Select Obituary

RICHARD WRIGHT
July 28, 1943 – September 15, 2008
"Remember a day before today, a day when you were young."

When we read of the death of Rick Wright, I was reminded of the death of Maude Flanders on The Simpsons. This might seem an unusual reference point but bear with us.

Before it happened, it was heavily trailed that one of the characters was going to die, and many of my friends agreed that it would be such a minor character that it would make no odd, but also we felt that if they had been bold and taken out a really major character that it may have been a very bold move and probably quite stupid, but that we'd get the hang of it.

When it was Maude, I for one realised how underappreciated she'd been as a character, and how little I'd regarded her, despite her always having been there. It was particularly effective.

I didn't under-appreciate Rick but many did, and it's a shame that his passing won't be as highly regarded as it could have been.

His Pink Floyd journey was probably the second strangest (Syd's will always be number one) in the band's history: a founding member, and in the early days the second most prolific songwriter in the band after Syd. Later he turned away from the "Turkish Delight" organ solos, and more towards the sonic soundscapes that developed in the group throughout the 70s and by the end of it, during the recording of The Wall, was addicted to cocaine and being strong-armed out of the band by Roger Waters.

Begging to be allowed to tour the record, he joined the group as a session musician. Amusingly, as he was paid a wage, he was the only Floyd member to make money from the Wall tour, as it made a significant loss which was borne by the three remaining members.

There followed a Pink Floyd album which he didn't feature on, The Final Cut. Although this is generally thought of by fans as a Roger Waters solo album that just happened to have Pink Floyd members on it. Indeed the inlay card read: "The Final Cut: A Requiem for the Post-War Dream - by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd".

The final track on that album features only Waters and a string quartet.

Rick Wright returned (albeit as a session musician once again) for the next Floyd album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, with the band now under the leadership of David Gilmour (Waters having embarked on his solo career and failed in his bid to prevent the rest of the band from using the name "Pink Floyd"), before going full time again on The Division Bell.

For those paying attention, this means that now only one Pink Floyd member has played on every album - drummer Nick Mason.

It's interesting that, with the former animosity between Rick and Roger in particular, Rick was the first Floyd member to reach out to him after the rift, attending one of his concerts and meeting him backstage. Well before the Live 8 reunion and well well before Roger and Nick Mason teamed up and started touring a version of Dark Side of the Moon.

A friend of Select-Obituary has expressed understandable annoyance that, after Live 8 - when Bob Geldof finally unleashed enough righteous swearing to get Dave, Rodge, Nick and Rick to shut up and get on stage together for a good cause - David Gilmour still carries enough bitterness about the split to have vetoed a reunion tour, something that Rick and Roger both said they would have liked to have done.

As it never did happen we never will know if it would have turned out to be glorious or if they would have imploded once more. As something of a compromise, Rick did tour with David Gilmour in support of Gilmour's "On an Island" album, but for what it's worth - Live 8 seems the perfect end for Pink Floyd. The final scene of the big Pink Floyd biopic movie will be Live 8. Anything that follows will just be captions before the end credits.

But those end credits will run over some truly excellent music.

JERRY REED
March 20, 1937 – September 1, 2008
"We've got a long way to go, and a short time to get there"

Over here in the UK, Jerry Reed is not well known. At a push we might recognise him from the Smokey and the Bandit films and if you really pushed us, we might remember some of his songs from same film and those who braved the country music station in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas will surely recall Amos Moses, his tale of a Louisiana swamp-man.

He was born Jerry Reed Hubbard in Atlanta, Georgia and as well as being a country vocalist he was also a highly accomplished fingerstyle guitar player. When Elvis Presley wanted to record two of Reed's songs (Guitar Man and U.S. Male), they had to bring him into the recording as no session guitarists had been able to achieve the correct sound.

He had a readily apparent sense of humour; he once remarked that before his success, his records "sold like hot cakes - fifty cents a sack", and he once had a #1 hit called "She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)".

Comedy was a mainstay of his film work - his association with Burt Reynolds took him through a very swift series of down-home comedies and action dramas, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings, Gator and the huge smash Smokey and the Bandit (Reed would later return for the two sequels, and in the third one would actually step up to play the lead role, with Bid Bad Burt only appearing in the last few minutes).

It's rather a shame that his "comedic" persona - traditionally that of an affable but dumb redneck - has become the public perception of the man and that his award-winning songwriting and frankly astonishing guitar work are less recognised. Perhaps this will now be rectified.

KEN CAMPBELL
December 10, 1941 - August 31, 2008
"It's a very freeing thing to just gloriously die, and not care about it."

