Monday, December 07, 2009

An Unexpected Death



Bad news travels much faster than good news.

The bad news is that my old music-friend Jack has passed away at the age of 38. He was a member of the brutally sophisticated noise-punk band Ugly Head (no relation to current band of same name) a band featuring Jack , two Daves and a Pat. Jack was one-half of  the band's barbed-wire fence of  oddly pleasing de-tuned twin guitar mayhem. I recorded  their 1997 CD, Silence is the Mystery of the Future Age in their drummer's basement, using this:






 It's among my favorite recordings. One of the tracks begins with me screaming into a Pig Nose guitar amp. No one in the band could quite do the scream, so after thirty takes they let me do it...I was going to do it anyway at that point.

Jack went on to a diverse and prolific musical career as a highly-accomplished and respected guitarist but I lost track of him after Ugly Head disbanded and he moved away.  He left to follow the musical dream and from what I have seen, he succeeded.

Then he died.

I suppose there should be a lesson here:

2 comments:

AngelConradie said...

Sounds like he achieved more than most people do...
Sorry Al.

secret agent woman said...

38! My God, that's so young.