celeb obit

The Unquiet Grave of Jim Morrison

Gary Lucas — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 19:22:07 +0000

The Unquiet Grave of Jim Morrison Gary Lucas December 12, 2024 - 14:22

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I took this photo of Jim Morrison's grave on a visit with Caroline Sinclair to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris in June 2022.

I grew up loving The Doors, and their music still moves me. (Never did get to see them, dammit!). But I was an old friend and former colleague at CBS Records of Jim's widow, the late Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, and once backed her when she read from some of Jim's unpublished erotic poetry at a tribute to Jim held at the Bowery Poetry Club, which also included my old friend Lenny Kaye.

My best Doors story, though, concerns Jim's grave.

In August 1997, I was staying in Paris, working on some new songs with French pop star/actress Elli Medeiros, who lived a stone's throw from Père-Lachaise. One day, I decided to head over there (the boneyard) and pay my respects to Jim at his graveside.

Arriving at the Cemetery Gates, I scanned a map hanging on a wall nearby that indicated the locations of the most famous celebrity graves (and there are tons of famous dead people buried there—including Edith Piaf, Simone Signoret, Isadora Duncan, Max Ophuls, Maria Callas, Michel Legrand, Marcel Marceau, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Moliere, Proust, Colette, and Sarah Bernhardt—for starters).

But not knowing the layout of the cemetery, I had my doubts as to where exactly, according to this map, I would find Jim's grave. It was bloody confusing. Suddenly, a swarm of young boys and girls swept past me loudly, yelling and running pell-mell in a mad dash—there must have been at least 75-100 kids—all hell-bent on finding the grave of JIM.

I knew instinctively that all I needed to do was to follow them and they would lead me to it.

They did not disappoint. They knew EXACTLY where Jim Morrison was buried. And arriving at his plot below, they ringed his grave at least five kids deep, and I had to fight my way to the front of their ranks to catch my glimpse of the grave.

Now, who were these mysterious kids—this flock of kinders out for a gander at the graveside??

Turns out the then Pope John Paul II had flown into Paris that very morning from Poland with hundreds of young followers in tow to cheer him on at a big convocation the following day in Paris:

And the first thing these fine young Catholic kids wanted to do once they got to Paris was to visit the grave of JIM MORRISON!!

(A good example of the Manichean Duality is here, in which the Profane conquers the Sacred. Or viewed from another angle, the triumph of the spirit of Dionysus over the spirit of Apollo.)

Whether or not these kids had the blessings of the Pope in their group activity, I do not know.

But I kind of doubt it.

Written on the 81st anniversary of the birthday of Jim Morrison (Dec. 8th, 1943).

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At The End of the Day It's All A Boom-Crack-Boom, Innit?

Gary Lucas — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 15:27:43 +0000

At The End of the Day It's All A Boom-Crack-Boom, Innit? Gary Lucas November 25, 2024 - 10:27

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I just heard the news of the untimely passing of the great drummer, programmer, and producer Keith LeBlanc from an unspecified illness last April. I am really, really saddened by this—I didn't get the memo till just now!

Keith was a great friend back in the day. I hung out alot with him, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald (basically, the Sugarhill Gang) in their loft on 14th Street off 7th Avenue in the early '80s—and I put a few of their records out on vinyl mixed by my pal dubmeister extraordinaire Adrian Sherwood (Fats Comet's "Stormy Weather," a Mark Stewart + Maffia compilation, Che's "Be My Power Station") through the indie label Upside Records, who I was doing A&R for part time.

Keith, Skip, and Doug encouraged me to really start writing and playing on my own steam after Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) quit music for a career as a full-time painter—and Keith and Skip helped organize my first ever first studio recording made under my own name, "King Strong"—recorded and mixed at Unique Studios in midtown back in 1985.

Keith did all the drum programming as well as playing live drums on the track, which also features my two bassists of that time, Jared Michael Nickerson and Paul Nowinski. He even was in Gods and Monsters for a short spell--I recall a live gig we did at the old Knitting Factory on Leonard Street. I think the track came out spectacularly well thanks to Keith’;s visionary touch, and it got played alot back in the day on WFMU, WNYU, and other college stations simply off cassette copies I circulated. Eventually in 1992 the track finally appeared on CD, closing my album Gods and Monsters (Enemy Records, which received a 4-Star Review in Rolling Stone)—and it is also on my recent double CD best-of album The Essential Gary Lucas (Knitting Factory Records).