Select Obituary says: "The Hood met Einstein. They had a child".

Ken Campbell was working right up until the end, a few days ago he wrapped up his Edinburgh show. Not for him the drawn-out debilitating illness. If you've ever heard of an "English eccentric", then Campbell was that man. He made numerous television appearances but was mostly noted for experimental theatre work, ranging from improvisations (2005's "Improvathon" was a 36 hour unscripted play) to a return to an almost Victorian style vaudevillian variety show, known as The Ken Campbell Roadshow which also featured Bob Hoskins and Sylvester McCoy (being made to put ferrets down his trousers and appear to hammer nails into his nose).

His TV appearances include a one-off in the Fawlty Towers episode "The Anniversary", managing to wind Basil into an even tighter knot than usual. He also (bizarrely) appeared in children's TV series Erasmus Microman (not pronounced in the way you'd imagine) in which he played the time travelling hero as well as the villain of the piece, utilising the anagram, "Lee B. McPlank".

Campbell was once under consideration for playing another time travelling TV character, having performed a screen test for the seventh incarnation of the Doctor in "Doctor Who". It's now well documented that script editor Andrew Cartmel deemed Campbell's interpretation of the character to be too dark to be televised. In the end the role went to Campbell's old colleague Sylvester McCoy.

A friend of Select Obituary saw Campbell at a live event a few years ago. When asked who he thought the greatest living actor was, he replied "Jackie Chan", and spoke of having purchased a number of Chan's movies and been impressed by his comic timing, attention to detail and on-screen charisma. This wasn't a man trying to look cool, or even to look eccentric but more an indication of how Campbell's mind worked - he clearly just didn't see things the same way everyone else does.

As well used a phrase as it is, it's actually quite rare that you can genuinely say of a person that we will never see their like again.

We will never see his like again.

DON LaFONTAINE
August 26, 1940 – September 1, 2008
"He is Special Agent John Kruger, his codename is ERASER."

It's not rare for a voice artist to become famous - Mel Blanc and Billy West certainly have their fans, but LaFontaine never really played a character beyond the intangible "movie guy" persona that he cultivated, and which is synonymous with the sound of a big exciting trailer - a sound which we feel sure will live for many years to come.

There are plenty of people who make a living just doing VO work on trailers, but few of them take home the money LaFontaine did, and even fewer have fans writing to them requesting signed pictures.

The LaFontaine Style was famously parodied as the basis for the trailer for Jerry Seinfeld's film, Comedian, ("In a world.... In a time....") though in this instance the lines were performed by a contemporary of LaFontaine's, Hal Douglas. LaFontaine would later perform a similar parody in a series of GEICO commercials.

Notoriously he used to use a chauffeur-driven limo to get from gig to gig as he was so well paid for them that it cost him less to do this than to expend any time parking his car, and later - thanks to advances in ISDN technology - he was able to work constantly from his own home studio.

Beyond some of the more obvious Schwarzenegger trailers (the first two Terminator films and Eraser, above) attempting to list his work here is an exercise in futility, suffice to say that if you've ever heard the "trailer voice", it's either been LaFontaine, or someone trying to do his style.

"One man... one voice... Don LaFontaine..."

GEOFFREY PERKINS
February 22, 1953 - August 29, 2008
"Share and Enjoy"

Geoffrey Perkins was a very important man, but you've probably never heard of him. You've probably really enjoyed something he was directly responsible for, but never realised it. Geoffrey Perkins has very few decent pictures available online for use in an amateur obituary such as this one.

At the age of 25, he was the producer of the original incarnation of Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" on Radio 4 - totally ahead of its time in its use of music and sound effects and was the first radio comedy to be mixed and broadcast in stereo.

When working on "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" he created the now legendary non-game "Mornington Crescent".

And frankly, even when he wasn't being a producer or writer of some of the more legendary comedy of the British Isles (a list which also includes things such as Radio Active, The Fast Show, Father Ted, The Catherine Tate Show, Game On, Two Pints..., My Family and other hugely successful British comedy gems), he was appearing on the shows themselves.

He was one of a choir of robots in Hitchhiker's series 2 singing "Share and Enjoy", the anthem of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's complaints department (sadly, due to a programming error, the robots sing a flattened fifth out of tune, and due to a seismic shift the final lyric is "go stick your head in a pig"), he played a TV producer in Dirk Maggs' resurrected Hitchhiker's radio series and - most enjoyably - was the disembodied voiceover of the visiting Father Hernandez in "Father Ted".



He died today, aged 55, in a road accident the details of which are available elsewhere.

Select Obituary do not concern ourselves with how he died. We are merely happy that he lived.

