Monthly Archives: April 2020

RIP Hamilton Bohannon (1942 – 2020)

Hamilton Bohannon  was an American musician best known for the disco hit “Let’s Start the Dance” (1978).

“Me and the Gang” (1978, the basis for “Get Get Down”, 1999, Paul Johnson)

Other compositions of note include “I Remember” (1981, the basis for “From: Disco To: Disco”, 1996), “Me and the Gang” (1978, the basis for “Get Get Down”, 1999), “Truck Stop” (1974), “South African Man” (1975) and “The Beat (Part 2)” (1979).

His instrumentals have a mesmerizing repetitiveness and a lack of violins which went down well with the people who liked to dance but were not into the kitsch of disco.

RIP Philippe Nahon (1938 – 2020)


Philippe Nahon was a French actor known for his roles in French horror and thriller films.

Nahon was has been described as the fetish actor of maverick director Gaspar Noé, playing a nameless butcher in no less than three films: CarneI Stand Alone, and Irréversible (cameo).

Above is the gimmicky “30 seconds to leave this film” scene from I Stand Alone (1988).

The film is especially bleak.

Not surprisingly, because it focuses on several pivotal days in the life of a butcher faced with abandonment, isolation, rejection and unemployment.

There was a time when I relished these kind of films. I remember seeing a trailer for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and absolutely wanting to see it.

The attraction for this fare has largely faded.

Nevertheless, watching scenes from I Stand Alone, one cannot help being immediately intrigued.

RIP Henry Grimes and Giuseppi Logan (1935 – 2020)

Sonny’s Time Now (1965) on which Grimes played bass. That record is in the Top Ten Free Jazz Underground (1995) list.

Henry Grimes was an American jazz musician working in the free jazz idiom.

Giuseppi Logan American jazz musician working in the free jazz idiom.

Also, both were tortured artists.

Giuseppi Logan Quartet (1965, ESP-Disk-1007)

I’ve always had a fascination with free jazz which veers from awe to disbelief to a mild form of even scorn.

It’s as if free jazz is the locus of strife between my need for entertainment and intellectualism.

This love–hate relationship appears to be my variety of the wild orchids and Trotsky.

But jazz itself was also that locus of strife.

Because it was somewhere in the 1940s that jazz begot bebop, and the road that had been jazz permanently forked.

One side continued its entertainment course.

Another side explored the realm of high art.

So as jazz became less popular, it became more highbrow.

Behind the scenes, rock and roll and R&B had been waiting impatiently to fill this entertainment void.

RIP Eddie Cooley (1933 – 2020)

Eddie Cooley was an American songwriter best known for co-writing “Fever” (1956).

That song has become a pop standard and is best known in the Peggy Lee rendition.

However, I I give you the version of The Cramps from their debut album Songs the Lord Taught Us (1980).

After all, as I explained before, I like all roads to lead to Rome, and The Cramps are central to my archive.

RIP Joe Frank (1938 – 2018)

This happened two years ago but I only found out today.

Also, I had never heard of Joe Frank.

Today, I googled for Ken Nordine and ASMR (one of my guilty pleasures) and I found Joe Frank.

I listened and liked immediately and immensely. Frank is an absolute genius.

Up there in absurdity with the likes of Roland Topor.

Joe Frank was a French-born American writer radio performer known for his philosophical, humorous, surrealist, and absurd monologues and radio dramas, says Wikipedia.

Typical radio dramas include “Bad Karma” (2000) and “That Night” (1994).

“Bad Karma” (2000)

“Bad Karma” opens with:

“I’m sitting at a dinner party attended by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Seated at another smaller table are Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milošević, Pinochet and some others I don’t recognize. And then there’s a third table, sort of a children’s table, it has shorter legs and smaller children’s chairs. And sitting there are Richard Speck, Gary Gilmore, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson.”

“That Night”

Synopsis from “That Night”:

“Joe’s uncle drowns while fishing a week after retiring, urban animal criminals, voyeur complains about a nude woman, sex with nuns in a limo, an elderly marching band and homecoming parade has been lost for 40 years and is being chased by homecoming queen’s fiance, creating life-size maps, to Jesus: why is there so much suffering, we’re on the edge of chaos, it’s great to feel a part of nature monologue with traffic background, monologue on sleep (repeated in other programs).” [3]

“That Night” also mentions maps on a 1:1 scale, just as Borges did in his one-paragraph story “On Exactitude in Science”.

RIP Ryo Kawasaki (1947 – 2020)

Ryo Kawasaki was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader of international acclaim.

“Trinkets and Things” (1978)

His best known compositions are “Bamboo Child” (1976), “Trinkets and Things” (1978) and “Hawaiian Caravan” (1982).

“Bamboo Child” (1976), from the album Juice.

Stanislaw Fernandes did the artwork for the album Juice (1976).

RIP Shusei Nagaoka (1936 – 2015)

This happened five years ago.

Shusei Nagaoka was a Japanese illustrator. He was known for his music album cover art in the 1970s and 1980s.

He designed album covers for Electric Light Orchestra, Earth, Wind & Fire, Deep Purple, Space, Maze, George Clinton, Kitaro and Rose Royce.

Wikipedia fails to mention the computer-like torso of Giorgio Moroder on E=MC2 and the dancing robots on the Munich Machine albums.

His style was similar to that of sexy robot designer Hajime Sorayama (born 1947) and his work reminiscent somehow of Luigi Colani.