Steve Bronski was a Scottish composer and keyboardist known for the project Bronski Beat.
I remember buying The Age of Consent (1984) at Free Record Shop on De Wapper.
There was something in the gay anthem “Smalltown Boy” that resonated with me. Today, I find it very hard to listen to that record.
I do not feel the same about “Don’t Leave Me This Way”, the 1986 cover of the philly hit by Jimmy Sommerville, after he’d left Bronski to form The Communards.
Robbie Shakespeare was a bass player who, with his partner Sly Dunbar, formed the most influential reggae rhythm section between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s.
I found out about Robbie’s death in De Standaard in which Karel Michiels wrote a knowledgeable obituary. Michiels had struck me before when writing about the death of Bunny Wailer. When I came home I googled him. I found out he is a reggae musician in his own right and performs under the name Jah Shakespeare.
I think a friend of mine had a tape of Taxi Gang (a Sly and Robbie moniker) with her when I traveled to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand in the early 1990s.
When I collected records during the late 1990s and early 2000s, I found a copy of “Don’t Stop the Music”, a track which they recorded under the moniker Bits & Pieces, a cover of the disco song.
And then there is “Boops (Here To Go)” (1987) produced by Bill Laswell. This I first heard in Tom Tom Club in Antwerp. When I tried to find it in the internet era, it took me some time, thinking the lyrics were, “civil check, arms open wide” in stead of “Si boops deh. With arms open wide”.
Besides all this, the duo are central to what is perhaps my favorite recording studio. I am referring to Compass Point, where Sly and Robbie were central to the house band Compass Point All Stars. Everybody played there, perhaps most central to my universe, Serge Gainsbourg.
And, to conclude: Robbie also did the bass line on that unforgettable record Padlock EP (1983) by Gwen Guthrie, produced by Larry Levan.
This happened in 2018, but I only found out today.
Wah Wah Watson was an American guitarist who was a member of The Funk Brothers, the studio band for Motown Records.
This track from Elementary (1976), his only solo album, reminds me somehow of “Rapper Dapper Snapper” (1980) by Edwin Birdsong.
Greg Tate was was an American writer, musician, and producer.
A long-time critic for The Village Voice, Tate focused particularly on African-American music and culture.
Also a musician himself, he was a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition and the leader of Burnt Sugar.
He is known for such pieces as “Yo! Hermeneutics!” (1985) and was interviewed by Mark Dery in “Black to the Future” (1994), making Tate a key figure in the protohistory of black science fiction.
Some have called a rogue scholar and when one reads “Yo! Hermeneutics!”, one does get the feeling of having landed in an African-American version of the Sokal affair.
John Miles was a British composer and musician best known for his composition “Music” (1976).
“Music” is a camp monstrosity in the category “foute muziek”.
The second movement of “Music”, which is uptempo, reminds me of “The Mexican” (1972) by Babe Ruth.
“The Mexican” shares some of “Music’s” campy qualities, but it is altogether a more satisfying song.
Lawrence Weiner is an American artist who made visual poetry and who wrote the art manifesto “Declaration of Intent” (1968).
He designed the Quando Quango and Section 25 poster for Factory Records in 1985.
With Ned Sublette, he released the albums Ships At Sea, Sailors & Shoes (1993) and Monsters from the Deep (1997).
In Antwerp, his poem “Iron and gold in the air, dust and smoke on the ground” is on permanent display at the Middelheim Open Air Sculpture Museum.
Alvin Lucier was an American composer, perhaps best-known for his piece I Am Sitting in a Room (1969). That piece is a reflection on resonance and generation loss.
Almudena Grandes was a Spanish writer best-known for her novel The Ages of Lulu (1989), a classic of Spanish erotica.
Bigas Luna adapted the novel to a film of the same name a year later.
David Gulpilil was an Australian actor best-known for his part in Walkabout.
Vladimir Naumov was a Russian film director, best-known in my universe for Legend of Thiele. This film is an episode in the Till Eulenspiegel legend.
I’ve known Eulenspiegel since my youth but I recently stumbled upon him again in that wonderful history of irreverence: Critique of Cynical Reason (1983) by Peter Sloterdijk.