Originally Posted by
Scrotum Scissor
Without question that day in March of 2009 when I was discussing back and forth with one of my heroes of contemporary "progressive" music, Steve Gore of the Rascal Reporters - in which he played with his closest bud, Steve Kretzmer. From what I understood (I may be wrong), they were Bar Mitzvah/highschool friends of unseparable girth. Anyway, we were debating the role of free improvisation etc. in the context of out beloved "genre", him being one who largely created -extremely- through-composed tunes with an almost unprecedented level of melodic structure - yet in frameworks of such density that one'd might even escape the more or less direct references to Bacharach, Carpenters, Brian Wilson etc. were it not for the "diplomatic" character of the duo's basic approach, featuring farce, humour, elegance and the sheer gusto of pure sentimentality.
Gore never really took to free improv. It was from the booklet of RR's The Foul-Tempered Clavier that I got the Fred Frith-quote in my bottom sig. Frith was one of several old mavericks whom they'd lure into contributing to their mildly eccentric vision of song and tune, along with Dave Newhouse (Muffins). Didkovsky (Doctor Nerve), Guy Segers (UZero/Present) and others.
I got the RR's Happy Accidents back in 1997. My then-wife and I played it to our kid while he was still in her swollen stomach, and he obviously adored it. Who wouldn't? My wife would drive us around in our old Golf Joker, harass me for never finishing in my driver's license and pointing out that if I hadn't at least brought some great sound to the table of the damn car, she'd leave me on the pavement. Our son loved Lars Hollmer's Ramlösa Kvällar as well. And Simon Steensland's Zombie Hunter, Beefheart's Decals and Crac! by Area. He turned out alright, of course.
Steve Gore broke off the discussion on improvisation because he had to attend to some housework, promising to return to the same thread the next day. About 20 hours later, Steve Kretzmer reported on how Gore had apparently gone down a set of moist stairs, fallen and hit his head.
And it wasn't an injury or a spectacle. The man was gone.
It's by far the single most tragic incident I ever "witnessed" online, and one I can never really get by. This man was a mind of difficult, but outright brilliance - and yeah, he possessed that exact same of dread-beyond-dark-dry existentialist humour which has kept me alive through decades of immense challenge in the face of folks and the world. I can only imagine how sincerely devastating the whole event must have been for those who actually knew and loved the guy, not least his wife and Steve K..
I still cherish his voice, songs and preposterous outlook on life, and I wish there was an afterlife so that I could meet up with the man and have him do "Woman to Woman" realtime. But alas I've already been dead and know that there isn't an afterlife, here's a couple for you punters:
Some of the best comedy from some of the funniest fuckers I've ever met. Miss those days!
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Anyway, after spending a few years on ProgArchives forums (!) I finally signed up here and was surprised at how tame it was compared to ProgArchives (and some old Yahoo groups I'd been on since the late 90's). It's weird because I think I was even friends with Sean on Facebook before I ever came over here. I remember seeing most of the group pictures at Nearfest being shot when I was there, but for some reason just was afraid to check out the site (I'm a loner, maybe that's it 
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