s jokes weren’t…

RIP Jeff Beck

I don’t think I knew there were different kinds of meningitis, nor that one of those kinds can be fatal within hours of getting it (and that it will fuck you up if it doesn’t kill you), but, thanks to today’s news about Jeff Beck, I certainly know that now… sigh. The only non-Yardbirds Beck I have are his first two solo records, which I’m giving another listen to tonight, cos it’s been a while anyway.

Regarding which: Double J dusted off an old interview with Beck from when he was in Australia back in 1977, wherein he says this:

Two of the three albums Beck released in his 20 months with the band comprised entirely of covers, which he saw as a limitation.
“I said to them, ‘We can’t keep going and doing Howlin’ Wolf numbers for the rest of our lives. Or Sonny Boy Williamson. You got to start writing your own material’. I found that I had a lot of influence on that.
“The first record we did, other than blues, was ‘Shapes Of Things’, which is a homemade job. And it worked a treat.”
That 1966 single – and Beck’s blistering solo in particular – became part of the blueprint for the psychedelic rock that would take over popular music in the following decade.
The Yardbirds shift from blues into more psychedelic territory was hugely influential on the development of rock’n’roll. Like so many important moments in rock history, many fans hated it at first.
“There was this great sort of complaint from all and sundry about the fact that they weren’t sticking to their guns,” Beck recalled.
“But, like I said, you can’t just sit around playing Howlin’ Wolf numbers. Sooner or later, you’ll die of boredom and people will die of boredom listening to.
“And you won’t even die gracefully, you’ll die having failed playing someone else’s material. So, it’s completely negative. We had to move on.”

Weird, then, that Truth, his first album from 1968, was full of covers, including not only a Howlin’ Wolf number but the aforementioned “Shapes of Things”, and even the three numbers actually credited to Beck & Rod Stewart are all rewrites of existing blues songs by Buddy Guy and B.B. King. Jeff apparently was less ready to “move on” to original material than he wanted his bandmates to be… and I think the next album, Beck-Ola, maybe demonstrates that too; the original material is kind of thin next to the two Elvis covers. Points to “Rice Pudding”, though, for the abruptness of its ending…

A sad story of not much interest

I can’t bring myself to be glad as such at a person’s death, cos I normally find that to be kind of ghoulish. But there are some people who I can’t be sad about either. The world is not poorer for their having left it. And I won’t judge people who *are* glad about that person’s death. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

RIP George Barry

Just read on Twitter that George Barry has passed. He was the director behind a singular film, in both the sense that it was the only film he made and that there’s no other film quite like it, that being the legendary Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. That link goes to my old review of it, and the film can be found on Youtube for anyone who hasn’t already had the pleasure.