Tag Archives: 2020

RIP Millie “My Boy Lollipop” Small (1947 – 2020)

Millie Small was the singer of “My Boy Lollipop” (1964), her only hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwrHCa9t0dM

She was the first Jamaican artist to break through to an international audience.

Did this mean international recognition for ska and reggae?

Well, not exactly, “My Boy Lollipop” was considered a novelty song rather than ska or reggae.

Thus reggae’s invasion into the mainstream actually only began that same year in the United Kingdom with songs such as “Al Capone” (1964) and “Guns of Navarone” (1964).

But in the United States, the wait was for 1969 with “The Israelites” (1968) to give reggae international repute and recognition.

RIP Dave ‘Strangler’ Greenfield (1949 – 2020)

Dave Greenfield was an English composer and musician, known as the keyboard player of The Stranglers.

Everyone is familiar with their song “Golden Brown” (1982) but few are aware that is actually a waltz.

Next to “Golden Brown”, The Stranglers wrote a couple of enduring compositions. There is “Peaches” (1977), a sleazy track which features the word clitoris and which for that reason had to be re-recorded in order for the BBC to play it.

There is “No More Heroes” (1977), the refrain of which has a childish quality that I find hard to swallow. “Always the Sun” (1986) however, works for me. It has that dreaminess also present in “Midsummer Night Dream” (1983) and of course in “Golden Brown”.

And then there is “Nice ‘n’ Sleazy” (1978), a track which is also dance-able. It’s on YouTube in a Top of the Pops live version and if you wait until 1:29 you see the keyboard solo of Greenfield.

“Nice ‘n’ Sleazy” is at 33:10

That track is also on the marvelous compilation How to Kill the DJ Part 2 (2004) out on Tigersushi Records.

RIP Tony ‘afrobeat’ Allen (1940 – 2020)

Tony Allen (1940 – 2020) was a Nigerian musician and drummer.

The importance of Allen? You simply cannot imagine Fela Kuti nor afrobeat without the drumming of Tony Allen during the period 1968 to 1979.

After parting with Fela Kuti it would take time for Allen to find his own sound.

This happened with the sublime EP Never Expect Power Always (1984), one of my favorite afrobeat compositions.

Other solo work of note includes Black Voices (1999), Tomorrow Comes The Harvest (2018, with Jeff Mills) and Sounding Lines (2018, with Moritz von Oswald).

To the international hipster crowd, Allen is probably best-known for playing drums on “La Ritournelle” (2003) by Sébastien Tellier, an iconic track for the contemporary cosmopolitan class.

The drumming on that track sounds like a “Funky Drummer” sample but it is in reality the live drumming of Tony Allen.

I’d say, if you are new to all this, start by listening to “Shakara (Oloje)” (1972) by Fela Kuti, then switch to Never Expect Power Always (1984) and end with Sounding Lines (2018).

RIP Germano Celant (1940 – 2020)

Germano Celant was an Italian art historian known for coining the term “arte povera” (poor art) in 1967.

The ‘poor’ of that epithet refers to the materials.

I’ve always thought of ‘arte povera’ as a bit of a non-concept.

It is exemplary of that 20th century mania of coining names for invented new art movements.

Think surrealism, dada, popart, post-popart, avant garde, post-avantgarde, nouveau réalisme, neomodern, remodern, metamodern, postminimal, stuckism, neoism, op art, fluxus.

Oh please stop already.

Art Povera: Conceptual, Actual or Impossible Art? (1969)

But then again, I like the cover of the 1969 book that made the term arte povera known around the world.

I wanted to check the book out, since my university has it in its library.

However, this being corona-time, the library is closed.

RIP Maj Sjöwall (1935 – 2020)

Maj Sjöwall was a Swedish author known as the co-author of the ten Martin Beck (1965-1975) novels.

She was with her partner Per Wahlöö (1926 – 1975) the spiritual co-parent of Nordic noir.

In my universe she is important for having been published in the  Zwarte Beertjes collection of pocket books.

To an international audience she is all but forgotten.

I believe all of the duo’s books were made into films.

I give you the trailer of The Laughing Policeman (1973) featuring Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern.

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDe9BTvCwc


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: Carne, I 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnU0Y3Xa2Uo
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.