Archive for the ‘Obituary’ Category

Mojo Nixon, RIP

Thursday, February 8th, 2024

Psychobilly musician Mojo Nixon died yesterday at 66. “A cardiac event on the Outlaw Country Cruise is about right… & that’s just how he did it, Mojo has left the building.”

I saw him live a couple of times at SXSW, once with Jello Biafra in support of Prairie Home Invasion. “Mojo, why do you play SXSW? Ain’t no major label ever gonna sign you!”

Here’s a few tracks for the memories.

Howard Waldrop: 1946-2024

Monday, January 15th, 2024

It is my sad duty to report that my friend, science fiction writer Howard Waldrop, died yesterday, January 14, 2024.

According to Robert Taylor: “Howard had a stroke around 1pm. EMS worked on him for over an hour. They got a pulse and took him to the hospital, but at the hospital they were unable to maintain the pulse and he died around 3pm.”

Howard had suffered a number of health maladies recently, but had been on the mend. I saw him just last week, and he was moving slightly better, and still mentally sharp.

I had known Howard since we interviewed him for Nova Express in 1987, and I’m one of the legions of people who corresponded with him (his preferred form of communication) when our respective journeys took us away from Austin.

Howard was one of the finest short story writers the field has ever produced. “The Ugly Chickens” is an acknowledged classic. “Night of the Cooters.” “Fin de Cycle.” “…The World As We Know’t.” “Horror We Got.” Great stories only Howard could have written. Plus great collaborations like “Black As the Pit, from Pole to Pole” (with Steve Utley) and “The Later Days of the Law” (with Bruce Sterling).

Howard was never far away from penury, and he relied on a network of friends to keep him above water. He rented a spare room from me for six months, for values of “rent” that included no exchange of money, but he did do odd jobs around the house, and he always paid his share of utilities. Before that I had paid him to stain and varnish several bookcases when I moved into my house.

Living with Howard was half like living with the smartest, most erudite man that ever lived, and half like living with Grandpa Simpson. Howard had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of mid-20th century pop culture, and had seen just about every damn English language movie made up into the 1970s or so (and a bunch of foreign ones beside). His knowledge of history was similarly immense.

And then he would do things like come into the kitchen were I was bleary-eyedly eating breakfast and tell me “You know, the milk at the local HEB is three cents more than the milk at the HEB down south.” As though this was information vital to my existence.

Howard was brilliant, but he was also as stubborn as the day is long, and a decided Luddite. He never owned a computer and would only use one under duress (he grudgingly agreed to enter his portion of our joint movie reviews into my Mac when he lived here). At one point around 1989 or so, Howard was at (I think) Pat Cadigan’s house after a con, and joined one of our Delphi Wednesday Night Group chats (attended by Gardner Dozois, Mike Resnick, and a host of other luminaries, many now also gone). “Howard, what do you think of cyberspace?” “It’s icky!”

Howard loved movies, television, history, reading, and fishing, and got around to writing either when deadlines pressed, or when all the pieces finally mentally clicked into place just so.

I mourn for Howard, and for the numerous in-progress works we may never get to read. Maybe enough of The Moone World (in progress since the late 1980s) exists for someone like longtime friend George R. R. Martin to finish it. I suspect even less exists of the even-longer in gestation I, John Mandeville. And Moving Waters, a fictional history of America through third-party politics and fishing, probably only existed in Howard’s head.

Howard was universally loved by pretty much everyone he knew and the science fiction field as a whole. He was our own homegrown Mr. National Treasure and a sturdy friend, and will be greatly missed.

Howard after tripping on some steps at the 2013 San Antonio Worldcon.

Shoegazer Sunday: Great Northern’s “Radio”

Sunday, October 22nd, 2023

My relationship to Great Northern is weird. I liked what I heard off Remind Me Where The Light Is enough to buy it, listened to it a lot for a while, and then just…stopped. I can’t even explain why I stopped. It’s a mystery, like the waning of a pestilence. That album is superbly crafted Shoegaze-tinged pop that sounds bit like Tamaryn.

“Radio,” an earlier effort off Sleepy Eepee, is a different sort of beast, like Mazzy Starr crossed with some buzzy low-fi band. Singer Rachel Stolte has a compelling voice.

Despite not listening to them for years, YouTube occasionally offers them up in my feed. A good thing, too.

They evidently toured with Smashing Pumpkins this year, and are supposedly working on a new album.

