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Blogocentric Formulations #830762 added October 10, 2014 at 11:18pm
Restrictions: None
'Cause I Love You, Michael Connelly
** Image ID #2010042 Unavailable **
SONG: "'Cause I Love You"
ARTIST: Screaming Lord Sutch
STATUS: Deceased (suicide by hanging, 6/16/1999)
ALBUM: Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends (1970)
Today's entry is more about the man than his music:
David Edward Sutch, self-styled as Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow despite having no actual peerage, was an English musician known as much for his various antics both onstage and off. His "shock rock" style of music predated others in the genre like Alice Cooper and KISS; he would often attend concerts dressed as Jack the Ripper, emerge onstage from a coffin, and booked "themed" tours where his band and performers would all take on various personas such as Roman soldiers. Sutch had a self-professed lack of vocal talent, but people still went to see him for the novelty of the experience. Here's a sample of a live performance of "Jack the Ripper' from 1964, a song that has since been covered by several bands including The White Stripes and The Black Keys:
He also performs one of my favorite "Halloween" songs, "All Black & Hairy" which is right up there with "Ghostbusters" and "Monster Mash" in my opinion:
Lord Sutch's first album, Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends, was voted as the worst album of all time on two separate lists (a 1998 BBC poll, and Colin Larkin's list of the Top 1000 Albums of All Time), despite having tracks that included the writing and guest performances of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Noel Redding, and others. Part of the reason for the album's lack of success is attributed to the fact that many of these talented performers were lured to the studio under the pretenses of just messing around and jamming with friends as they recorded demo tracks that were never intended to be released... and Sutch subsequently included those recordings as part of his album, causing many of those famous musicians to disown the project and separate themselves from him.
Music wasn't the only arena were Lord Sutch met with failure, though. In 1983 he founded the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (which is, in fact, a registered political party in the UK), which creates and promotes intentionally bizarre policies and essentially exists to satirize and make fun of British politics. As of 2008, the party has 1,354 members (only 173 of which pay dues), and you can become a dues-paying member of the party for only £9.99 per year. Although if you pay £19.99, they also throw in a T-shirt.  Sutch actually holds a political record in the UK... for losing the most elections of any candidate, having lost all 40 of his campaigns.
He also took over an old army fort with the intention of broadcasting a pirate radio channel. Radio Sutch mostly alternated between playing Sutch's songs and performing staged readings of Lady Chatterly's Lover. Sutch soon sold it outright to the partner who helped him acquire it.
Sutch's most famous accomplishment, though, is one for which he doesn't often receive direct credit: in the Rolling Stones' song "Get Off of My Cloud," the line, "All dressed up just like a Union Jack" is actually a reference to Sutch and an incident where showed up uninvited at Mick Jagger's hotel room one night wearing an outfit resembling the British flag.
Lord Sutch hanged himself in 1999, following the death of his mother the previous year. His fiancee confirmed he had been battling manic depression for some time.
 
PROMPT: The author whose work I've read the most is...
This one's easy. Without question, it's Michael Connelly. And by a landslide, too. At last count, I've read eleven of his books. Looking at other others of whom I've read more than five books, the list is: J.K. Rowling (8), Stephen King (8), and C.S. Lewis (8) ... and two of those three are only because they have seven-volume series that I read in their entireties. Connelly has three different series plus standalone books, and I've read at least one of each of them. The first book of his I ever read, though, was:
| ASIN: 0446694258 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 16.54
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I picked up a hardcover copy for $1 at my local library bookstore over the summer while I was in college. I finished it in two days, immediately went back to the bookstore, and bought every other Michael Connelly book they had including his other standalone, Chasing the Dime, as well as the first three books in his Harry Bosch series, plus The Poet. He's a Pulitzer Prize-nominated former crime beat reporter for the L.A. Times, and there's definitely an authenticity to his writing about cops and trial lawyers and criminals as a result.
Connelly has won almost every award there is to win for mystery novelists, including the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, LA Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award, .38 Caliber Award, Grand Prix Award, Premio Bancarella Award, and the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing. Honestly, I don't even know what 75% of those awards are, but his books are definitely very good. It's been a while since I've read one of his and I think it's time I get back to his Harry Bosch series. If I recall correctly, I think Angel's Flight is next on the reading list.
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