“The Tragic End of Amy Winehouse”
Written July 28, 2011…
As the entire world knows by now, troubled R&B chanteuse Amy Winehouse sadly passed away on Saturday at the age of 27. I guess we all knew it would tragically end this way. She had been on a self-destructive course throughout her entire career. The drugs, the drinking, the run-ins with the law, a failed marriage fraught with problems and co-addiction, the inability to produce a follow-up to her blockbuster 2006 album Back to Black (which she had finally begun writing and recording recently) and the numerous concerts that ended in drunken disaster. Every time she took a step in the right direction we held out hope that she wouldn’t end up like Billie Holiday and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin before her – artists who burned brightly but flamed out too quickly. With every step forward though, she would take two steps back – and so her life ended without ever having fulfilled all the promise she once showed. In otherwords, a tragedy. The fact that this was so predictable doesn’t make it any less of a tragic event. It was not easy watching her self-destruct over the past five years – watching her play out her sad life like a slow motion car crash. In some ways, it seems amazing that this didn’t happen much sooner. The fact that she had managed to hang on longer than anyone expected made us think that maybe she had turned a corner – especially with her insistence that she had given up hard drugs. The drinking remained though. And now she has joined the infamous “27 Club.” Read the rest of this entry »
Passengers – “Original Soundtracks 1” (1995)
A Boston Globe review of the U2/Brian Eno Passengers side project, from Nov. 7, 1995 and written by Jim Sullivan…
Eno, U2 Make an Original
The five guys who put together Original Soundtracks 1 (Island) refer to themselves as Passengers, and that’s fair enough: They’re not trading on their star status, not publicly or ostentatiously, anyway. That is, they’re not billed as U2 and Brian Eno, and no one should misconstrue this album as being the latest U2 opus.
As to Eno fans? Well, they might automatically, and justifiably, perk up their ears, but they’re a more limited group, as Eno has never sold more than 100,000 copies of any one album.
Eno – Roxy Music cofounder, U2’s frequent producer, David Bowie’s on-and-off collaborator and a long-term progressive solo artist of high regard – is a wizard in many ways. This disc, in stores today, very much bears his sonic imprint. Fans of Eno’s Another Green World and his ambient work will be enchanted.
Original Soundtracks 1 also features the voice of Luciano Pavarotti singing “Miss Sarajevo” with Bono. Before your knee-jerk reaction kicks in – yet another incongruous, showboating Bono duet! – let me state that’s it’s a sad, emotionally wrenching gem. Read the rest of this entry »
Amy Winehouse – “Love Is a Losing Game” (2006)
Probably her most beautiful song, I post this as a tribute to the great Amy Winehouse, who sadly and tragically died way too young. I’m very saddened right now. Addiction claimed another talent at 27 years of age. It’s just terrible.
Amy Winehouse Found Dead in London
MSN.com reports that Amy Winehouse has tragically but sadly predictably passed away at the too-young age of 27. What a terrible shame and a waste of a beautiful talent.
May she rest in peace…
Grammy Award winner was 27, had checked out of treatment center month ago.
Amy Winehouse, the beehived soul-jazz diva whose self-destructive habits overshadowed a distinctive musical talent, was found dead Saturday in her London home, police said. She was 27.
The British singer’s record label, Universal, confirmed her death on Saturday.
“We are deeply saddened at the sudden loss of such a gifted musician, artist and performer,” the statement read. “Our prayers go out to Amy’s family, friends and fans at this difficult time.”
Winehouse shot to fame with the album Back to Black, whose blend of jazz, soul, rock and classic pop was a global hit. It won five Grammys and made Winehouse — with her black beehive hairdo and old-fashioned sailor tattoos — one of music’s most recognizable stars.
Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene. An autopsy is scheduled for Sunday, TMZ.com reports. Read the rest of this entry »
Ted Berrigan – “Jim Carroll” (1969)
A 1969 article from Culture Hero #5 by poet Ted Berrigan about fellow poet Jim Carroll, who was just starting out, and years away from becoming a singer…
Jim Carroll has to be the biggest thing arriving in heroic culture right now. “How does it feel to be a famous poet?” “It feels . . .” No, no more. It’s beginning to feel famous? & half the population is under 25. The poems for the singing voice that pour from radios and record players, are turning kids on, and turning them on to poems for the talking voice, too. There are so many fresh and exciting and amazingly talented poets under 25 now, and what a pleasure they are! Thanks, beatniks! Thanks, Beatles!, and thanks, Bobby Dylan! Or at least I think thanks.
Jim Carroll is beautiful. He says [in Organic Trains], “I was forewarned about the clocks falling on me, so all I felt was 8 colors as my wrist watch flew into the sky’s cheek. Watches are very symbolic of security, they remind me of Frank O’Hara. Frank O’Hara reminds me of many wonderful things, as does the vanilla light . . .”
He’s 20 years old, stands 6’3″, and has a body like Nureyev (or would have were Nureyev Clint Eastwood). Across a party, or a poetry-reading one sees above a black swath of leather, Jim Carroll’s brilliant-red Prince Valiant cut quietly Read the rest of this entry »
Shabazz Palaces – “Black Up” (2011)
A recent review from the PopMatters website, June 28, 2011, by Matthew Fiander…
Ishmael Butler can be a bit confusing. He was once part of Digible Planets, but now—as the front man for Shabazz Palaces—he prefers to go by Palaceer Lazaro and act as a sort of man behind the curtain. If this shift in persona seems unnecessary, even tedious, from a performer that’s been around as long as Butler has, the slippery nature of identity it presents gives us a great frame for the equally slippery music on Black Up. Listening to this record, you can hear loose ties to Digible Planets, but can we really say this is the same Butler who gave us Blowout Comb? And if he’s not—as his shift in names suggests—then what is this new Butler, this Lazaro, giving us?
The answer to that question is a difficult one, but it is also what makes this album so endlessly fascinating. It doesn’t frustrate with its difficulties so much as it pushes us to ask questions about some of our deeply ingrained assumptions about music. Butler is certainly rapping here, so you’d be inclined to call this hip-hop. Trouble is, Black Up sounds nothing like any other hip-hop record around, and often borrows from ambient music, electronica, jazz, drone, Read the rest of this entry »
Jack Kerouac – “On the Road” (1957)
A review of On the Road from Phoebe Lou Adams from the October 1957 issue of The Atlantic. It’s always fascinating to read what critics thought of On the Road at the time of its release…
Ladder to Nirvana
Jack Kerouac’s second novel, On the Road (Viking, $3.95), concerns the adventures of the narrator, Sal Paradise, a war veteran who is studying on the G.I. bill and writing a book between drinks, and his younger friend, Dean Moriarty late of reform school. Neither of these boys can sit still. They race back and forth from New York to San Francisco, they charge from one party to another, they tour jazz joints, and Dean complicates the pattern by continually getting married. At odd moments they devote a little thought to finding Dean’s father, a confirmed drunk who is presumably bumming around somewhere west of the Mississippi.
Dean is the more important character. Mr. Kerouac makes considerable play with his disorderly childhood, his hitch in the reform school, and his rootlessness, but his activities seem less a search for stability than a determined pursuit of euphoria. Dope, liquor, girls, jazz, and fast cars, in that order, are Dean’s ladder to nirvana, and so much time is spent on them that it is hard to keep track of any larger pattern behind all the scuttling about. Read the rest of this entry »
The Beat Patrol 