Obituary
Just announced…
Musings on the byways of popular culture
Obituary
Just announced…
Obituary
One of the all-time greats. Always worth watching. I just heard on the news that he started his acting career in the same way as Orson Welles by blagging a role from Michéal MacLiammior in the Gate Theatre using a fake CV. I doubt that MM was fooled – he just liked to give young actors a start.
I am a reasonably optimistic person – we are facing many difficulties, but I believe human ingenuity will eventually solve the climate crisis despite our refusal to act responsibly up till now. I hope that the Ukraine situation will be resolved in Ukraine’s favour and that, after a suitable period of reflection and payment of reparations, Russian will re-join the civilised world. I may not be around to see it, but I think it will happen someday. But this story – this has fucked me up terribly today. I cannot bear to hear of deliberate cruelty visited on children or animals. We had a terrible story yesterday about the death of a five-year old girl in Co. Antrim after a sustained period of abuse and neglect by her mother and stepfather. That can be isolated, and the perpetrators identified and punished as a one-off anomaly. But the report from the BBC has horrified me, not just as a story of organised animal cruelty, but because it says something about the human condition. That there is a global network of people who are prepared to seek out this abomination on social networks leaves me feeling that perhaps there is no hope » Continue Reading.
Obituary
Lead singer with Irish band Aslan. After a very long and public illness. Their music wasn’t always for me, but Christy seemed to be one of the good guys and they had a very devoted following in Ireland. They had the mixed blessing of writing a couple of very popular anthems, “This Is” and “Crazy World”, and these two songs tended to be the only songs played on radio. I remember hearing a decent carbon copy of the Stones’ “Angie” and yesterday I heard a very good arrangement of Bowie’s “Quicksand”. I saw them when they opened for DB when he played Slane Castle on the Glass Spider tour.
Obituary
A name I admit that I was not familiar with, but the songs are almost part of our DNA. On Broadway, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, We Gotta Get Out Of This Place and lots more. Writing with her husband Barry Mann they were contemporaries of Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
Obituary
Horslips guitarist Johnny Fean at age 71. Others will be better placed to write about his career and influence. Dancehall Sweethearts was the first proper album I owned and loved – still do. He lived a few miles up the road from me in Shannon but kept a very low profile apparently. My cousin is a professional musician and fell into the Horslips orbit regularly. He has nothing but nice things to say about Johnny and his bandmates.
Inspired by @seanio resurrecting his thread on ‘A musical education’ I wondered who has attended gigs with their offspring – first / most recent / most enjoyable?
Obituary
The Boomtown Rats guitarist Garry Roberts has died. A great musician in an under appreciated band
Could be really good. Some might be surprised at how quickly this has come round. I suppose he has to deal with it as he feels appropriate.
While painting one of the girls bedrooms over the weekend, I was listening to some podcasts. Along came this one, an old radio sci-fi drama, The Martian Death March. After a few minutes I copped that the indigenous Martians were called ‘Spiders’ by the Earth colonists. It was recorded in 1955, so it is unlikely that a young Master Jones heard the original, but perhaps DB stumbled across a repeat broadcast, or a transcript, on his ’71 visit to the states? I know there is another story about migrating spiders at a football match, but my theory seems just as plausible. Any other stories of (possible) inspirations for bands/names/albums?
https://www.relicradio.com/otr/2017/07/the-martian-death-march-by-x-minus-one/