The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (235 page)

(The Whitecaps)

As homage to his favourite blues guitarist, Blind Willie McTell, James Cuminale adopted the epithet ‘Colorblind’ when he played the coffeehouses of New York during the mid seventies. Cuminale – an accomplished vibraphonist as well as guitarist and singer – relocated to San Francisco where he made his first record with the shortlived Whitecaps in 1980. He was then on the move again, shifting back to the East Coast with the newly formed Colorblind James Experience for the release of a critically acclaimed debut album in 1987. Contrary to popular belief, Cuminale (for some reason now known as ‘Chuck’) never actually made his best-known relocation: the wonderful, John Peel-championed ‘Considering a Move to Memphis’ was merely speculation about how things might have turned out had he made his home in the town he’d already dismissed as unimpressive.

The Colorblind James Experience issued three further albums but never quite made the breakthrough, although popularity in Europe encouraged them to give up day jobs briefly for a tour in 1988. Cuminale died suddenly from a heart attack in the swimming pool of his home in Rochester, New York, in the company of his wife and sons.

John Lee Hooker: The pick of Delta-bluesmen

Wednesday 11

Herman Brood

(Zwolle, The Netherlands, 11 May 1946)

Herman Brood & The Wild Romance

Long Tall Ernie & The Shakers

(Various acts)

One of Holland’s most outlandish musicians, Herman Brood was a drug-dealer turned rock phenomenon who found success with a variety of acts – his main priority being to stay in the papers as long as possible. And this didn’t stop at his death …

A distinctive art-school figure with his shock of black hair, pianist Brood joined The Moans, later to become rock-revival act Long Tall Ernie & The Shakers, before going on to sing with no lesser musicians than Van Morrison and John Mayall, until his dealing in LSD led to his imprisonment in 1968. Once back in the outside world, Brood’s subsequent projects put him in the esteemed company of a post-Focus Jan Akkerman, and newwave
femme fatales
Nina Hagen and Lene Lovich, with whom he starred in the 1979 movie
Cha Cha.
His main band were The Wild Romance, who found some commercial success, although even this was hampered by the singer’s wayward behaviour with narcotics and prostitutes. Excluding time out by Brood for solo work, there were at least three line-ups of The Wild Romance.

Brood’s death did not come as much of a surprise to those who knew the extremes to which this wilful artist was prepared to go. Even as late as 1999, he was still using drugs – the hard variety this time – and was charged with firearms offences. Then, on 11 July 2001, the singer took himself up to the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton and plunged to his death. It was no less than the media expected from a man who’d always sought that extra thrill and pursued publicity to the finish.

Wild Romance bassist Freddie Cavalli died in January 2008.

Sunday 15

Too Poetic

(Anthony Berkeley - Trinidad, 15 November 1964)

Gravediggaz

Also going by the name of Grym Reaper, Too Poetic was one of the main guys with hip-hop supergroup Gravediggaz, a New York-based unit comprising lead producer Prince Paul (Paul Huston), Frukwan (Arnold Hamilton – aka The Gatekeeper) and The Wu-Tang Clan’s notorious RZA (Robert Diggs). The group were a part of the mushrooming horror/rap genre of the mid nineties that also threw up acts like The Flatlinerz and Insane Clown Posse. Poetic was born the son of a minister in Trinidad, growing up in Brooklyn, where he befriended the sprawling Stetsasonic unit in 1987 – from which the contacts that lifted the one-time homeless musician into rap’s upper echelons were to accumulate. A first Gravediggaz album,
Six Feet Deep,
emerged in 1995: it sold well, unlike the second,
The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel
(1997), which led to the act being dropped by Gee Street.

Too Poetic and his crew continued without a label, working on a third album,
Nightmare in A Minor
– but the artist’s health was already worsening. With doctors virtually giving up on colon cancer they considered too aggressive for treatment, Poetic did admirably to survive as long as he did. Even as his body was losing the battle, Poetic managed a fourth album with Gravediggaz and a solo joint before his death.

Wednesday 18

Mimi Fariña

(Margarita Mimi Baez - Palo Alto, California, 30 April 1945)

Richard & Mimi Fariña

Mimi Baez – the youngest of three daughters born to Quakers, a Mexican scientist and his Scots wife – trained as a dancer and musician. One of her elder sisters was Joan Baez, whose more prominent career saw Mimi fall in with many of the folk artists of the early sixties – most notably Bob Dylan, who worked closely with Joan. Mimi’s own musical career began in earnest when she started a relationship with noted author/musician Richard Fariña, whom she married at just eighteen, the pair embarking on a relatively successful career as a folk duo. For the next three years, the two partnerships almost rewrote the book on bohemia, their lifestyles much envied by folk’s new followers. The pivotal moment for the Fariñas was a triumphant performance in the rain at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival – just hours before Dylan was heckled for plugging in. It all came crashing down on Mimi’s twenty-first birthday, however, when her husband was suddenly killed in a motorcycle accident during her party (
April 1966).
After this unexpected tragedy, Fariña’s career was fractured: moving to San Francisco, her varied interests led the singer into a variety of projects. In the early seventies, she became briefly involved, both musically and emotionally, with folk singer Tom Jans, but her increasing contributions to Richard Fariña tributes coupled with Jans’s own desire to break into the mainstream caused them to part company. (It is widely believed that Jans found the constant references to a deceased legend intimidating and thus chose to branch out alone. Ironically, his own premature death was also a result of a motorcycle accident (
March 1984).)

A performance with her sister Joan and bluesman B B King at Sing Sing Prison awoke an interest in humanitarian affairs, leading to the creation of Fariña’s Bread & Roses organization. Seeking to help those isolated by society, the foundation won a great deal of support from other artists and earned Fariña a good number of accolades. For twenty-five years, her life was largely dedicated to this cause. Fariña died at her home in California’s Mill Valley, having fought lung cancer for two years.