Forever 27 - RIP Amy Winehouse.

"Amy Winehouse, 27, found dead at her London flat." Read about it here.

RIP CLARE AMORY

And another righteous babe bites the dust.


Clare was a member of Excepter, a five-person experimental noise-improv musical group from Brooklyn. This is a video for their song Burgers.


She also participated as a drummer in the Boredoms' 77 Boadrum performance which occurred on July 7, 2007 at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, New York.

RIP Tura Satana

Tura Satana, the actress whose authoritative presence, exotic looks and buxom frame commanded the attention of viewers of Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult movie “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, died on Friday evening in Reno, Nev.

The death was announced by her longtime manager, Siouxzan Perry, who said the cause of death was believed to be heart failure. Ms. Perry said Ms. Satana was 72 when she died, though other sources listed her birth year as 1935.

Heavy HeART

RIP Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson.

Affectionately known as Sleazy, Peter died peacefully in his sleep on the
24th of November at his home in Bangkok, Thailand. The music and art world has lost a great talent whose unique approach ignored the conventions of the day and often challenged the status quo.

Sleazy’s playful and inspiring creativity saw him pushing boundaries as a musician, video director and designer throughout his life. He had recently returned to Thailand from Europe, where he had played a short but spectacular series of live shows as a member of Throbbing Gristle and in the newly formed trio X-TG with Cosey Fanni Tutti and Chris Carter. Sleazy's visual art career included work as a member of the influential British design agency Hipgnosis, creating iconic record sleeve artwork in the 1970s for Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and, later, Factory Records. He took the first promo photographs of the Sex Pistols, created a highly controversial window display for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's clothing shop, SEX, and went on to design the logo of the hugely popular fashion company, BOY. In 1976 Sleazy met Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter and Genesis P-Orridge and together they formed electronic music provocateurs Throbbing Gristle and Industrial Records, creating one of the first independent record labels of the era and laying the foundation for a new genre of music. The band was infamously described in the Daily Mail by Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn as "the wreckers of civilisation".

TG ceased operations in 1981, after which Sleazy formed Psychic TV with Genesis P-Orridge and they produced two albums. The second, Dreams Less Sweet included his future life partner Jhonn Balance as a member, with whom he went on to form Coil and to release an extensive body of work up until Jhonn's passing in 2004. Subsequently, Sleazy left the UK to live in Bangkok, Thailand and to continue his artistic and musical vision in the guise of The Threshold HouseBoys Choir and Soisong. Following their original break-up, Throbbing Gristle's legacy steadily grew within the music and art world, leading to their reformation in 2004 and a series of sold-out performances, including in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

At the time of his death, Sleazy was in the midst of assembling what was to be Throbbing Gristle's next project: a cover version of Nico's Desertshore album.


Sleazy was a kind and beautiful soul. No words can express how much he will be missed.

-Throbbing Gristle / X-TG
Cosey Fanni Tutti
Chris Carter

RIP Ari Up

The Slits - Typical Girls (mp3)
The Slits - So Tough (mp3)
The Slits - Shoplifting (mp3)

Forever 27

Today is officially my 27th birthday.



Party on, and Rest In Peace:



Jimi Hendrix


Janis Joplin


Jean-Michel Basquiat


Jim Morrison


Kurt Cobain


Brian Jones


Kristen Pfaff


Mia Zapata

R.I.P Will Munro

Jaime Sin and Will Munro

(article by Bruce LaBruce)

The night before I heard Will Munro had passed on to that great rock’n’roll fag bar in the sky, I was sitting in Trinity Bellwoods Park smoking a joint with my good friend and his, Kevin Hegge, the cute young man who used to work at Rotate This to tell you what cool music to buy.

Earlier in the evening, Kevin and I had gone to see legendary Lydia Lunch at the Royal, whose eloquent spoken-word diatribe against this increasingly fascist world was still ringing in our ears. Long story short, a young cop emerged from a cherry top to inform us snidely that it was against the law for us to be there at 2:30 a.m., and that because there was a random empty beer bottle under our bench, he had the right to search our backpacks. The fact that he failed to find my secret cache of illicit substances, from poppers on up, was the only upside to this sobering encounter, which made me realize, finally, that we are pretty much on the verge of, if not already, living in a police state. (FYI, Toronto Bylaw Section 608-9 B states: "Unless authorized by permit, no person shall use, enter or gather in a park between the hours of 12:01 a.m. and 5:30 a.m." In other words, walking through any public park in Toronto after midnight is illegal and subject to a considerable fine.)

I bring up this incident now because it represents exactly the kind of Toronto—and world—that Will Munro always fought against.

Although Will himself didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs—he was always a straight-edge queen, and a vegan to boot—he never passed judgment on anyone who did, and in fact he was all about celebrating various sorts of nonconformist, rebellious, and anti-authoritarian behaviour. The loss of Will hits so many of us so hard because he was a warrior in that regard, someone who was offended by the very idea of being boring and conventional. In his own words, he always said he wanted to see "a lot of freak flags flying in Toronto." And his, I say with the utmost admiration, was one of the freakiest.

