Gone too soon . . . Gary Ablett RIP

Even when he was part of the ultra-successful Liverpool team, me often heard punters say "he isn't good enough".

But as former team mates reflected upon the news of his tragic passing, consensus appears that he was a top pro & one who thoroughly deserved his place in that great LFC team.

Solid, dependable & fuss free, Ablett was a vital cog in that Anfield MAchine circa 88-90 which many pundits consider to be one of the finest footballing sides ever.

Ablett won two FA Cups with both red & blue halves of Merseyside.

RIP.

Coolest facial hair in footie - Socrates RIP

"That's how you play when under pressure. Brazil have replied."

Even though me was a wee lad during Espana 82, me can still remember the commentator's words when Socrates strode into the Italian penalty box & slid in that goal.

Though Brasil lost that classic tussle with the Italians, many football fans of a certain vintage will always have very fond memories of that team. Classy & reckless in equal measures, they were the closest thing to the great 1970 side that truly played football as a "beautiful game'.

And with his 70s style neo-Afro & headband, Socrates looked like the coolest thing on planet footie. Socrates famously sat fer his medical exams whille being a full time pro & he is also famed fer his pro-democracy campaigning whihc helped overthrow a dictatorship.

Alas, the Smoking Doctor who captained Brasil passed on today at the age of 57.

And to quote a narrator on one those 'great Brasilian world cup' videos who said, "these men have truly bestowed on us a golden almanac of memories."

RIP.

Xcuse me while I kiss the sky . . .

Wot a life . . .

Owsley Stanley killed in car crash
LOS ANGELES, March 14 — Owsley “Bear” Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia yesterday, his family said. He was 76.

The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco’s Bay Area.

“He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor,” former rock ‘n’ roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Hendrix’s song “Purple Haze” was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley’s product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting psychedelic-blues combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.

Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums, providing him with a healthy income in later life.

“When it came to technology, the Bear was one of the most far-out and interesting guys on the planet,” Cutler wrote. “The first FM live simulcast could be, in part, attributed to his vision, as could the first quadraphonic simulcast on radio.”
The Dead, a fabled rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 known for its improvisational live concerts, wrote about him in their song “Alice D. Millionaire” after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to describe Stanley as an “LSD millionaire.”

Steely Dan’s 1976 single “Kid Charlemagne” was loosely inspired by Stanley’s exploits.

‘COMMUNITY SERVICE’
According to a 2007 profile in the San Francisco Chronicle, Stanley started cooking LSD after discovering the recipe in a chemistry journal at the University of California, Berkeley.
The police raided his first lab in 1966, but Stanley successfully sued for the return of his equipment. After a marijuana bust in 1970, he went to prison for two years.

“I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for,” he told the Chronicle’s Joel Selvin.

“What I did was a community service, the way I look at it. I was punished for political reasons. Absolutely meaningless. Was I a criminal? No. I was a good member of society. Only my society and the one making the laws are different.”
He emigrated to the tropical Australian state of Queensland in the early 1980s, apparently fearful of a new ice age, and sold enamel sculptures on the Internet. He lost one of his vocal cords to cancer.

Stanley was born Augustus Owsley Stanley III in Kentucky, a state governed by his namesake grandfather from 1915 to 1919. He served in the US Air Force for 18 months, studied ballet in Los Angeles and then enrolled at UC Berkeley. In addition to producing and advocating LSD, he adhered to an all-meat diet.

Cutler, speaking on behalf of the family, said in an interview that Stanley and his wife, Sheila, were driving to their home near the city of Cairns along a dangerous stretch of highway when he evidently lost control during a storm. He died instantly; his wife broke her collar bone.

Stanley is also survived by four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. — Reuters

Man On the Silver Mountain - RIP Ronnie James Dio.

Me clearly remembers when me was a wee lad & Mobil petrol stations were having a promo. Fer every RM10 of fuel pumped ye got a sticker & once ye had ten stickers, ye got to choose a free cassette. One time me dad let me choose & even though me was just 10 years old, me hand randomly pointed towards the gold cover of Rainbow's Long Live Rock n Roll. Suffice to say, me ears were too tender fer the ruckus & the tape was consigned to the drawer of forgotten relics.

But me curiosity was awakened again when later on, me kept hearing Rainbow tunes on the nightly FM radio programmes such as Pilihan Anda. (Yes, in the Dark Ages prior to the world wide web, us folks had to rely on local radio fer entertainment!). Soon that tape was dug out & the slow journey towards metaldom had begun.

Any long hair worth his or her salt will always have a soft spot fer Ronnie James Dio. In fact, many, like meself, would have had their first forays into heavy rock thanks to the many classics he penned - Temple of the King (Rainbow), Heaven & Hell (Black Sabbath) &, of course, Holy Diver (Dio).

Sadly, Dio succumbed to stomach cancer yesterday. He was 67.

