Category: Notable Obituaries

So long, Mr. Barry

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Legendary film composer John Barry passes away at age 77. I’m a huge Bond fan and his music is simply iconic orchestral pop.

Here is the “007 Theme”, not to be confused with “The James Bond Theme”, is an adventure theme composed by John Barry in 1963 for the Bond film, “From Russia with Love”, It became a secondary theme for the Bond films, being used in quite a few Bond movies, primarily during action scenes. If you like, here is Barry (circa 2001) conducting both “Goldfinger” and “The James Bond Theme.”

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The end is near… for Not Lame Recordings.

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Sad but true. The founder and popaholic-in-chief Bruce Brodeen is closing up shop at www.notlame.com on November 24th. This is the label and brand that got me really inspired as a power pop fan and music blogger. As a music resource, Not Lame was one of the best places to get all your power pop and related artists in one shot, but as the modern music consumer is shunning CDs in favor of downloads, it made business extremely challenging. But I’d hang on to those CDs, they are rare collectors items now.

 He recorded a special goodbye message to fans here. He is now promoting an online community, rockandrolltribe.com and new site www.popgeekheaven.com. I wish him well and look forward to his new endeavors.

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Synchronicity in action: Stoney Curtis

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Two milestones occurred today – Actor Tony Curtis passed away at age 85 and The Flintstones celebrate it’s 50th anniversary.

Google dedicated it’s home page to the modern stone age family, so today my post will honor both. Even though the actor is best known in movies like “Sweet Smell of Success” and “Some Like It Hot,” he also did a cameo on the cartoon shows sixth season in 1965 as “Stoney Curtis.” Be a good “slave boy” and get the episode here.

What has any of this to do with music? Not that much actually, but the cartoon show did feature many classic musical episodes with “The Way Outs” and “The Bedrock Twitch” and even Pebbles & Bamm Bamm harmonize. My favorite has been the music of “The Beau Brummelstones.”

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Hay, hay, my, my – ELO’s Mike Edwards is gone.

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Despite my gallows humor in the title of this post, what happened on Sept.3 is no joke. A giant 1200 lb. bale of hay rolled into the road at Devon, England. This caused a multi-vehicle accident and ex-ELO Cellist Mike Edwards was killed. Edwards played a significant part in Electric Light Orchestra’s success, despite his short stay with the band (1972 -1975). He constantly showed up in crazy outfits and invented new approaches to playing his cello (think: plucking and strumming with various citrus instead of picks). You tube has an interesting interview and performance of Mike from 2009.

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More power pop legends pass away…

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Two players in both rock and pop passed away recently: Tommy Hoehn died last Thursday. Hoehn was part of the Memphis music scene and an integral part of Argent studios work with Big Star. He played with The Scruffs as well and the 1977 single “Blow Yourself Up” was his biggest hit, eventually earning Hoehn a new generation of followers thanks to its inclusion on 1993 Rhino Records compilation D.I.Y.: Come Out and Play: American Power Pop I (1975-78). He also recorded two albums with another Memphis power popper, Van Duren.

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Another rock legend, Pete Quaife passed away after a long bout with kidney disease. Pete was The Kinks original bassist. He left the band in 1969 becase of all the fighting among band members. In a 1998 interview, Quaife pointed to the band’s 1968 disc Village Green Preservation Society as his favorite. “For me, it represents the only real album made by the Kinks,” he said. “It’s the only one where we all contributed something.” The 2010 video below is Ray Davies’ tribute to Pete at Glastonbury.

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