Category Archives: Obituary

The Best of 2013

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After careful consideration, here’s my list of top albums this year, as well as some other commentary on music happenings. Enjoy!

1. Boards of Canada, Tomorrow’s Harvest (WARP)
2. WIRE, Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag)
3. Bombino, Nomad (Nonesuch)
4. Bill Orcutt, “Twenty Five Songs” (Palialia)
5. Run the Jewels, s/t (Fools Gold)
6. Zomes, Time Was (Thrill Jockey)
7. Marisa Anderson, Mercury (Mississippi/Change)
8. Endless Boogie, Long Island (No Quarter)
9. Daughn Gibson, Me Moan (Sub Pop)
10. Anwar Sadat, Gold (Sophomore Lounge)

Honorable mention: Matmos, The Marriage of True Minds (Thrill Jockey); The Dead C., Armed Courage (Ba Da Bing!), Jovonaes, Paranoia Makes a Crazy Gift (Sophomore Lounge); Steve Gunn, Time Off (Paradise of Bachelors); Call Back the Giants, “The Marianne” (Kye); Francisco Franco, s/t (New Images); Circuit Des Yeux, Overdue (Ba Da Bing!); Jaye Jayle, Jayle Time (unreleased); Glenn Jones, My Garden State (Thrill Jockey); Van Dyke Parks, Songs Cycled (Bella Union); Richard Youngs, Summer Through My Mind (Ba Da Bing!); Nathan Salsburg, Hard for to Win and Can’t be Won (No Quarter); Mammane Sani et son Orgue, La Musique Electronique du Niger (Sahel Sounds); Cian Nugent & the Cosmos, Born with the Caul (No Quarter).

Best Shows I Attended in 2013 (that I didn’t book):
1. Cropped Out Festival, Louisville, Kentucky — highlights being Mayo Thompson performing Corky’s Debt to His Father, Borbetomagus, Endless Boogie, The Endtables, Blues Control, Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano, Superwolf, Montag, lots more.
2. Goblin and Zombi at the Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN.
3. Aaron Dilloway, Darin Gray & Raw Thug, Mike Shiflet, Jonathan Wood & Lowe Sutherland at the Louisville Experimental Festival.
4. Blondie and X at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN.
5. TIE — Run the Jewels and Bombino at Forecastle; Yo La Tengo at the Brown Theater, both in Louisville.

Worst Things to Happen in 2013: The deaths of Lou Reed, Ray Price, Zbigniew Karkowski, Bernard Parmegiani, Jim Hall, Junior Murvin, Richard Coughlan, Cheb i Sabbah, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Chico Hamilton, Butch Warren, Philip Chevron, Wadih El Safi, Gypie Mayo, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Makoto Moroi, Isamu Jordan, Forrest, Prince Jazzbo, Jerry G. Bishop aka Svengoolie, Jackie Lomax, Mac Curtis, Jimmy Ponder, Lindsay Cooper, Pavlos Fyssas, Zulema, Tim Wright, George Duke, Willie Dunn, Zev Asher, Batile Alake, Eydie Gorme, Aube, Allen Lanier, Eyob Mekonnen, Marian McPartland, Bernard Vitet, T-Model Ford, Steve Berrios, Mike Farren, Joey Covington, Arturo Vega, Darondo, Johnny Smith, Fatai Rolling Dollar, Alastair Donaldson aka William Mysterious, Claudio Rocchi, Slim Whitman, Mary Love, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Puff Johnson, Alan Meyers, Chris Kelly, Jeff Hanneman, Cedric Brooks, Steve Martland, Ollie Mitchell, Ray Manzarek, Andy Johns, Don Blackman, Dean Drummond, Cordell Mosson, Storm Thorgerson, Chrissy Amphlett, Richie Havens, George Jones, Bobby Rogers, Alvin Lee, Peter Banks, Clive Burr, Bobby Smith, Hugh McCracken, Cecil Womack, Donald Byrd, Reg Presley, Rick Huxley, Shadow Morton, Tim Dog, Kevin Ayers, Damon Harris, Magic Slim, Cleotha Staples, Virgil Johnson, Richard Street, Nic Potter, Bobby Bennett, Steve Knight, Gregory Carroll, Leroy Bonner, Butch Morris, Patty Andrews, Ann Rabson, and probably many more that I’m forgetting. Rest in peace.

UPDATE, 12/24/2013: Rest in peace, Yusef Lateef, Diomedes Diaz, Björn J:son Lindh, Lord Infamous, David Richards, Herb Geller, and Ronnie Biggs.

