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.
Christophe was a French singer-songwriter best known for his schmalzy broken heart love song “Aline” (1965).
Apart from that, he gained some fame for his composition “Sunny Road to Salina” (1970), which was featured in Kill Bill Vol. 2. (2004).
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” 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.”
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”.
Ryo Kawasaki was a Japanese jazz fusion guitarist, composer and band leader of international acclaim.
His best known compositions are “Bamboo Child” (1976), “Trinkets and Things” (1978) and “Hawaiian Caravan” (1982).
Stanislaw Fernandes did the artwork for the album Juice (1976).
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.
Onaje Allan Gumbs was an American pianist, best-known for having played with the fine fleur of American jazz.
As I prefer all roads to lead to Rome, and Rome is my book, the death of Onaje Allan Gumbs must inevitably lead to Strata-East Records, more specifically to Charles Sullivan’s album Genesis (1974) on which mister Gumbs played piano.
Hal Willner was an American music producer and facilitator.
In my book Willner is primarily noted for his album Dead City Radio (1990), a spoken word album of William S. Burroughs recitations.
I cannot remember if it was Gus Van Sant’s video “A Thanksgiving Prayer” (1991) or his film Drugstore Cowboy (1989) which visually introduced me to Burroughs.
Today, I learn that “A Thanksgiving Prayer” was a promotional video to Dead City Radio.
In the documentary Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road (2007) there is an interview with Willner on the making of Dead City Radio at 1:07:40 and the recording of of a “Thanksgiving Prayer” is at 1:11:23, sadly without the Gus Van Sant footage.
Honor Blackman was an English actress, known for her sex symbol-ish parts in popular pulp of the sixties (The Avengers, Goldfinger and Jason and the Argonauts).
Radley Metzger cast her as Susan Sills (“the big game hunter, one of the world’s most efficient killers”) in The Cat and the Canary (1978).
She recorded the surprise hit “Kinky Boots” (1964) and the album Everything I’ve Got (1964) which featured an interpretation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “La Javanaise”.
Pentti Linkola was a Finnish academic and radical ecology-activist.
So radical that in the Anglosphere he is known as an ecofascist.
He first came to the attention outside of Finland when Dana Milbank interviewed him for the WSJ.
That article was “In His Solitude” (1994), and it cited him as saying:
“We still have a chance to be cruel. But if we are not cruel today, all is lost.”
What exactly does he mean by being cruel?:
“End Third World aid and asylum for refugees, so millions die. Try mandatory abortions for those with two children. And then find some way to get rid of the extra billions of people. With 2.5 times more humans than earth can support, another world war, he says, would be ‘a happy occasion for the planet.’ Living alone in primitive style here without running water or car, the fisherman likes to compare humanity to a sinking ship with 100 passengers and a lifeboat that can only hold 10. ‘Those who hate life try to pull more people on board and drown everybody. Those who love and respect life use axes to chop off the extra hands hanging on the gunwale.'”
“In His Solitude” (1994)
Next to this there is “Humanflood”, a four-page text of his hand featured in Apocalypse Culture II (2000) which I have been unable to identify.
And then there is his book Can Life Prevail? (2011), a translation of Voisiko elämä voittaa (2004), is still in print.
The metaphor of the lifeboat [above] was probably taken from the 1974 essay “Living on a Lifeboat” by Garrett Hardin, an essay which was the basis for what has become known as lifeboat ethics.
Patrick Gibson (ne Francfort) was French musician. He was the drummer of the Gibson Brothers.
Their disco was not my type of disco … but hey … as I often say … you can’t argue with popular.
To his credit, Patrick seemed to have played the drums on the recently deceased Manu Dibango album Manu 76 (1976).
Patrick was in his sixties. Seeing recent photos of the trio seems to confirm that covid and obesity are bad company.
The Gibson Brothers were managed by Jean Kluger (born 1937) and Daniel Vangarde (born 1947). Vangarde’s real name is Bangalter and he is the father of Thomas.