Keith was a real creative force of nature. He hit the drums harder than anyone I knew, as well as becoming a total master of sample drum programming. The heavy sampled drum sounds he and Adrian came up with sound like sledgehammers to the brain, ICBM misses going off, or more appositely, like Roman rowing-masters beating out the pounding rhythms for galley slaves in a trireme bound across the Mediterranean for a naval engagement with the Spartans.

Keith was also blessed with a heavy sense of radical compassion for sufferers far worse off than the exploitative music biz sharks he and his loft mates were forced to swim with, in order to effect the release of their records, which he once described to me as "basically the news set to beats."

Certainly visionary tracks like Keith's masterpiece Malcolm X: No Sell Out—which samples Malcolm's voice taken from various forceful political speeches set off a storm of controversy, with much protest coming from American Black radio programmers who believed Malcolm would never have sanctioned use of his voice on what was essentially a hip-hop track.

In turn, Keith was eloquently defended by black music writer Nelson George, who wrote in Billboard:

"LeBlanc has done an amazing job of capturing the essence of Malcolm X's intellectual street raps, bringing this messenger's message to a new generation of listeners."

Malcolm's widow Betty Shabazz, aware of Malcolm's influence on the growing rap and hip-hop community, gave Keith permission to sample Malcom's voice on the track, and wrote in the liner notes to the Tommy Boy Records 12-inch:

"This recording documents Malcolm's voice at a time and space in history some nineteen or more years ago. Its meaning is just as relevant today as it was then. His belief is that people must constantly monitor behavior, refine goals, and direct their objectives to insure that the right to life and work is a reality. Ultimately, our goals should be peace and brotherhood. After all, the universe belongs to all its inhabitants."

Keith's work with former Pop Group firebrand Mark Stewart is even more radical, cutting-edge and avant-garde.

Listen to the sample and drum beat hellscape of "As The Veneer of Democracy Starts to Fade," which posits the ever-encroaching surveillance police state worldwide:

Keith once told me of a session he did with anarchist manager/recording artiste Malcolm McLaren, where Keith, ever the perfectionist, labored away for hours trying to achieve the perfect drum sound.

Eventually Malcolm sniffed: "At the end of the day, it's all a boom-crack-boom, innit?"

Keith was a heck of a lot more than a "boom-crack-boom."

Check out "You Drummers Listen Good" from his 1986 visionary solo album Major Malfunction to stare the future in the face.

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R.I.P. Prince Rogers Nelson 1958-2016

Steve Holtje — Sat, 23 Apr 2016 05:53:44 +0000

R.I.P. Prince Rogers Nelson 1958-2016 Steve Holtje April 23, 2016 - 01:53

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Prince didn't give a fuck what anybody thought about him.

You could say that's just what he wanted us to think, but his actions back up my assessment. Over and over he made choices that went against conventional wisdom. In the process, he built a counterintuitive career that made him a superstar, loved by the masses but also respected by such unimpeachable icons as Miles Davis (who compared Prince to Duke Ellington).

Saxophonist, composer, and musicologist Allen Lowe wrote yesterday, "As we pay tribute to Prince and others like him who have died recently, it's just a little too easy to repeat the clichés that describe them as expressing our generation, our history, our current world. In truth, as Richard Gilman said many years ago, what makes an artist great is not so much that he or she is of their time or a part of history but rather that what they give us is an alternative to that history. I do get worn down with the clichés of social significance; what made Prince great was really, as Gilman also said, that he was able to tell us the next things that we would be seeing hearing and thinking, even before we knew what they were. In this way he was very much like Bird, or Beckett; or Picasso, Haggard, or Ayler: A predictor of the future, or least of one particular kind of a future, in which radical changes in means and modes of expression were really confirmation of our own changing and ever-expanding consciousness."

If you're worried about what people think about your music (or any art) -- if you choose to do what's expected and safe -- you won't come up with something those people haven't heard before but discover they wanted to hear without knowing it until they hear it. Prince understood that. There's a scene in the middle of his movie Purple Rain where the club owner tells Prince's (semi-autobiographical) character, The Kid, "Your music makes sense to no one but yourself." And in truth, a lot of Prince's music seemed unusual, even weird, in the context of early '80s pop music norms. Consider that when he opened for the Rolling Stones at the L.A. Coliseum in 1981, he got booed off the stage after three songs, with some audience members throwing food at him and shouting homophobic slurs.

