Bad week for heroes

Personal

Ouch! Another one.

It has been a bad week for my heroes and it’s not even over yet.

Ursula Le Guin, Hugh Masekela and now Mark E Smith.

“The Dispossessed” by Le Guin was a big influence on me as a young man, it helped me get some much needed perspective on my favoured politics of anarchism. I cringed but absorbed the message that handled wrongly, it could be as oppressive and any other system of politics.

While I was never lucky enough to see Hugh Masekela live, for me he was the visible face of the Anti-Apartheid movement, more critical politics of my youth.

I was lucky enough to see The Fall live, the 80’s, a small gig in a community centre under a motorway flyover in West London. As a young punk, they blew the head clean off my shoulders. “Live at the Witch Trials” was one of my first albums and an enduring favourite. I still listen to them (I am listening to them now). I first heard them on the John Peel Show (another great loss). Snatches of their lyrics still surface to my perpetual amusement.

I was blessed by your lives.

Feck! Who’s next?