UPDATE, 1/4/14: Rest in peace, David Wertman, Doe B, Benjamin Curtis, Wojciech Kilar, Jay Traynor, Al Porcino, Phil Everly, and Rita MacNeil (thanks to Alexander Campbell for informing me of her music).

Bernard Parmegiani, R.I.P.

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We’ve gotten word via the internet that Bernard Parmegiani, one of our favorite composers, has passed today.


(Parmegiani on the left, with Christian Zanesi, from Wikipedia.)

We’ll post an official obituary as soon as we find one. In the meantime, enjoy Hors Phase from 1972:

Lou Reed, R.I.P.

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Rolling Stone is reporting that Lou Reed has died today, at age 71:

Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

Needless to say, Reed’s adventures with the Velvet Underground, as well as his many solo outings after their dissolution, were very crucial to our musical development. Another anti-hero of the 1960s Lower East Side joins Jack Smith, Angus MacLise, Sterling Morrison, and many others on whatever Heaven’s version is of Ludlow Street. (Just kidding, we don’t believe in Heaven.)

John Tchicai, R.I.P.

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We’re seeing some unfortunate news today on the internet that Danish saxophonist John Tchicai has died, though so far without any official confirmation. This is terrible news, if true, as Tchicai has been long known as one of the best players, yet he was sort of weirdly unheralded outside the jazz cognoscenti. His discography is long and broad, going back to early 1960s work with Archie Shepp, the New York Art Quartet (with Roswell Rudd, Milford Graves, Lewis Worrell, and Amiri Baraka), and John Coltrane‘s classic Ascension. It should also be said that he continued to play and compose some really great stuff over the past few decades, though the last time we saw him play was in Chicago in the late 1990s. He will be greatly missed.

We’ll update when we find official (or otherwise) obituaries and tributes posted, and hopefully we’ll post some of Tchicai’s music to sample, as well.

UPDATE, 10/7/2012, 9:30 PM: One good place to start in Tchicai’s massive discography is the self-titled debut from 1964 by the New York Art Quartet, his classic group with Roswell Rudd, Milford Graves, and Lewis Worrell (and Amiri Baraka, reciting poetry on the track “Black Dada Nihilismus”). So, for a short time, you can find it here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/5cawmw.

UPDATE, 10/8/12: The Associated Press has published an obituary for Tchicai, which has been picked up by several news outlets: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gR2SgcqNtQQiD9zYUc7-67LDCYKA?docId=a95085a0576e4f50936c160ba2ff22bf.

R.I.P. Byard Lancaster and Tom Bruno

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Inexplicably, the music world lost two great jazz musicians yesterday. Byard Lancaster, a multi-reedist — who would be revered if the only cool thing he did was appear on Sunny Murray‘s self-titled ESP-Disk album, but managed to also lead and collaborate on some great titles including his own It’s Not Up to Us — died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 70.

Additionally, Tom Bruno, a drummer best known for his work in the quartet Test with Matthew Heyner, Sabir Mateen, and Daniel Carter, died yesterday.


(Photograph of Test by Michael Galinsky — from left to right: Daniel Carter, Tom Bruno, Matthew Heyner, Sabir Mateen.)

They will both be missed.

Jason Noble, R.I.P.

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http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jasonnoble

The Louisville musician, artist, collaborator, and all-around fantastic human being Jason Noble died today. Our thoughts go out to his friends and family.

UPDATE, 8/5/2012: A number of tributes and obituaries for Jason have been appearing across Facebook and in other parts of the internet. One of the most moving ones we’ve read is by Louisvillian Syd Bishop, over at the Never Nervous blog. Thanks, Syd.

Official obituaries have been published by Billboard and Pitchfork. A number of YouTube clips from Jason’s various musical projects over the years are available at each.

Also, the web site actualblood.com compiles a number of Jason’s works. And a few of Jason’s columns for LEO Weekly are available at http://publicnoise.blogspot.com.

R.I.P. İlhan Mimaroğlu

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One of our favorite composers, İlhan Mimaroğlu, died yesterday at the age of 86. His Wikipedia page offers a short biography:

He was born in Istanbul, Turkey, the son of the famous architect Mimar Kemaleddin Bey depicted on the Turkish lira banknotes, denomination 20 lira, of the 2009 E-9 emission. He graduated from Galatasaray High School in 1945 and the Ankara Law School in 1949. He went to study in New York supported by a Rockefeller Scholarship. He studied musicology at Columbia University under Paul Henry Lang and composition under Douglas Moore.

