Passages

[colinr0380]

John Lafia who wrote the screenplay for the original 1988 Child's Play and wrote and directed Child's Play 2 (that's the film in which Grace Zabriske is photocopiered to death, and Jenny Agutter turns up purely to get bumped off too)

He also wrote and directed 1988's The Blue Iguana, 1993's Man's Best Friend and a fun looking 2002 TV movie The Rats.

Whilst it is not noted on his imdb page, here's The Ballad of Frank and Cora (NSFW), as noted in the Variety article, from his YouTube channel.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Matty Simmons

[colinr0380]

Here's Derek Malcolm's Guardian obituary for Rishi Kapoor.

[tavernier]

Mezzo-soprano Rosalind Elias

[tavernier]

'70s adult-film star Samantha Fox

[fiddlesticks]

Don Shula

[MichaelB]

Stranglers keyboard player Dave Greenfield, of Covid-19.

[beamish14]

Matty Simmons

A HUGE figure in contemporary American comedy. He put out an interesting autobiography some years back. Typically
self-aggrandizing stuff in many spots, and not really dynamically well-written, but it does show how he made a beeline from
making a fortune through the Diner's Club credit card to eventually commercializing the Harvard Lampoon. He also
published Heavy Metal magazine for a while, and was responsible for bringing over the concept of Metal Hurlant
from France with Leonard Goldberg.

[dadaistnun]

Composer Dmitri Smirnov, of COVID, back on April 9.

[neilist]

Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider.

[Glowingwabbit]

Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider.

That's a rough one. I can't even picture what music of the last 40+ years would look like without Kraftwerk.

[hearthesilence]

Rough morning.

Poet Michael McClure (who has a cameo in Scorsese's The Last Waltz)

Millie Small who recorded an early landmark reggae hit, "My Boy Lollipop"

[Calvin]

Peque Gallaga, Filipino director best known for Oro, Plata, Mata

[Swift]

Sad to hear of Schneider's death. I was late to discover Kraftwerk only coming to them in the last decade. What amazing music.

While I'm not particularly familiar with the UK hip hop scene, Ty's "Ha Ha" was a favourite of mine after hearing it on Scratch Pervert's stellar Fabric Live Mix. He died this week aged 47 of coronavirus.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy, from COVID-19

[GaryC]

No online obits as yet, but Arthur Dignam has apparently passed away. He was 80.

ETA: A report here.

[colinr0380]

If you want more history of Kraftwerk, that Are Sounds Electrik channel has put up a specific tribute to Florian Schneider, as well as a documentary on the band and a 1998 concert. The area that I would really take contention with that documentary on however is the complete dismissal of Kraftwerk's late album, 2003's Tour de France, which is a stunning piece of work and actually contradicts the thesis of the interviewed music historian (that Kraftwerk destroyed their avant garde beginnings by succumbing/being seduced into making shorter length pop tunes and then faded away through a combination of lack of ideas and being surpassed by groups they inspired) by actually being a complete return to an album being one entire audio work about perpetual motion on the level of Autobahn or Trans Europe Express, where the move into different tracks works almost like gear changes! It was a wonderful unexpected final gift of an album from the group, and of course inevitably at the time got dismissed primarily because there were few catchy three minute radio friendly tracks on it! (Though the heavy breathing of Elektro Kardiogramm comes the closest after the title track, I think!). There feels like a lot of influence from the Tour de France album on The Chemical Brothers "Theme For Velodrome" track for the 2012 London Olympics.

That dismissal of Tour de France does lead into my general feeling that I think there is a bit of a limitation in thinking about electronic music in the media that if it is not playing in a nightclub or on the beaches of Ibiza to hedonistic revellers that it does not have a proper 'function', which ignores that some great music in the genre is all about the 'soundscape' and made for private listening and contemplation as much as for clubbing!

Lots of Kraftwerk (the Radio-Activity album) also turns up in Christopher Petit's fantastic Wim Wenders-influenced 1979 UK road movie Radio On, with a beautiful use of Ohm Sweet Ohm over the final scene and end credits.

[MichaelB]

Producer Włodzimierz Niderhaus, a huge figure in Polish cinema over the last half-century, not least for his long-term willingness to give promising new filmmakers an early break.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Horror cartoonist and watercolorist Richard Sala - a remembrance from his friend Daniel Clowes here.

[Aunt Peg]

Australian actor Arthur Dignam best known for his role in The Devils Playground (1976):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Dignam

[britcom68]

An overlooked passing from one month ago- former Californian politician John V. Briggs, from cancer. Briggs was best known for pushing the failed Proposition 6 in California which gave Harvey Milk the opportunity to become known statewide as a serious campaigner. Briggs is covered, as well as the campaign against Prop 6, in Van Sant's film Milk, as well as in the Criterion edition of The Times of Harvey Milk.

https://www.mtdemocrat.com/news/former- ... iggs-dies/

I've always felt is a sad twist that although the Briggs initiative was defeated due to Milk's hard-fought campaigning, Milk would be assassinated just less than a month after his victory.

[pet42]

Photographer Astrid Kirchherr: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/ ... es-aged-81

[GaryC]

Pete May of the Pretty Things, aged 75.

[Professor Wagstaff]

Fred Willard

A sad loss for comedy. He never failed at getting a laugh out of me, with Best in Show ranking among one of the funniest performances I've seen.

[swo17]

Both of those sting