remembered

When I first think of my father, I don’t think of an actor or a cultural figure. I think of this playful, goofy man who would sing me and my sister To Bed, To Bed, To Bed, said Sleepyhead, a bedtime song he learned in the Bahamas. Then there was this aeroplane game, where he’d pick us up one at a time, fly us around the house, and at the end, pretend to dunk our heads in the toilet. We’d laugh and scream and he’d hug us tight. That was the heart of who my dad was.Only in my teens did I start to take in the magnitude of…

If you talk about the greatest singers of all time and miss out Norma Waterson, it’s like talking about guitars and missing out Jimi Hendrix. Her voice was a wondrous thing. She was also one of the loveliest people, all warmth, curiosity and kindness.When I met her in late 2008, the experience hit me like a bullet train. I was making a Radio 4 series, The Ocean, which involved this mad road trip around the country interviewing folk musicians. Suddenly I was this tiny fly on the wall of the lives of this wonderful family…

In July 1981 the drummer Hamish Kilgour, who has died at age 65, went with his band the Clean to record their first single in Christchurch, New Zealand. Roger Shepherd, a local record shop manager, had given the band $50 to make a record that would kickstart his new label called Flying Nun.Over only a few hours in a makeshift studio in the back of a house, the Clean recorded Tally Ho!, a song that the journalist Russell Brown said “starts stopped hearts”, and which rocketed up New Zealand’s singles chart.It was a single…

Fans celebrated the musical legacy of slain rapper Takeoff on Friday at a memorial service in Atlanta, near where the artist grew up, that drew Justin Bieber, Drake and other big names in the music industry. Takeoff, part of the Grammy Award-nominated trio Migos with uncle Quavo and cousin Offset, was shot and killed earlier this month outside a Houston bowling alley. A woman and another man were also wounded in the shooting. No arrests have been made. Jenifer Loving, 22, stood in line with her…

Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images. Following Kevin Conroy‘s sudden death due to cancer on Thursday, fans of the actor known for voicing Batman for decades are remembering the time he embodied a superhero in real life by helping to feed first responders and other volunteers after 9/11. In the week that followed the terrorist attack on 9/11, New York City had asked its citizens to volunteer in the recovery effort. Though Conroy wanted to help in some capacity, he was told by the volunteer line that they didn’t need…

If you had to live the rest of your life inside one of your music videos, which one would it be? Dioli75Can’t Get You Out of My Head would mean I could travel to the future, but I would miss everyone in the here and now. Also, the white hooded jumpsuit could be tricky. Come Into My World would be more comfortable, but I would be eternally going round in circles, picking dry cleaning up off the floor. I loved my Barbarella moment in Put Yourself in My Place, but I don’t fancy living for ever alone in space. The…

Nick Carter is remembering his brother Aaron a day after the younger Carter was found dead in his California home. “My heart has been broken today,” Nick, a member of the Backstreet Boys, wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. “Even though my brother and I have had a complicated relationship, my love for him has never ever faded.” On Saturday, a rep for Aaron confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that he was found dead in his home in Lancaster, California. Separately, a spokesperson for the Los…

via Paramount If you were to ask somebody about 2004’s haunting psychological thriller The Machinist, then there’s probably a 99 percent change their response would be something along the lines of “is that the one where Christian Bale emaciates himself?” While the answer is definitely yes, with the Method man infamously putting himself through the wringer to drop 62 points before shooting through the not-recommended means of cigarettes, coffee, and a solitary apple, there’s so much more going on under the hood…

Watching Google officially announce the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro yesterday, I was struck by how much of its presentation focused on the most fundamental of smartphone features: the phone call. Smartphones may have become miniature handheld computers, capable of doing everything from office work to filming movies, but Google refuses to forget about the phone part of its smartphones. How refreshing.“Pixel 7 is designed to be the best phone for actual phone calling,” said Google product manager Brian Rakowski from the stage,…

‘From furnishings to sausages, his taste was impeccable’Emma ThompsonThe most remarkable thing about the first days after Alan died was the number of actors, poets, musicians, playwrights and directors who wanted to express their gratitude for all the help he’d given them. I don’t think I know anyone in this business who has championed more aspiring artists, nor unerringly perceived so many great ones before they became great. Quite a number said that, latterly, they had been too shy to thank him personally. They had…