Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obituaries. Show all posts
Friday, July 03, 2009
Karl Malden (1912 - 2009)
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
On The Waterfront (1954)
The Streets of San Francisco (1973)
The Old Potato Nose is gone: American actor Karl Malden has died at the honourable age of 97. Malden, born as Mladen George Sekulovich, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and was also nominated for On The Waterfront (1954), another Marlon Brando movie. Malden was already 60 years old in 1972, when the popular cop show The Streets of San Francisco was launched, lasting five seasons and amassing 119 hour-long episodes where he starred as Lt. Mike Stone all through the series, alongside the newcomer Michael Douglas. With a career that spanned amazing seven decades, Karl Malden lent his rough, down-to-Earth charisma to whatever he worked with.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sky Saxon of The Seeds (1946* - 2009)
The Seeds: 'Pushin' Too Hard' (1967)
The Seeds: 'Mr Farmer (1967)
The Seeds: 'Can't Seem To Make You Mine
The Seeds: 'Two Fingers Pointing on You' (off Psych-Out, directed by Richard Rush, 1968)
Sky "Sunlight" Saxon, the singer and leader of the seminal psychedelic garage rock band The Seeds died on Wednesday 25 June 2009.
* He was reported to be 63 years old, though some sources differ on his actual age.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon In Memoriam
Eon: 'The Spice Must Flow' (1991)
Via Blissblog:
Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon, a legendary British electronic dance music producer, passed away on Wednesday June 17 from complications with pneumonia at the age of 54. Loveday was known for such rave tunes as 'Spice' (1990) and 'Fear The Mind Killer' (1991), and the album Void Dweller (1992). He also recorded under such monikers as Minimal Man, Tan Ru and R. Rash. I interviewed Ian Loveday for pHinnWeb in 2002, through his connection with J Saul Kane's Electron Industries label, for which Eon released such 12"s as 'Wave Angel' (1995) and 'Phaze Test' (1996). Rest in peace.
More:
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Matti Inkinen of SIG (1958 - 2009)
SIG: 'Leijailen' (1985)
SIG: 'Hyvää syntymäpäivää'
SIG: 'Sadan vuoden yksinäisyys' (1984)
Matti Inkinen, the vocalist of Finnish electropop band SIG, was found drowned on Monday 25 May, after having disappeared from his home on 29 April 2009. Inkinen, 50, had been recovering from a brain surgery where a tumour was removed, and was allegedly suffering from depression. SIG was at the peak of its popularity in the early 1980s, known for such tunes as 'Tiina menee naimisiin' ("Tiina gets married"), 'Hyvää syntymäpäivää' ("Happy birthday"), 'Sadan vuoden yksinäisyys' ("One hundred years of solitude") and 'Vuosisadan rakkaustarina' ("The love story of the century").
Links in Finnish:
Monday, April 20, 2009
J.G. Ballard (1930 - 2009)
British writer J.G. Ballard died on Sunday 19 April 2009. Ballard, who had been diagnosed with prostrate cancer in June 2006, was 78 years old. Among his best-known novels are such as Crash, High-Rise, Empire of the Sun, and Super-Cannes.
Though usually cited as a science fiction writer (he was one of the vanguards of the "New Wave" of sci-fi coming into prominence in the 1960s with such celebrated magazines as New Worlds, which he also contributed), Ballard's main theme was the psychopathology of contemporary society. The writer inspired by French Surrealists of the early 20th century, Ballard's works usually were about the civilisation crumbling but also mutating into something else, creating its own beauty and serenity. His psycho-geographical landscapes were inhabitated by alienated but inquisitive characters obsessed by a combination of technology, celebrity cult, sex and violence; all of which they worshipped with a religious fervour and even some sort of strange dignity.
Crash (1973) is about a small cult of people sexually obsessed with becoming injured or even dying in car accidents, preferably featuring some celebrity figures such as Elizabeth Taylor. Concrete Island (1974) describes a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, who finds himself helplessly stranded on a traffic island in the abyss of a spaghetti junction, his pleas for help ignored by passing cars. As with film director Luis Buñuel, Ballard's works could often be seen as surreal satires of the "discreet charm of bourgeoisie", and High-Rise (1975) shows a group of people consisting of highly-paid professionals and inhabiting an ultra-modern tower block degenerate into a constant life of violent orgy. In The Unlimited Dream Company (1979) an aviator crashes his plane in a suburb town of the Thames Valley, becoming a sort of Messiah with supernatural powers in a tale which might be or not only a final fantasy of a dying man. Ballard's late quadrology Cocaine Nights (1996), Super-Cannes (2000) (these two being actually companion pieces, so similar they are in their themes), Millennium People (2003) and Kingdom Come (2006) also show these same upper-middle class people instigating absurd violence to alleviate the boredom and social friction in their tightly guarded resort communities, business parks and shopping malls.
In a perfect world, the Nobel Award for Literature would have been Ballard's, but science/speculative fiction has never really fitted the appetites of that venerable election committee, not to speak about the controversial nature of his works. It would perhaps be preposterous to call Ballard's works prophetical, but I'm quite sure in the years to come more and more resonance will be found with his works and how the world around us turns out to be. No, as it already is: Ballard's dystopias took place not in some far future or a faraway country, but here and now.