During the 1960s he studied in the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Center under Vladimir Ussachevsky and on occasions worked with Edgard Varèse and Stefan Wolpe. He is an electronic music composer, and also was the producer for Charles Mingus‘ Changes One and Changes Two, as well as Federico Fellini‘s Satyricon. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 1971.

He worked as a producer for Atlantic Records, and created his own record label there, Finnadar Records,and collaborated with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard on a moving anti-war statement, Sing Me a Song of Songmy in the same year.

His notable students included Ingram Marshall.

In tribute to him, we’re making a few of his albums available for download.


İlhan Mimaroğlu & Freddie Hubbard, Sing Me a Song of Songmy, a Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape (Atlantic, 1971)


Outstanding Warrants (Southport, 2001)

Missing Pieces (Earlabs, 2003)

Mike Kelley, R.I.P.

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The artist and musician Mike Kelley has died, apparently by his own hand (from Blouin Artinfo):

Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York’s Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist.

“It is totally shocking that someone would decide to do this, someone who has success and renown and options,” said Winer. “It’s extremely sad.” She added that the artist had been depressed.

Kelley was born in 1954 in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. He became involved in the city’s music scene as a teen, and while a student at the University of Michigan, formed the influential proto-punk band Destroy All Monsters with fellow artists Jim Shaw, Niagara, and Cary Loren (a retrospective devoted to Destroy All Monsters was held at L.A.’s Prism gallery last year). Together, the band hatched a style of performance that skirted the edge of performance art.

After graduating college in 1976, he moved to Los Angeles to attend the California Institute of the Arts, studying alongside teachers like John Baldessari and Laurie Anderson. Music continued to be a constant passion: he formed another band, “Poetics,” with fellow CalArts students John Miller and Tony Oursler.

Kelley’s career took off in the early 1990s, with solo shows at the Whitney, LACMA, and other international venues. He and Oursler organized a well-recived installation — a kind of monument to punk — at Documenta X in 1997. In the early 2000s, he began exhibiting with Gagosian Gallery after 20 years with Metro Pictures.

For his 2005 exhibition “Day is Done,” Kelley filled Gagosian with found yearbook photos, video footage, and automated furniture, prompting New York Magazine critic Jerry Saltz to describe the show as an example of “clusterfuck aesthetics.” More conventionally, he was associated with the notion of “abject art,” highlighting the irrational and the repulsive.

Kelley’s work will be included in the upcoming Whitney Biennial. It is the eighth time his work has been included in the biannual exhibition.

Perhaps best known in the music world for his cover of Sonic Youth’s Dirty album, Kelley was also a founding member of Destroy All Monsters and Poetics, and worked with many musicians over the course of his career.

The Best (and Worst) of 2009

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This week’s LEO Weekly contains a short top-five list by yours truly, and here it is for your perusal — Top Five Albums of 2009:

1. Blues Control, “Local Flavor” (Siltbreeze)

Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho of Blues Control have delivered the goods with “Local Flavor” (full disclosure: Russ and Lea are friends, and I was present at their first show a few years back). That is, if the goods were super-hallucinogenic drugs that didn’t leave you damaged, but rather took you on a midnight journey through Tangier without leaving your living room. From beat-laden not-quite-dance workouts, to deconstructed guitar licks, to massive underwater drones, to ringing alarm clocks, there isn’t a record this year I’ve heard as wonderfully evocative of out-of-mind experiences.

2. Group Doueh, “Treeg Salaam” (Sublime Frequencies)

While it might put off some world music purists (and who do those jokers think they are, anyway?), the lo-fi nature of Group Doueh’s recordings are not only more “authentic” than, say, bringing the band to Paris or London to record in some sterile studio, they’re also far more joyous. Listening to “Treeg Salaam” at a loud volume, you feel like you’re standing in some Western Saharan souk, watching guitarist Doueh and company tear it up – and seeing them have a great time while they’re doing so.

3. The Phantom Family Halo, “Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die” (Karate Body)

Generally, most rock bands these days can’t pull off the sprawling double album, once a 1970s hallmark. But The Phantom Family Halo manages to do so, with aplomb. After multiple listens, I’m not entirely sure what the overarching theme or concept behind “Monoliths and These Flowers Never Die” is, or even if there is one, but this double album is executed so brilliantly, I’m not sure it matters. Hopefully the rest of the country will start paying attention to what these local greats are up to.