Library Addition: Signed Limited Edition of New Worlds #1

Thursday, June 16th, 2022

I should point out that this is the new, new, new, new, new incarnation of New Worlds, this time as a hardback anthology series.

Gevers, Nick, and Peter Crowther, editors. New Worlds Issue #1. PS Publishing, 2021 (i.e., 2022). First edition hardback, #49 of 200 copies, a Fine copy in decorated boards and a Fine dust jacket, and a Fine embossed slipcase. Latest resurrection of this venerable UK fiction title, most famous for Michael Moorcock’s New Wave editorship in the 1960s, and Moorcock contributes a story (and signature) here, as do Alan Moore, Michael Swanwick, Ken MacLeod, James Lovegrove, Ian Watson, Ian R. MacLeod, etc. The trade paperback version came out last year, but this hardback edition is already out of print. Bought from the publisher at the usual discount.

I will have two copies of this to sell in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog (currently in progress).

Obituary Watch: Toots Hibbert

Saturday, September 12th, 2020

Reggae legend Toots Hibbert, of Toots & The Maytals, has died at age 77.

The number of Reggae tracks in regular rotation on my iTunes is pretty finite, but “Pressure Drop” is one of them:

I also liked their cover of Radiohead’s “Let Down” off the Radiodread, the complete reggae cover album of OK Computer.

Ennio Morricone, RIP

Monday, July 6th, 2020

Legendary film score composer Ennio Morricone has died at age 91. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, John Carpenter’s The Thing and The Hateful Eight all had scores by him, among the 500+(!) he composed.

Here’s probably my favorite piece by him, from his soundtrack to Once Upon A Time In The West:

Mazzy Star’s David Roback, RIP

Wednesday, February 26th, 2020

David Roback, half of duo Mazzy Star, has died at age 61. He co-wrote their one hit, the haunting “Fade Into You”:

Mazzy Star got called Shoegaze because there wasn’t anything else to call them, but their twangy guitar sound, and Hope Sandoval’s breathy, honey-and-bourbon vocals, were like nothing else on the scene.

Joseph Shabala, RIP

Tuesday, February 11th, 2020

Ladysmith Black Mambazo founder and lead singer Jospeh Shabala has died. Like just about everyone else in the world, the first time I heard them was on Paul Simon’s Graceland. Unlike most, I actually picked up a few Ladysmith Black Mambazo albums. (In fact, I just counted and I have seven, a lot of which came out on Shanachie records, which put out a lot of world music in the 1980s and 90s.)

If you only know them from Graceland, you might not have realized that they’re primarily a gospel group. Most of the songs end with “Amen! Halleluya! Amen!” The track below is from Umthombo Wamanzi.

Mike Resnick, RIP

Thursday, January 9th, 2020

Science fiction writer and editor Mike Resnick died this morning a little after midnight according to a post by his daughter Laura Resnick, due to an aggressive lymphoma that followed on the heels of major surgery.

Mike was a friend from way back in the pre-WWW days of the Delphi Wednesday Night Group in the late 1980s, where a bunch of science fiction people (Resnick, Pat Cadigan, Gardner Dozois, myself, Dwight and many others) hung out on a regular basis. I sold Mike one of my earliest stories, “Huddled Masses” for his Alternate Presidents anthology, as well as “Saul’s Diary” for Galaxy’s Edge, and Mike used “Crucifixion Variations” for World’s Science Fiction Story Collection II, my only story ever published in China.

He got involved with science fandom early in life and never left. Mike was one of the last of a dying breed of science fiction’s writing machines, someone who early-on mastered the ability to crank out a prodigious amount of wordage every day. The Kirinyaga stories in the 1980s, set an orbital African primativist tribal “utopia,” was where he really started to make his mark, and he became a regular Hugo and Nebula winner back when that meant something. He edited dozens of anthologies, frequently buying work by new writers, and eventually founding Galaxy’s Edge. He raised prize-winning collies and collected books on Africa. When the Social Justice Warrior mob came for him and Barry Malzberg for the usual stupid reasons he told them to go pound sand.

He was a jovial presence at conventions, and he will be missed.

Barry Hughart, RIP

Friday, August 2nd, 2019

Mike Berro is reporting on Facebook than fantasy writer Barry Hughart has died. No linkable source yet for the news yet.

It’s a darn shame that the slings and arrows of outrageous publishing fortune discouraged him from writing any more Master Li and Number Ten Ox books…

Update: There’s now a small note on Berro’s Barry Hughart bibliography site that “It has been confirmed as of 1-Aug-2019 that Mr. Hughart has passed on.”