Farewell, T-Model Ford
From the obituary in The Times (£): Blues musician whose whiskey-fuelled guitar playing, raw lyrics and risqué repartee made him the toast of the Mississippi Delta It was difficult to distinguish between reality and legend in the life of T-Model Ford. Like many of the great bluesmen, his ability to self-mythologise and his delight in […]
Let us now praise famous underachievers
A charmingly unsparing obituary in yesterday’s Times(£) celebrated the life and times of rock musician Kevin Ayers. Very old readers of this blog may remember him. A richly gifted singer and songwriter, Kevin Ayers made some wonderfully quixotic and engaging pop music, full of wit, warmth and whimsy. He was a founder member of Soft Machine, […]
RIP CMJ
“Tony Greig died of a heart attack on Saturday. It was probably for him a merciful release because the late stage of any cancer is often hell on earth.” So wrote Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times on 31 December. He knew what he was writing about. He died of cancer himself on New Year’s Day. […]
What I will and wont miss by Norah Ephron
Posted by Vale Writer and director Norah Ephron died this week. Called an artist of consolation, she is remembered for comedies like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, but also wrote screenplays for the more serious Silkwood, fiction and a huge number of books, articles and blog posts. In I Remember Nothing she left […]
‘Moose…Indian’ – whose last words?
Posted by Vale 150 years ago yesterday Henry David Thoreau died. I’ve loved him ever since I came across his views on the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Emerson had written in praise of it, but Thoreau – with something of the prophet in him – refused to be enthusiastic simply noting that “perchance the first […]
Death is a great score-settler
Hat tip to Xpiry
Remembering Dory Previn
Posted by Vale A week or so ago one of my heroines died – the musician, writer and singer Dory Previn. She hasn’t recorded much, but for those who know her work she is unmatched in her musicality, wit, dark humour and willingness to explore the darker parts of the mind and a woman’s experience […]
Quote of the day
Posted by Vale “I still use a manual typewriter (a 1953 Underwood portable, in a robin’s-egg blue) because the soft pip-pip-pip of the typing of keys on a computer keyboard doesn’t quite fit with my sense of what writing sounds like. I need the hard metal clack, and I need those keys to sometimes catch […]
Quote of the day +
Posted by Vale Wislawa Szymborska – Nobel prize winning poet – died last week. In a piece in the Guardian she was reported as saying: “For the last few years my favourite phrase has been ‘I don’t know’. I’ve reached the age of self-knowledge, so I don’t know anything. People who claim that they […]
Nice obit
Really nice recent obit here from The Times: Hilary Ruth ALLEN Hilary Ruth (nee Castle). The family are sad to announce, after a long and brave 3 year battle with cancer the death of Hilary in Salisbury on the 5th January 2012, aged 67 years. She was a wonderful mother, wife and friend, whose presence […]
