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.
Via fellow erotomaniac Hans-Jürgen Döpp it came to my attention that German art historian and curator Peter Weiermair has died. He is the author of such books as The Nude. Ideal and Reality.
What was interesting, just after he died, I googled him and I switched to Google images. I found photo books of Ann Mandelbaum and one of Roger Ballen. The one by Mandelbaum had a human with a vegetable in his or her mouth.
The one by Ballen was called Outland, and the cover photo depicted two very dirty feet with a hand stuck between them which is holding a puppy it seems.
Ballen’s photo is called “Puppy between Feet”, I learn afterwards.
Antonio Escohotado was a Spanish philosopher and writer. I discovered him through his A Brief History of Drugs: From the Stone Age to the Stoned Age which was written in Spanish in 1989 and translated to English in 1996.
On the cover of one Spanish edition is The Smoker by Joos van Craesbeeck (photo).