The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (407 page)

Haitian-born Paul Frappier was a natural entertainer with a good line in stage patter, and he became equally recognised for his dapper appearance and virtuosity on the harmonica. As MC Bad News Brown, Frappier turned to Quebec’s club scene, having busked the streets for most of his twenties.

BNB started his own independent label, before developing an original, hybrid sound that encompassed elements of soul, blues and hip-hop. The promise of this seemed to have been borne out by the artist’s well-received debut
Born 2 Sin
(Trilateral, 2009). Thanks to the success of this recording, Brown appeared to have made a serious professional leap, shortly opening for big-hitters like Snoop Dogg, Kanye West and 50 Cent. However, with the Canadian press earmarking Brown and his ‘hip hop blues’ as the next big thing waiting to happen, the rising artist’s life was sickeningly ended.

In what appeared to be a robbery or mugging, Bad News Brown was violently attacked and shot dead on an industrial estate near the Lachine Canal. The 33-year-old rapper – widely regarded as peaceful, warm-spirited and a positive role model for the young – was shot and beaten within walking distance from his home. In a cruel irony, he’d been shooting the part of a high-ranking hit man for a movie concerned with Montreal’s gang culture. The murder of Bad News Brown – who had no real-life connections with gangs – remained unsolved at the end of 2011.

Golden Oldies #128

Helen Gathers

(Spanish Harlem, New York City, 18 March 1942)

The Bobbettes

Although fame didn’t last very long for Helen Gathers and her four Bobbettes pals, the group’s paean to a less-than-lovable school teacher still shifted a million copies for Atlantic.

The tuneful quintet of eleven-year-old Reather Dixon (lead), Emma Pought (second lead), her sister Jannie Pought (soprano), Laura Webb (tenor) and Helen Gathers (alto) had all earned their corn in the glee clubs, though the talent scouts that came knocking weren’t too sure about their original moniker of The Harlem Queens, feeling that it was a tad suggestive for such tender-aged ladies. So, The Bobbettes they became, and it was Atlantic that jumped in to record the group’s first songs. One of these was the sprightly ‘Mr Lee’, an innocent ‘tribute’ within which the label smelt a hit record. Atlantic were right: The Bobbettes climbed to R & B number one in the autumn of 1957 (Cash Box, number six), spending almost half a year on the Hot 100 and making them the first R & B girl group to sell a million records. This prompted a nationwide tour alongside bigger names like Dion & The Belmonts and Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers. (Indeed, The Bobbettes even made a few dates in the West Indies, where their b-side ‘Look at the Stars’ was climbing the charts.)

Having been asked to change their original lyric to something more favourable, Gathers and her pals - a little naively - then tried to tempt Atlantic with ‘I Shot Mr Lee’, which exposed a somewhat different opinion of their teacher. The label passed up the song. It was, more than two years later, granted a release by Triple X, but such a long time out of the spotlight meant that the cut failed to penetrate the Top Forty, and follow-ups ‘Have Mercy Baby’ and ‘Dance With Me Georgie’ (both 1960) fared even worse. Another move to the End/Gone label proved prophetic, since, after one final single - ‘I Don’t Like It Like That’ (1961) - Gathers made her excuses and departed.

The remaining Bobbettes continued to record, but Gathers left the industry behind. Sadly, there was tragedy in later years: Jannie Pought, aged just thirty-four, was stabbed to death by a mentally unstable man unknown to her as she walked down a New Jersey street in September 1980; Laura Webb-Childress passed away from colon cancer in January 2001; while Helen Gathers also died from cancer at her home in The Bronx on 13 February 2011. Reather Dixon and Emma Pought continue to tour as The Bobbettes, with new members.

Thursday 17
*

Phil Vane

(Ipswich, England, 1964)

Extreme Noise Terror

Crust-punk stalwarts Extreme Noise Terror hailed from Ipswich, the sleepy East Anglia town hiding a hotbed of what became known as ‘grindcore’. The band – Dean Jones and Phil Vane (vocals), Pete Hurley (guitar), Jerry Clay (bass) and Pig Killer (Darren Olley, drums) – emerged kicking and screaming in 1985: within two years, they’d become one of the leading lights of a scene championed by the ever-influential John Peel. ENT’s debut album, the self-explanatory
A Holocaust in Your Head
(1988), featured new drummer Tony Dickens and new bass player Mark Gardener. The group– regarded for their fierce political standpoints – will forever be remembered for an unexpected and blistering performance of The KLF’s ‘3am Eternal’ at the 1992 BRIT Awards; during this performance, ENT controversially fired blanks from machine guns toward the ceiling, which offered the audience a bizarre if not amusing sight of the veteran classical conductor Georg Solti running for cover from the venue. (The
NME
later ranked the ‘performance’ fourth in their 100 Greatest Rock Moments.)