In popular culture, J.G. Ballard has been for years a hip name to throw around and his works have inspired countless other writers, film-makers, artists and musicians. Empire of The Sun, an autobiographical book on Ballard's childhood years in the Japanese-occupied Shanghai, was filmed by Steven Spielberg in 1987. The Crash film version by David Cronenberg (whose earlier works such as Videodrome had a definite Ballardian tone) stirred some controversy in 1996.
Daniel Miller, the founder of Mute Records, recorded in 1978 under the alias of The Normal 'Warm Leatherette', a song based on Ballard's Crash. The Normal's electronic contemporaries such as Gary Numan ('Down In The Park') and John Foxx (Metamatic) have read their Ballard, too. Joy Division's late frontman Ian Curtis took the name for one of their songs, 'The Atrocity Exhibition', from a short story collection of Ballard.
The Normal: 'Warm Leatherette' with film clips from Crash adaptation by David Cronenberg
Obituaries & tributes:
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Åke Lindman (1928 - 2009)
Finnish actor and director Åke Lindman has died at the age of 81. Lindman's best-known role is probably as private Lehto in Edwin Laine's war film Tuntematon sotilas ("The Unknown Soldier", 1955). In the 1950s Lindman also played in many other Finnish films, his rough looks often typecasting him in villain roles. Åke Lindman, who was also a professional footplayer in his youth, later became a film and TV director.
Stormkärs Maja/Myrskyluodon Maija (a 1975 TV series directed by Åke Lindman, with the famous theme music by Lasse Mårtenson)
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Lux Interior of The Cramps (1946 - 2009)
The Cramps: 'Naked Girl Falling Down The Stairs'
Lux Interior, the vocalist of The Cramps, an influential psychobilly band, has died at the age of 62.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Patrick McGoohan, No. 6 of The Prisoner (1928 - 2009)
Patrick McGoohan as No. 6 in The Prisoner: "I am not a number, I am a free man!"
The Prisoner opening credits/sequence
Patrick McGoohan has died at the age of 80. The Irish-American actor appeared in such films as Ice Station Zebra (which was the favourite film of Howard Hughes, the one the hermit millionare kept watching repeatedly), Escape from Alcatraz, Scanners and Braveheart; and such TV shows as Danger Man and Columbo (for which he received two Emmy Awards).
However, the one from which McGoohan will be best remembered for was The Prisoner, a British-made cult TV series of 17 episodes, first aired in between 1967 and 1968. A brainchild of McGoohan, who also starred in the series as an ex-agent only called "No.6", The Prisoner was a combination of spy genre very much in vogue in the 60s, science fiction, psychological drama and even socio-political allegory, which reflected the turbulent spirit of its time, as if James Bond had been rewritten by a team of George Orwell, Herbert Marcuse and Harold Pinter.
Every episode followed the attempts of No. 6 to escape from a mysterious place called The Village (an obvious reference to the then-fashionable works of Marshall McLuhan) where he was held by his captors trying to get out of him "by hook or by crook" the information behind the reason of his having resigned from the Secret Service. No. 6/McGoohan's trademark outcry "I'm not a number, I'm a free man!" appealed to the rebellious youth of the 60s but also those who were afraid of State's power over the individual: The Prisoner has spawned endless interpretations as to the real meaning behind the show and continues to intrigue both fans and critics. McGoohan's production company Everyman took its name from a 15th-century English morality play, which gave a clue to The Prisoner's allegorical nature in its handling of such universal topics as politics, war, individual's rights and so on.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ricardo Montalbán, Khan of Star Trek (1920 - 2009)
An excerpt from The Wrath of Khan (1982)
American actor Ricardo Montalbán (1920 - 2009) has died. Montalbán is probably best remembered by many as the superhuman villain Khan Noonien Singh of the 1967 Star Trek episode "Space Seed", the role which he reprised in 1982 in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the best films in the otherwise uneven series. Montalbán was also known from many other TV roles and film appearances among all in the sequels of The Planet of the Apes.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Ron Asheton of The Stooges (1948 - 2009*)
Ron Asheton, who played guitar for The Stooges, has died at the age of 60. The Stooges were born in the late 1960s in Ann Arbor, near Detroit, in the aftermath of psychedelia and garage rock explosion; often joining on gigs The MC5, who considered The Stooges their "little brother" band. Like Scott Asheton, his drummer brother and fellow Stooges member, Ron Asheton always remained in the shadow of Iggy Pop, the wild frontman of the band (who later became a successful solo artist, recording with such people as David Bowie), but it was Ron's spiky guitar sound which was there to influence punk rock some years after The Stooges had split.
The 21st century Stooges reunion saw Iggy, Ron and Scott together again, though for many fans the 2007 album The Weirdness is best to be forgotten: just stick to the classics, The Stooges (1969), Funhouse (1970) and Raw Power (1973; although Ron was only "reduced" to play bass there, with James Williamson on guitar) -- there's also plenty of sessions, unreleased and bootleg material around, just see The Stooges @ Discogs. As the band themselves put it on one of their more rare songs: Jesus Loves The Stooges! R.I.P. Ron.
