The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (314 page)

A mixtape rapper expected to clean up on the East Coast scene, Stack Bundles had made an impact after moving from the Desert Storm label to help set up the Asylum-affiliated ByrdGang Records in 2006 with his long-term ally, hip-hop mogul/performer Jim Jones. Members Of ByrdGang (MOB) was also the name of Bundles’s posse, featuring a trio of New York MCs completed by Max B and Mel Matrix.

In a very short career, Bundles recorded with a variety of East Coast names, including DJ Clue, Fabolous, The Diplomats/DipSet, Lupe Fiasco, Fatz Belvedere, Ron Browz and Joe Budden. Stack Bundles’s vocation and life, however, were cut short by another of the city’s seemingly endless inter-gang shootings. Having enjoyed an evening at the Stereo nightclub in Manhattan, Bundles returned to his home at Far Rockaway, Queens, where, at around 6 am, he was ambushed in the apartment’s lobby and shot twice in the head and once in the neck. While the slain artist’s money had been left on his body, his gold medallion had been taken – presumably as a trophy.

One week later, Bundles’s funeral was attended by a throng of hip-hop names (including most of those mentioned above). On the same morning, the body of 20-year-old rap artist Charles White – the man suspected of pulling the trigger – had been found in a vacated house in Springfield Gardens: he had been shot, execution-style.

The Jim Jones album
Pray IV Reign
(2009) was apparently dedicated to the memory of Bundles, in particular the emotional cut, ‘My My My’.

In 2009, Max B received a seventy-five-year jail sentence following his part in the hotel-room murder of former ByrdGang associate David Taylor the previous year.

Thursday 14

Kai Davidson

(Lerwick, Shetland, 8 September 1962)

The Cateran

The Joyriders

(Various acts)

Kai Davidson was hugely popular in Edinburgh’s postpunk scene – both as a musician with various punk bands, and as manager of successful pop/rock duo The Proclaimers. A keen amateur guitarist as a teenager with Inverness band The Hormones, Davidson moved to the capital’s more ‘happening’ scene in 1980 to play with a series of local rock acts. Among the bands to benefit from Davidson’s enthusiastic playing were Reasons For Emotion, featuring unlikely pop stars in young twins Craig and Charlie Reid. Davidson made his name as their manager, his three-year tenure with the Reid brothers – ie, The Proclaimers– seeing the duo rocket into the spotlight with the hit ‘Letter from America’ (1987, UK number three) and debut album
This Is the Story.
Davidson then returned to performing, finding a slot for his bass-playing in The Cateran, a hardcore band that opened for The Lemonheads, Husker Du, and Nirvana’s first UK tour. Davidson went on to play with The Joyriders, another band championed by the press– and indeed his friend Kurt Cobain, who the musician persuaded to play a secret charity gig for a children’s hospital. Davidson continued his renowned goodwill by thereafter moving into care work.

In later years, the guitarist suffered from crippling health issues, mainly a lung condition that necessitated the removal of an organ. Suffering unyielding physical pain, Davidson decided to end his own life by falling from the roof of his tenement home: his body was found in the courtyard of Nisbet Court, in Restalrig, Edinburgh. Fittingly, for a man who liked the raw energy of guitar music, Davidson’s funeral apparently opened to the strains of The Ramones and Motorhead.

Friday 15

Richard Bell

(Toronto, Ontario, 5 March 1946)

Janis Joplin & The Full Tilt Boogie Band

The Band

(Crowbar)

(Porkbelly Futures)

(And Many Others)

(Various acts)

Classically trained pianist Richard Bell emerged from Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music to make a considerable mark in folk-rock. His first residence of note was with Ronnie Hawkins’s band And Many Others, the unit hastily assembled following the departure of the musicians who were to become The Band.

Hawkins gave his band the push in spring of 1970, allegedly telling them that they could ‘fuck up a crowbar in fifteen seconds.’ Whatever this meant, it gave Bell’s colleagues a name (Crowbar) under which they were to tour for some years. Janis Joplin’s manager Albert Grossman courted Bell – clearly more gifted than those about him – during a performance at Fillmore East. The pianist then made the move to San Francisco and Joplin’s latest initiative, The Full Tilt Boogie Band. Although the legendary singer did not have long to live (
October 1970
), Bell joined her on the infamous Festival Express tour of Canada that summer and can also be heard on Joplin’s posthumous number-one album,
Pearl.

His reputation as a first-rate pianist secured, the musician – then living in New York – played alongside a number of contemporary giants, including Paul Butterfield and John Sebastian. Bell was thus able to earn a decent living through session work until a further move to Atlanta saw him play with a number of lesser-known acts including The Convertibles, who were nonetheless a popular regional draw.

Richard Bell – in more than one sense – made the journey full-circle with a return to Canada in 1990 and a place within the latest incarnation of The Band, some of whose alumni had defected from Hawkins before Bell’s arrival all those years before. The musician replaced late keyboardist Stan Szelest
(
January 1991
), this latest placement turning out to be his longest-ever with any act. Bell contributed piano, horns, backing vocals and songwriting to The Band’s final three studio albums,
Jericho
(1993),
High on the Hog
(1996) and
Jubilation
(1998). Once again, however, it was the drug-related death of a band’s singer that brought matters to a halt for Bell. Rick Danko’s passing
(
December 1999
) effectively ended The Band as a going concern.

In his final years, Bell could still be seen at the keys of some great Canadian bands, including Blackie & The Rodeo Kings and Porkbelly Futures (a group originally set up in homage to the late Butterfield
(
May 1987
)), for whom Bell was a regular performer and occasional songwriter and vocalist. Richard Bell had fought a lengthy battle with multiple myeloma by the time of his passing at a Toronto medical centre.

See also
Richard Manuel (
March 1986). Richard Newell - aka King Biscuit Boy, the harmonica-wieldingfront man of Crowbar -passed away in January 2003, while Porkbelly Fututes singer/guitarist Paul Quarrington died in 2010.