January 2016 has been a foul month. Many are still coming to terms with the passing of David Bowie, the magnitude of which has understandably overshadowed the deaths of other musicians over the past two and a bit weeks. Various blogging friends have paid great tributes to Otis Clay, Dale Griffin and Glenn Frey. The latest name to join what is an ever-more depressing list is Colin Vearncombe.
His real brush with fame came back in 1987 when, under the moniker of Black, he had a huge and deserved hit all across Europe with Wonderful Life. It’s a song that has been much covered and in recent years become increasingly used in TV commercials and there’s no doubt that for many, and I include myself among them, the hit single is all they can recall.
But Colin Vearncombe had a substantial following out there who followed his career throughout the peaks and troughs, delighting in the fact that in recent years he had written and recorded some of the best songs in his career. All the more tragic therefore, that he died earlier this week having been unable to recover from an horrific brain injury sustained in an accident a few weeks back on a road near Cork in Ireland.
One of the biggest supporters of T(n)VV is Echorich – there’s barely a day goes by that he doesn’t leave some sort of comment on a posting, offering a wonderfully concise and often personal take on the song or the artist featured.
I had long known that Echorich was a huge Bowie fan and he was one of the first I thought of when the news of that death emerged. I hadn’t however, known till recently that Colin Vearncombe was another of his favourites and so he really has had an awful start to 2016. Typically, he has put together a very lovely tribute to his hero, highlighting 17 of his best songs. It is well worth a few minutes of your time:-
http://thatperfectbeat.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/its-wonderful-wonderful-life.html
Thank You.
PS : Two more very fine tributes courtesy of friends of this blog:-
From djjedredy :https://myvinyldreams.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/black-black-compilation-from-1984-cd-re-issue/
From Post Punk Monk* : https://postpunkmonk.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/colin-vearncombe-1962-2016
* as with Echorich, PPM is a big fan of Bowie so he too has had an unimaginable start to 2016.
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 