(*) Ron's body was found at his home several days after the demise, so it's not clear if his death took place before the New Year or after.
The Stooges live in Cincinnati, 1970
The Stooges/MC5
The Stooges, "a hippie festival" in 1970
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008)
Harold Pinter's The Caretaker - "The Job Offer" (1963, directed by Clive Donner)
Harold Pinter, British playwright of the Modernist generation of "Angry Young Men", has died at the age of 78. He received the Literature Nobel Prize in 2005.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Betty Page (1923 - 2008)
Bettie Page 1950
Bettie Page 1955
Bettie's Punishment
Betty Page (also spelled as "Bettie Page"), the iconic model of fetish, burlesque and pin-up photos in the 1950s has died at the age of 85.
More obituaries:
Monday, December 01, 2008
Fashion Photographer Max Petrelius (1940 - 2008)
Finnish fashion and commercial photographer Max Petrelius died on 16 November 2008. Petrelius, who might have been called "Finland's David Bailey", had been born on 5 May 1940. He studied in 1958 - 60 under Rolf Winquist in Stockholm.
During his study trips to France in 1960 - 62 he got acquainted with the work of local commercial and fashion photographers. He had his own studio in Helsinki from 1960 to 1987, where several future fashion photographers learned their trade. As a highly sought-after fashion photographer Max Petrelius gained somewhat a star status in the 1960s Finland, with fashion companies, magazines and advertising agencies all competing to use his works.
He collaborated with acclaimed fashion designer Vuokko Nurmesniemi [more] from 1964 onwards, and the photographs by Petrelius of Nurmesniemi's designs found their way to many international fashion and art publications. Also Artek was one those countless Finnish companies using Petrelius's services.
In 1969 Petrelius, as a first fashion photographer ever, was granted Finnish State Prize for Photography and in 2000 State Artist Pension.
More photos by Max Petrelius:
Friday, November 28, 2008
Pekka Pohjola (1952 - 2008)
Pekka Pohjola Group: 'Ensimmäinen aamu'
Finnish bassist, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Pekka Pohjola has died at the age of 56. Pohjola came first into prominence as a bass player for Finnish progressive rock/"deep pop" band Wigwam, where he played from 1970 to 1974. After that he concentrated on his solo career, even though his solo debut Pihkasilmä Kaarnakorva came out already in 1972 when he was still in Wigwam. Pohjola also played with Mike Oldfield, The Group and Made In Sweden.
For the main bass line in his song 'Midnight in a Perfect World' on the 1996 Entroducing... LP, American trip-hop artist DJ Shadow sampled Pekka Pohjola's 'Sekoilu seestyy' ("The Madness Subsides"; off Pohjola's 1974 album Harakka Bialoipokku, which was published in England as B the Magpie).
Friday, November 21, 2008
Guy Peellaert (1934 - 2008)
Belgian artist Guy Peellaert has died at the age of 74. He was known from the controversial sleeve illustration of David Bowie's dystopian 1974 album Diamond Dogs (where Bowie appeared as a human-canine character whose genitals were deemed so offensive that they were airbrushed away from the release), also from the book Rock Dreams (1973), featuring Peellaert's fantasy illustrations of some of the biggest icons of rock history (with commentary by the rock critic Nik Cohn), and several film posters for such as Taxi Driver.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Mitch Mitchell, the drummer for The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1947 - 2008)
Mitch Mitchell: drum solo at a Jimi Hendrix gig in Sweden, January 9, 1969
Mitch Mitchell, who played drums with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, has died at the age of 61. Mitchell was the last surviving member of The Experience, Hendrix having passed away in 1970 and the bassist Noel Redding in 2003.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Michael Crichton (1942 - 2008)
The Andromeda Strain opening credits (1971)
Michael Crichton, a prolific American bestseller novelist, film director and TV producer has died. The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park were among his best-known books, the cult sci-fi movie Westworld [trailer] (1973) one of the films he directed.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Yma Sumac (1922 - 2008)
Yma Sumac: 'Tumpa'
Yma Sumac: La Castafiore Inca, Part 1
Yma Sumac (13 September 1922 - 1 November 2008), a legendary vocalist (whose memorable voice range covered five octaves) well known to the fans of 1950s exotica, lounge and "Incredibly Strange Music", has passed away.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Levi Stubbs (1936 - 2008)
The Four Tops: 'Reach Out, I'll Be There' (1966)
The Four Tops: 'It's The Same Old Song' (1965)
Just after Isaac Hayes and Norman Whitfield, another great soul man is gone. Levi Stubbs (born as Levi Stubbles; 6 June 1936 – 17 October 2008), the lead vocalist for Motown's legendary R&B group The Four Tops, has passed away. He was also the subject of Billy Bragg's song 'Levi Stubb's Tears'.
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Also gone: Neal Hefti (29 October 1922 - 11 October 2008), who wrote the memorable theme music to the 1960s campy TV series version of Batman.
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