NELSON DE LA ROSA
June, 1968 - October 22, 2006
"...Mahow, Mahow..."

Nelson De La Rosa was 28 inches tall (that's four inches shorter than Verne "Mini Me" Troyer and a whopping fourteen inches shorter than Warwick Davies from Willow). In fact, Nelson's own son was already taller than his father by the age of two. He was born in the Dominican Republic sometime in June, 1968.

He has never been the shortest man alive, although it has been claimed. What he was was the World's Shortest Actor. His first screen appearance was in "Quella villa in fondo al parco", mostly known to English speakers as "Ratman". Guess who Nelson played. A tiny tiny man in a very small cage was certainly a freaky image that isn't easily forgotten. His most mainstream appearance was in 1996's The Island of Dr. Moreau alongside such hot Hollywood talent as Val Kilmer and Mark "The Crow TV Series" Dacascos.

He made many television appearances, such as the one during which he demonstrated the legendary "Mahow Mahow" dance. The clip can be seen HERE. Interesting to note if you have sound is Nelson's voice. Although many short people do have higher pitched voices or timbres, Nelson's is particularly high - he literally does sound like a child. Also on television he was a regular on "Super sabado sensaciona" which features a Mini-Pops section (kids mime songs by their favourite artists).

He was probably best known in America for being the mascot and good luck charm of the Boston Red Sox baseball team after becoming friends with their pitcher Pedro Martinez.

De La Rosa died of, still unkown, causes (although one source suggests a heart attack). He leaves a wife and child and, moral arguments aside, a body that some have suggested may go on display in a Dominican Republic museum.

CHARLIE WILLIAMS MBE
December 23, 1928 - September 2, 2006
"...Me old flower..."

Charlie Williams, the son of an immigrant coal miner, first found a mild level of fame as a footballer for Doncaster Rovers.From there he decided to become a club singer but, finding that audiences responded much more favourably to his humorous banter between songs, embarked on a career as a stand up comedian. It was as a comedian that he achieved his greatest success, becoming a regular on TV's The Comedians. He was the first black comedian to make it onto British TV.

With a modern viewpoint we can look back and say it's sad that much of the material he found himself doing reflected the racist nature of the country at the time. He would often comment on being so hot he was "sweating chocolate" and his stock answer to hecklers was for them to calm down or he'd "come and move in next door", but that would be missing the point. If you're going to be challenging a racist society towards acceptance then you'll have to do it in a way that they understand. Audiences who would have reacted very stongly to a confrontational approach swiftly became comfortable with Charlie and took him to their hearts. Because of his work, an audience for black comedians was created, and these ones didn't need to poke fun at themselves, or even mention race at all if they chose not to. As a result, Charlie Williams is better than anyone else famous who may have died recently.

I imagine you probably anticipated a noted croc botherer to be featured in here, and although Mr Irwin was certainly of Select Obituary caliber, he got a lot of press mileage elsewhere. Far more than another recent and much more groundbreaking celebrity did.

Stay tuned.

It would be just the way that the moment I start an obituary LJ, there's a distinct lack of cool, amazing famous people passing away. Obviously this is good, as I don't specifically want anyone to die, but it also means I have little to do here. I think I'll start including some belated ones (I was going to say posthumous, but that would be silly). I must find a way to mark them out from others, though. Leave it with me.

BRUNO KIRBY
April 28, 1949 - August 14, 2006
"Yes I Can... if Frank Sinatra says it's okay"

Bruno Kirby, son of actor Bruce Kirby (or in real name terms, Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu Jr. and Sr.) was one of Those Faces. He was thingy from whatsit. Such is the fate of the character actor. He was highly allergic to horses and required dailly shots on the set of City Slickers. His early appearances in Columbo and Kojak and the like are generally under the name Bruce Kirby Jr. (or B. Kirby Jr). For the record, you probably know him best as one of the following:

Tommy Pischedda, the Sinatra loving chauffeur from This Is Spinal Tap
Brad Brillnick from It's Garry Shandling's Show
The humourless Lt "now THAT'S comedy" Steve Hauk from Good Morning, Vietnam.
Jess from When Harry Met Sally, ("Draw SOMETHING resembling ANYTHING.")

He died from complications related to Leukaemia, aged 57.

Oh, Lieutenant Steve...

I'm not much of obituary writer, but recently after the death of Patrick Allen passed me by, I decided that those who are often overlooked should have someone write SOMETHING about them. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have included, say, Syd Barrett but that's only polite isnt it?

A particular actor's death has finally inspired this page. His write-up will follow soon.

Until then, stay tuned.