4. Mouthus, “Divisionals” (Ecstatic Peace!)

Back in May I wrote in LEO about Mouthus, the rackety, noisy guitar-and-drums duo of Brian Sullivan and Nate Nelson, and their album “Divisionals,” one of the mellowest, yet undeniably great albums I’ve heard this year. I even went so preposterously far as to write that “Divisionals” contains “a mysterious set of cyclic drones, which interlock and mesh within each other, much as the strands of DNA within our cells.” Well, Nate came through Louisville in August, and told me that “Divisionals” was performed on synths, a departure from their usual m.o. There you go.

5. Extra Golden, “Thank You Very Quickly” (Thrill Jockey)

Despite listening to more music from around the world than ever, I find that not very much of it is by current bands. The recent explosion of reissues of 1960s and 1970s African music is far more compelling than most new African bands, sadly. Extra Golden is an exception to that rule, and perhaps it’s because the half-Kenyan, half-American band has an extra rock element to it reminiscent of 1970s classics. Regardless, we’ve been lucky to see them twice in Louisville in the past year, and that they release consistently great albums.

Other albums that I’d have given honorable mention to, if space allowed: Bill Orcutt, A New Way to Pay Old Debts (Palialia); Sperm, Shh! (DeStijl); Sir Richard Bishop, The Freak of Araby (Drag City); Oneohtrix Point Never, Zones Without People (Arbor); Omar Souleyman, Highway to Hassake: Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria (Sublime Frequencies); Jim O’Rourke, I’m Happy, and I’m singing and a 1, 2, 3, 4 (Editions Mego); Kurt Vile, Childish Prodigy (Matador); Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou, The Voudon Effect: Funk & Sato from Benin’s Obscure Labels 1972 – 1975 (Analog Africa); Death, …For the Whole World to See (Drag City); Tony Conrad/Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Taking Issue (Dais).

Best Shows I Attended in 2009: Throbbing Gristle/Emeralds at Logan Square Auditorium, Chicago; Daniel Higgs at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Joe Manning/Doug Paisley/Nathan Salsburg at the Swan Dive, Louisville (full disclosure: I booked this show); Endless Boogie/Cross at the Swan Dive, Louisville (I also booked this show); Sapat/Blues Control/Softcheque/Raw Thug at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Black Juju (The Alice Cooper Cover Band) at Lisa’s Oak Street Lounge, Louisville; Young Widows/Maserati/The Genitalmen at Zanzabar, Louisville (full disclosure: I djed at this show); The Julia Schagene/Furry Bits at Jeff Komara’s house, Louisville.

Worst Things to Happen in 2009: The deaths of Rowland S. Howard, Jack Rose, Jerry Fuchs, Tony Bailey, Rashied Ali, Maryanne Amacher, Hugh Hopper, Max Neuhaus, Michael Jackson, Ron Asheton, Randy Bewley, Lux Interior, Luther Thomas, Mick Cocks, Sirone, and probably many more that I’m forgetting.

You can read the rest of the feature, including the top-five picks by the rest of LEO‘s music critics here: http://leoweekly.com/music/music-top-fives-2009.

Jack Rose, R.I.P.

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I’m almost at a lost for words, this time, to write an obituary, once again, for a fantastic musician who I was lucky to consider a friend. I’m in my office, aka our spare room, lying on the air mattress that we use when out-of-towners come to visit, with my beagles, listening to the new Bill Orcutt record, and thinking about Jack Rose, and how Jack Rose passed away today.

Jack was just here, in late September, as he played a show I booked on my birthday, and he stayed the night. I had the next day off so we drove around town in search of records, soul food, and rare bourbons. He was stoked because he found a Verlaines record at Underground Sounds for $7. We also had a great lunch at this soul food joint way out where Broadway ends at Shawnee Park with Kris Abplanalp and Neil. We went to Old Town Liquors, and Jack bought a bunch of good and obscure bourbons, then he left. Needless to say, it was a really good hang.

Aside from the many other times I saw him play, another fond memory was when Jack played a show I booked in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with Major Stars and Miminokoto at the Palace Tavern. The place was way too crowded, and Major Stars nearly brought the house down with their blistering, super-loud and awesome opening set (Wayne Rogers, you are the man, and I’m glad New York’s Finest didn’t haul you away that night). Jack played second, just him and his guitar, and delivered the same sort of intensity at 1/4 the volume. Even though I’d seen him many times, that was the night his playing really clicked for me. And despite all the chaos of probably 200 people in a space made for 50, noise complaints from the neighbors, and the two bartender/owners who seemed like they were ready to kill me and Todd P., it was totally worth it.

Anyway, Jack Rose is gone, and the world has lost a singular talent. And people who knew him lost a fun, fun-loving, laid-back-yet-intense guy, who was no bullshit artist, but the real deal. Rest in peace, Jack.