Coffee-Table Notes

Adventures on Yan   Imagine this. A colonised world where natives and settlers live peacefully beside each other. Old traditions have been forgotten since the place was taken over, so few born there are aware of their history anymore. Many have willingly embraced the ways of those who took them over, while some incomers fetishise local ways, appropriating them as something fashionable that might make them appear cool. While cultural integration largely keeps any prejudice at play, there are incomers who see themselves as superior, and look down on the natives. Largely, however, most get by.    Into this, a blaze of spectacular images suddenly lights up the skies without warning, dazzling those below. The event is the latest in a universal franchise that has given its creator a virtual monopoly on such events, whether their intended audiences want them or not. But those behind it want more, and have landed in an attempt to make their next gig even better.    To d...

Charley Pride – Singer   Born March 18, 1934: died December 12, 2020       Charley Pride, who has died aged 86 from complications of Covid-19, was a Country singer who broke the mould several times over. His honey-sweet, easy-going voice on deep fried classics such as Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’ and Crystal Chandelier saw him sell millions of records and become successful all over the world. Pride released more than fifty albums, and scored twenty-nine No.1’s in the Country music chart. During his thirty years with the RCA record label, only Elvis Presley sold more records.    As a black artist operating within what has historically been a predominantly white genre, Pride’s talents came to the fore during an era of institutionalised racism, and his early records were issued without a picture of him. He was only the second artist of colour to become a member of the home of Country royalty, the Grand Ole Opry.   Pride wore such pioneering as gently a...

David Johnson - Theatre producer Born October 12, 1960; died December 13, 2020   David Johnson, who has died aged 60, was a theatre producer whose ebullient largesse and fearless eye for an off-kilter hit was rooted in the creative anarchy of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Now household names such as Graham Norton, Stewart Lee, Sue Perkins, Alexei Sayle and Steve Coogan all worked with Johnson, who also brought American provocateurs Bill Hicks and Michael Moore to the UK.   In the in-yer-face 1990s, collaborating with Mark Goucher as G&J Productions, Johnson co-produced commercial tours of Trainspotting, Harry Gibson’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s seminal novel. Tours of Marabou Stork Nightmares and Filth followed.     At one time, the dynamic but short-lived G&J seemed to have cornered the market in grenade-lobbing theatrical assaults on what a commercial hit could be. Mark Ravenhill’s era defining play, Shopping and F******, went to Broadway. Enda Wals...

Harold Budd – composer, musician   Born May 24, 1936; died December 8, 2020    Harold Budd, who has died aged 84 from complications caused by Covid-19, was a composer and pianist whose work left its mark with a slow burning intensity. This was as evident on Brian Eno produced albums such as The Plateaux of Mirror (1980) as it was on later records with Robin Guthrie. These included the soundtrack to Gregg Araki’s film, White Bird in a Blizzard (2014), and the recently released Another Flower (2020).    Inbetween came a substantial body of work that felt as elongated as some of the notes played on Budd’s spacious and intricately constructed compositions.  Whether working with such fellow travellers or carving out his musical atmospheres solo, Budd’s palette remained constant. Playing with what he described as ‘soft pedal’, a form of gentle footwork that gave keys different tones, his work was both insistent and barely there. Every sustained note seemed t...

Luke Rhinehart  – writer   Born November 15, 1932; died November 6, 2020 George Cockcroft, who has died aged 87, was better known to millions of readers as Luke Rhinehart, author of one of the quintessential late twentieth century counter cultural novels. The Dice Man (1971), about a bored psychiatrist – also named Luke Rhinehart - who decides to live his life based on the roll of the dice, transcended cult status to become a totem of its time. Presented as a kind of pseudo autobiography of the mythical Rhinehart, the book tapped into the 1960s generation’s search for freedom with a darkly troubling humour, and went on to sell more than two million copies. While Cockcroft stayed away from the limelight, the success of The Dice Man saw another ten books appear under the Rhinehart by-line, with some of them later reworked. Cockcroft’s first novel remained a huge influence on pop culture. Mark E. Smith and The Fall paid homage with their song, Dice Man (1979), and Talk Talk’s...

Chris Killip – Photographer   Born July 11, 1946; died October 13, 2020    Chris Killip, who has died aged 74, was a pioneering documentary photographer, whose depictions of working class communities in the north of England during the1970s and 1980s captured a part of British society in the process of being marginalised or else wiped out entirely. Taken in vivid black and white, Killip’s images were a crucial counterpoint to the Thatcherite claim that there was no such thing as society. Images of the Tyneside shipyards captured great hulks towering over redbrick terraces. Workers coming off shift eye the camera with a mixture of suspicion and defiance. A skinhead youth scrunched up on a wall looks to be in despair.   All these and more were captured in era defining volumes such as In Flagrante (1988), a collection of pictures taken in and around Newcastle between 1973 and 1985, which charted the decline and gradual deindustrialisation of the area. It won Killip the 1...

Jerry Jeff Walker – singer, songwriter   Born March 18, 1942; died October 23, 2020     Jerry Jeff Walker, who has died aged 78, was a Country singer who stayed true to his outlaw spirit, even as he penned what became a classic of the American songbook. Walker wrote Mr. Bojangles following a night in a New Orleans drunk tank, where he encountered the old street dancer who became its inspiration.    Walker first recorded the song for his debut 1968 album of the same name. Since then, Mr. Bojangles has been covered by a multitude of artists, including The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who had a hit with it in1970. Others who recorded it include Neil Diamond, Bobbie Gentry, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton and Edwyn Collins. The song became a central part of Sammy Davis Junior’s act, while composer Philip Glass incorporated it into his opera, Einstein on the Beach. It was Nina Simone’s version, however, Walker said he liked best.   The success of Mr. Bojangles afforded Walke...