James Chance – d. June 18th 2024

New Wave corrodes into No Wave.
The world contorts and blows itself
out, leaving us with two chances:
no chance and James Chance,
and James Chance just left town.

Read about James Chance here

Françoise Hardy – d. June 11th 2024

Tous les garçons
connaissent tes chansons;
ils sentent ton souffle
comme un couteau dans la chair.
Toutes les filles
connaissent ta douleur;
la tension d'un coeur
qui apprend à casser.
 

All the boys
know your songs;
they feel your breath
like a knife in the flesh.
All the girls
know your pain;
the strain of a heart
learning how to break.

Read about Françoise Hardy here

Bill Anders – d. June 7th 2024

How small this capsule, too cramped
for the spirit of a man who looked
through the lens of space without
seeing his own reflection, who went
to the Moon but discovered the Earth. 

Read about Bill Anders here

Michael Mosley – d. June 5th 2024

Learning is the only real diet
that works; 5:2, where five
is common sense and two
is science. It’s all we can do:
eat well, dream, think, be alive
until the body returns to quiet.

Read about Michael Mosley here

Nicholas Ball – d. June 4th 2024

The gumshoes tail the wide boys;
sometimes you can’t tell which is
which, all those dropped aitches
and pickup lines while boozers
burn, and every villain has a tale:
who’s brown bread, or brown ale.

Read about Nicholas Ball here

 

William Russell – d. June 3rd 2024

Eternity beckons to us, opens doors
of the blue boxes of our imagination.
The Universe is wondrous but malign;
be amazed for us, frightened for us,
our small teacher in an infinite school. 

Read about WIlliam Russell here

Rob Burrow – d. June 2nd 2024

Life will take six tackles: childhood’s open
field; the scrummage of youth; the day
you find your best position; victory and its
disguises; defeat that you cannot admit;
the hooter that never blows for such as you.

Read about Rob Burrow here 

Richard M. Sherman – d. May 25th 2024

I was born on the back seat of a car
on the sad-happy road between
Hushabye Mountain and Lullaby Bay.
It was music that brought me this far
from all the grown-ups I have been
to the little boy in my shadow today. 

Read about Richard M. Sherman here

Frank Ifield – d. May 18th 2024

Few now can honestly recall
your times - the waning croon,
the looming beat, throat-trill
and tears, pure vaudeville,
songs that ended too soon,
the intangible thrill of it all. 

Read about Frank Ifield here

Roger Corman – d. May 9th 2024

Terror at the Drive-in; shock and schlock,
art brut and buckets of blood, all shot by
The Man With X-Ray Imagination, who knows
that when the light goes over-budget
you can always tell the story with shadows. 

Read about Roger Corman here

Shirley Conran – d. May 9th 2024

The night is nearly done, yet still
so many positions to be explored;
woman as missionary to themselves,
money like Spanish Fly, how life is only
too short for housework when it’s over.

Read about Shirley Conran here

Steve Albini – d. May 7th 2024

The problem with music is that
there are more broken hearts
than broken strings. Crank up
the amp, fill your lungs and play;
faster, harder, bigger, blacker. 

Read about Steve Albini here

Bernard Hill – d. May 5th 2024

Where is the horse that could bear
such as you, so often playing beaten
and broken? We need to see dignity
in defeat, a Kirkby kiss that breaks
a nose, a heart: you could do that. 

Read about Bernard Hill here

Duane Eddy – d. April 30th 2024

Time twangs like a guitar string;
we are all rebels at the low end
caught in the shimmer of reverb.
I nestle the Gretsch in its case
and close the lid once and for all. 

Read about Duane Eddy here

Frank Field – d. April 23rd 2024

Politics is a long walk, not a cab on expenses.
It does not speed through our darker towns
swerving round the fallen, past the crowds.
It is the service of the outstretched hand,
the conversation, the trying to understand. 

Read about Frank Field here

Derek Underwood – d. April 15th 2024

Some lives are a slow turn of the arm, same
line and length day after day; others deceive
with variation, changes of pace and angle,
occasional days that skid through fast,
that you can only stand up and applaud.

Read about Derek Underwood here

Peter Higgs – d. April 8th 2024

The universe is barely credible,
its mass in excess of what is visible,
its meaning opaque, intangible.
Most of us exist and die, illegible
and void. Others are indelible,
named by every atom, irreducible.

Read about Peter Higgs here

Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry – d. April 7th 2024

It’s not easy in the Big Easy, friend,
and making it big is the biggest joke,
but a bluesman’s a bluesman right to the end,
and life’s hard, and then you croak. 

Read about Clarence 'Frogman' Henry here

Keith LeBlanc – d. April 2024

You sit down to play; the kit becomes
an orchestra, a symphony of drums,
super-heavy, hi-hat like a ticking bomb,
paranoid snare and depth-charge toms,
kick-drum beating rebellion in sixteenths,
no compromise, no sell-out, no relief.

Read about Keith LeBlanc here

Chris Cross – d. March 25th 2024

Sooner or later we will return
to an Eden of our own; yours
will be lush and romantic, bass
amped up and folded back until
it becomes a hymn to lost youth.

Read about Chris Cross here