Ennio Morricone - d. July 6th 2020

Listen! Those soaring buttes

of string, mariachi trumpet, 

the sound of a desert on fire,

of gunshot, gulch and canyon, 

the kind of music that people

make movies to accompany.

Read about Ennio Morricone here

Earl Cameron - d. July 3rd 2020

Many read for your part,

a realist plot simmering

with a deeper history,

but someone had to be

the first to be cast,

the first in the credits.

Read about Earl Cameron here

 

Carl Reiner - d. June 29th 2020

They called you

about a new show of shows,

confident

that you would enter, laughing. 

They asked you 

when will the scripts be ready?

I heard you say

In about two thousand years.

Read about Carl Reiner here

Margarita Pracatan - d. June 23rd 2020

No sombre ceremony

could fete you: that would be wrong,

wrong as the memory

of melody you learned for too long,

rendered unsingable. We

mourn your approximation of song.

Read about Margarita Pracatan here

Ian Holm - d. June 19th 2020

I admired your purity,  

from outside the stadium,

to the middle of another Earth, 

to the coldness of space

- a survivor, always believable

in your unbelievable art.

Read about Ian Holm here

Vera Lynn - d. June 18th 2020

A table is reserved

at the Ritz of any age.

A menu of optimism

falls open at a page

adorned with bluebirds.

Angels sit expectantly

as you rise to the stage.

Read about Vera Lynn here

Keith Tippett - d. June 14th 2020

There are no blueprints

for spontaneity: breathe

in a note, chord, cadence,

breathe out brilliance

through fingertips that,

even now, don't know

what's coming next.

Read about Keith Tippett here

Ricky Valance - d. June 12th 2020

Tell Ricky, who loved him,

that in the chapel steeped in song,

we are singing his hymn

to doomed adolescence, the wrong

words but the right tune, grim

as the fate we expected all along.

Read about Ricky Valance here

Rupert Hine - d. June 4th 2020

Takeastrangerpathandlurkfordecadesinthedarkness

Takeaquirkysoundandmakeitintosomethingquantum

Fixxuponafutureanddesignitforthestereo

Thinkmanthinkofhowyoullhearaheavenandremixit

Read about Rupert Hine here

Steve Priest - d. June 4th 2020

Are you ready, Steve,

to raise some hell, push 

the button marked blitz,

square off with the bass, 

find the action, grab a piece?

All right, fella, let’s go...

Read more about Steve Priest here

Michael Angelis - d. May 30th 2020

There's a promised land,

thick with accents, jokes,

where there are jobs 

for all the boys, signals 

are all set at clear

and there are rabbits, 

rabbits, everywhere.

Read about Michael Angelis here

Larry Kramer - d. May 27th 2020

Amid those years of chaos,

waist-deep in prejudice,

you cut through the BS,

wrote uncomfortable justice,

of the first lesions, the KS,

the plague before the abyss, 

scripted a warning, a witness.

Read about Larry Kramer here

Fred Willard - d. May 15th 2020

Eh, wha’appen? 
I blinked and missed you,
then rewatched,
as all of us must surely do,
and you snuck in,
smiling, not knowing a damn
thing. I went for you
like you were made outta ham.

Read about Fred Willard Here

Astrid Kirchherr - d. May 12th 2020

Your wraith, in half-shadow,
is the spectre in the cellar
or the dark boutiques of 
Mathew Street, St Pauli.
A stylish ghost, friend to
genius, tutor in the art
of the unschoolable cool.

Read about Astrid Kirchherr Here

Little Richard - d. May 9th 2020

Hail! Hail! We genuflect
before the king who wrote the book.
Originator. Architect.
You sang a prayer, then ripped it up.

read about Little Richard here

Florian Schneider - d. May 6th 2020

Sounds. Rhythms. Frontiers. Legend.
Sounds. Rhythms. Frontiers. Legend.
Sounds. Rhythms. Frontiers. Legend.
Sounds. Rhythms. Frontiers. Legend.

Read about Florian Schneider here

Millie Small - d. May 5th 2020

My, girl, 
how you lit the fuse 
to that cane-sweet beat, 
blue as Kingston sky, 
mashing up systems 
from here to Brixton,
making the world 
go giddy-up.

Read about Millie Small here

Dave Greenfield - d. May 3rd 2020

No more your riffsinblack,
textures like suninblack.
Play then the dirgeinblack:
Long gone is youthinblack.

Read about Dave Greenfield here

Jill Gascoine - d. April 29th 2020

We need someone to be
the first to the old scene,
cast an eye on a dark place,
witness and be witnessed,
gather fresh new evidence,
present a gentler case.

Read about Jill Gascoine here

Gabi Delgado - d. March 22nd 2020

All is not good today.
Sweat drips as you channel 
Ramone and Moroder, 
sex and steroids, leather
and propaganda, body
and rhetoric colliding forever.

Heute ist nicht alles gut.
Schweiß tropft, während Sie kanalisieren
Ramone und Moroder,
Sex und Steroide, Leder
und Propaganda, Körper
und Rhetorik kollidiert für immer.

read about Gabi Delgado here