As the latter point suggests, Prince was flouting more than musical norms. Prince was the first African-American pop artist to flaunt an androgynous image in front of predominantly straight audiences. He dressed outrageously, whether in just bikini briefs or in ruffled shirts with purple suits or in a tight-fitting toreador suit. In an era when most male-fronted bands, especially R&B bands, didn't have female members except as backing vocalists or dancers, Prince's band The Revolution was integrated in race, gender, and orientation -- both guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman are lesbians, and though this was not openly proclaimed until later, the intro to "Computer Blue" flirted with a lesbian scenario.

Despite all the opposition he encountered, Prince believed strongly in his musical instincts. Even at the beginning of his career, he held out for a deal that would give him complete creative control and allow him to self-produce; only Warner Brothers' Lenny Waronker was willing to grant that freedom. When in Prince's eyes Warner Bros. reneged on their deal by refusing to let him release albums as often as he wanted to, he protested his treatment and left the lucrative safety of the major label in favor of life as an indie artist. Writing "slave" on his face and changing his name to an unpronounceable symbol brought ridicule. But since Prince didn't give a fuck what anybody thought about him, he stood his ground. The result is not just a legacy of superb albums that lives on after him, beloved by millions, but the more tolerant and diversity-friendly culture in which we live nowadays. - Steve Holtje

Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based composer, poet, and editor. He worked under CultureCatch founder Dusty Wright on Prince's official mid-'90s magazine NPG. The art above is one of NPG's covers.

Fifedom

Dusty Wright — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 20:22:26 +0000

Fifedom Dusty Wright March 2, 2006 - 15:22

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R.I.P, Mr. Knotts

One of our cultural icons passed away early this week. A man who invented a comedic acting style yet to be duplicated. The ultimate nervous nellie. His face and body language genius in space. So jittery and jumpy one minute, yet so poised and cocksure the next, he makes Larry David look fantastically wooden. I'm talking Officer Barney Fife, AKA Don Knotts, AKA The Incredible Mr. Limpet, once hailing from the land of Mayberry in the TV world of The Andy Griffith Show. Forget the fish lips of Mick Jagger, Don Knotts's were the original. His rubbery face could suggest a thousand different moods in the course of this half-hour episodic juggernaut.

His vehicle is/was a unique television series, one that never really ages. Some have suggested that it's more popular today than it was during its original eight-year run in the '60s. Well, that makes sense. There are more Baby Boomers with more kids and with more TVs who can now catch more reruns. But that doesn't diminish the quality storytelling and wonderful ensemble work from Andy, Aunt Bee, Opie (Ron Howard), Gomer, Goober, Floyd The Barber, and Otis The Town Drunk.

Each episode focused on moral or life lessons and never bowed to the politics of the day. That in itself makes it evergreen. And the writing and acting was always heartfelt even when it seemed hokey. It remains the comfort food of television shows, like meatloaf, and suggests a simpler time when life was far less complicated. And in these sensory overloaded times, meatloaf ain't such a bad meal.

As I read his obit, I heard his voice say, "Andy, can I use my bullet?" (He kept his one bullet in his shirt pocket and his citation book under his cap.) Or his classic lover boy serenade for his squeeze Juanita. And something I recently discovered... Officer Barney Fife was actually Sheriff Andy Taylor's cousin. (Mayberry, indeed!)

Years later, Don would reappear in Three's Company. But for me this insipid character was a waste of his acting genius and never rivaled Officer Fife's twitchy comedic panache. A few years after that, I had the good fortune of working with him as one of his TV agents. I found myself booking him on pathetic daytime game shows as a celebrity guest. It embarrassed me to have to call him and sell him in this world. But he did it and he always did it with a smile and a "thank you." He was a real dude, a trooper.

It's easy to eulogize a man after the fact, but I predict that years from now his Fifeness will continue to inspire. You really owe it to yourself to immerse yourself in the land of Fife. You will never be the same. After all, there's a little bit of Fife in all of us.