Will was always an art fag par excellence, even in his OCAD days causing consternation with his choice of medium (found underwear, largely) and his defiant, open queerness. For many years, he volunteered at an LGBT youth crisis hotline, providing an empathetic ear for kids who found it difficult to cope in a homophobic world. Empathy, in fact, was one of the essential parts of Will’s character. He was a great listener, and he always made you feel good about yourself. He also rarely had a bad thing to say about anybody. These are exceedingly rare qualities.

Let there be no mistake, though: Sheena was a punk rocker. Will had a very distinct punk sensibility, both in musical taste and attitude, and he enjoyed walking on the wild side. He had a fondness for the macabre and the grotesque, occasionally dressing up in drag as a zombie hag from hell. His infamous guerilla birthday parties, wherein dozens of his friends and comrades would descend in costume on a particular subway car and party while literally hanging from the overhead handrails by their knees, creating general panic and a public nuisance, were just his style. No mindless vandalism, no hostility: just a fun reminder that it’s okay to act out in public, to break the rules, to challenge the status quo. It’s hard to imagine getting away with something like that in Toronto now. More's the pity.

Will was a real Renaissance man—a successful artist (collaborating with a host of Toronto’s most creative characters, including Luis Jacob and Jeremy Laing), but also a respected DJ, promoter, activist, and restaurateur. He truly hit his stride with Vazaleen, a club night that allowed him to combine all his favourite obsessions: punk and no-wave rock’n’roll music, queers, dykes, trannies, pornography, performance art, go-go dancers, wild costumes, public indecency, strap-on dildos, what have you. He was the only promoter in town who consistently brought in the international royalty of queer and underground performers, everyone from Stink Mitt to Limp Wrist to Vaginal Crème Davis to Cherie Curie to Jayne County to Carol Pope to the Toilet Boys to Kembra Pfahler. (I took a particularly memorable road trip to Niagara Falls with Kembra and Will the day after she performed at Vazaleen, a memory I will always cherish.) He also provided an early platform for now more widely known musical forces such as Peaches, The Hidden Cameras, and The Gossip. Vazaleen, which started at the El Mocambo before moving to Lee's Palace, was the first real homo club of note outside the gay ghetto, opening up queer culture to a broader audience of like-minded misfits of all genders and sexual persuasions. In Will’s own words: "When I started doing Vazaleen I was like finally there is a space where you can do fucking anything and no one is going to turn their nose up at you." In a nutshell, that was Will’s credo.

Will insisted on being inclusive, but he also never betrayed his old school gay roots. Of all his club nights, one of my favourites was Moustache, which he held upstairs at Remingtons, Toronto’s only gay male strip bar. It was so much fun to see people of all sexes and ages participating in the amateur strip competition alongside the professional male strippers and the regular clientele. Only Will could pull off that kind of bizarre cultural fusion.

After Vazaleen, Will doggedly pursued his promise of creating life outside the ghetto by turning the Beaver Café (with Lyn McNeil) into the first real hothouse of queer activity on the west side. It was only after several successful years there that he discovered he had a brain tumour. It was a particularly aggressive from of cancer (one more often found in children), and it’s a testament to his heart and determination, his unwaveringly positive attitude about everything, and his sheer love of life that he valiantly fought the disease for two years. I think we all believed that if anyone could beat it, against all conceivable odds, Will could.

The last time I had a chance to speak at length with Will was at his art opening at the Paul Petro gallery a couple of months ago. (I've reviewed the show in the latest issue of C Magazine.) The cancer had already come back with a vengeance and he was a bit fragile, but what struck me was that he maintained the same commitment to his art, the same positive energy, the same consistency of attitude, and the same generosity of spirit that he'd always had. It was beyond humbling.

From all reports, Will was surrounded by an extremely loyal, loving, and supportive group of family and friends, including his boyfriend Peter, until the end. I know that many people are profoundly and painfully feeling the loss of this gentle, elegant soul, including yours truly. Toronto is already a much, much dimmer and less bearable place without him.

Ironic?

On April 16, 2010, You Say Party! We Say Die! drummer Devon Clifford (third from left) collapsed on stage at an all-ages show Friday at the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He is reported to have died as a result of complications arisen from a sudden brain hemmorage. On April 18, it was announced that Devon passed away surrounded by family and friends.


Make Xxxx - You Say Party! We Say Die! (mp3)

She's Spoken For - You Say Party! We Say Die! (mp3)

Falling Out (Rick Agnew cover) - You Say Party! We Say Die! (mp3)

Lhasa

and Vic Chesnutt

have both recently passed away.

Margaret Cho's 'Drop Dead Diva' premieres tonight in Canada.


Play a game from the 'Experimental Gameplay Project'.