To read more, please click here: http://themalaysianinsider.com/showbiz/article/heavy-metal-veteran-ronnie-james-dio-dies/

Magic Wood (Les Paul: 1915-2009)

Would the instantly recognisable ringing guitar intro to GnR's Sweet Child O' Mine sound the same if Slash had not used a Les Paul Gibson? And let's face it, many of us dreamed of posing with one even if we couldn't strum a single riff to save our bacon. It is an icon of cool.

Les Paul passed on yesterday at the grand old age of 94 after succumbing to complications arising from pneumonia. From recording techniques to iconic instruments, Les Paul has given music lovers everywhere countless hours of enjoyment.

Thank you sir & may yer memory live on forever.

For a more detailed obituary, please go to: http://www.malaysiainsider.com/index.php/showbiz/35144-original-guitar-hero-les-paul-dies

ps: Just in case anyone is confused, Les Paul is pictured at the top next to the Beatle. The other two pix highlight why his guitars are part of rock iconography.

pps: yer all invited to share yer fave Les Paul anecdote or rave about yer fave piece of music featuring his guitars.

Breaking Glass - RIP JG Ballard

"In his vision of a car crash with the actress, Vaughan was obsessed by many wounds and impacts--by the dying chromium and collapsing bulkheads of their two cars meeting head-on in complex collisions endlessly repeated in slow-motion films, by the identical wounds inflicted on their bodies, by the image of windshield glass frosting around her face as she broke its tinted surface like a death-born Aphrodite, by the compound fractures of their thighs impacted against their handbrake mountings, ban above all by the wounds to their genitalia, her uterus pierced by the heraldic beak of the manufacturer's medallion, his semen emptying across the luminescent dials that registered forever the last temperature and the fuel levels of the engine." - excerpt from Crash (1973).

Anyone who can make a car crash sound erotic & horrific at the same time is pretty fooking cool by me.

RIP - James Graham Ballard (November 15, 1930 - April 19, 2009).

ps: Fer more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard .

RIP - Richard Wright

LONDON, Sept 16 - Richard Wright, a founding member of Pink Floyd, died yesterday. He was 65.

The rock group’s spokesman, Doug Wright, who’s unrelated, said Wright died after a battle with cancer at his home in Britain. He said the band member’s family did not want to give more details about his death.

Wright met Pink Floyd members Roger Waters and Nick Mason in college and joined their early band, Sigma 6. Along with the late Syd Barrett, the four formed Pink Floyd in 1965.

The group’s jazz-infused rock and drug-laced multimedia “happenings” made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene, and their 1967 album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”, was a hit.

In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright, along with Barrett, was seen as the group’s dominant musical force. The London-born musician and son of a biochemist wrote songs and played the keyboard.

“Rick’s keyboards were an integral part of the Pink Floyd sound,” said Joe Boyd, a prominent record producer who worked with Pink Floyd early in its career.

The band released a series of commercially and critically successful albums including 1973’s “The Dark Side of the Moon”, which has sold more than 40 million copies. Wright wrote “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them” for that album, and worked on the group’s epic compositions such as “Atom Heart Mother”, “Echoes” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”.

But tensions grew among Waters, Wright and fellow band member David Gilmour. The tensions came to a head during the making of “The Wall” when Waters insisted Wright be fired. As a result, Wright was relegated to the status of session musician on the tour of “The Wall”, and did not perform on Pink Floyd’s 1983 album, “The Final Cut”.

Wright formed a new band Zee with Dave Harris from the band Fashion, and released one album, “Identity”, with Atlantic Records.

Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and Wright began recording with Mason and Gilmour again, releasing the albums “The Division Bell” and “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” as Pink Floyd. Wright also released the solo albums “Wet Dream” (1978) and “Broken China” (1996).

In July 2005, Wright, Waters, Mason and Gilmour reunited to perform at the “Live 8” charity concert in London - the first time in 25 years they had been onstage together.

Wright also worked on Gilmour’s solo projects, most recently playing on the 2006 album “On an Island” and the accompanying world tour.

Gilmour paid tribute to Wright yesterday, saying his input was often forgotten.

“He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound,” he said. “I have never played with anyone quite like him.” - AP


Sigh . . . Having been so caught up with the state of political flux here, me completely missed this piece of news. Like millions of music lovers, the Floyd was a constant on our turntable/CD player/ipod & gave many pleasurable & guilt-free hours of self-absorption.

Thanks fer the music Rick Wright . . . may yer journey onwards be as trippy & wonderful as the incredible music you made.

ps: Who can forget the mood set by Richard Wright's synth intro to Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Understated, sombre & yet bursting with emotion . . .

pps: pix caption (above): In this file photo dated March 3, 1967, members of the rock band Pink Floyd, Roger Waters (left), Nick Mason (second from left), Syd Barrett (second from right) and Richard Wright (right). - AP pic