Frequent line-up changes certainly affected the band’s stability: founder Vane left twice, once in 1994, to front fellow-grinders Napalm Death, and again in 1999, to disappear to Switzerland – the singer this time exiled himself for almost seven years before returning to ENT again in 2006. However, the grindcore scene had pretty much burned itself out by now, and the group’s wares were almost exclusively available as downloads. Phil Vane was found by friends at his home, having died suddenly in his sleep at age 46. He was believed to have suffered a cerebrovascular accident, perhaps caused by ischemia– a break in the flow of blood to the brain.

*
Some sources date Vane’s passing as early as 13 February.

Golden Oldies #129

Eddie Serrato

(Eduardo Serrato - Encinal, Texas, 5 December 1945)

? (Question Mark) & The Mysterians

The intriguingly low-rent ? & The Mysterians helped create the blueprint for garage rock ‘n’ roll and it might even be argued that they prompted the term ‘punk rock’ - believed to have been first used by
Creem
journalist Dave Marsh to describe the group’s sound.

Certainly, ? & The Mysterians (as it was always spelled on the records) were among the first Latino rock groups to score a major hit. The band were formed in Bay City, Michigan, during 1962, by Larry Borjas (bass), his cousin Bobby Balderrama (guitar) and Robert Martinez (bongos and guitar). The telling move was the introduction of mysterious vocalist ?, who has always been believed to be Martinez’s brother, Rudy. This man’s increasingly whacked-out claims to have time-travelled and lived with martians and dinosaurs were just what The Mysterians (the band’s original name) needed to hone in on their ‘sci-fi’ feel, and the arrival of Frank Rodriguez and his distinctive Farfisa organ sealed the deal. Following Borjas and Robert Martinez’s conscription in 1964, the door was then opened for Frank Lugo (bass) and Eddie Serrato (drums) - and the band’s classic line-up was thus set.

Rudy Martinez - let’s assume it was him - presented them with a poem which he and the band then worked into the song ‘96 Tears’. With most members feeling that their ‘Midnight Hour’ was a stronger tune, the song was initially confined to a b-side. Cameo Parkway agreed with Martinez, however, and ‘96 Tears’ (1966) instead became the group’s debut a-side for the label. With ? following up his conviction by promoting the record everywhere, Serrato and his fellow Mysterians fell off their chairs in astonishment as it gradually rose to US number one. The song has, of course, since then become a rock standard and has been covered by dozens including Iggy Pop, The Cramps and The Stranglers, who finally took the song into the UK Top Twenty in 1990.

A follow-up ‘I Need Somebody’ (1966, US Top Forty) kept ? & The Mysterians on the charts for a while, but it was clear by the performances of 1967 releases ‘Can’t Get Enough of You Baby’ and ‘Girl (You Captivate Me)’ that, to the public at least, it had all been about ‘96 Tears’ and not - as had been hoped - the band. After a necessary hiatus, ? & The Mysterians returned in the early seventies with an edgier line-up, although without Eddie Serrato, who sadly in the interim had fallen victim to muscular dystrophy. The former drummer was, however, making a decent income by putting to use the nuggets he’d picked up in the studio and working as a sound engineer back in Texas.

Recent years have proven heartbreak-ing for ? & The Mysterians. While ? lost his house, memorabilia and several breeding dogs to a fire in January 2007, Eddie Serrato succumbed to a heart attack at his home in Saginaw on 24 February 2011.

Saturday 26

Mark Tulin

(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 21 November 1948)

The Electric Prunes

(Smashing Pumpkins/Spirits in the Sky)

Just two days later, another key protagonist of sixties garage passed away – and as with ? & The Mysterians, his band is also recalled primarily for one hit song. Aspiring Philadelphia-born bassist Mark Tulin was approached by San Fernando Valley rock band The Sanctions, he and Joe Dooley (drums) completing a line-up that comprised only James Lowe (vocals/autoharp) and Ken Williams (guitar) from its earliest days. The bassist was to become recognised as ‘Professor Psychedelic’, a warm-hearted individual who enjoyed the bohemian lifestyle of the era.