Guest theSun Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 if you're asking if i feel more connected or empathetic towards sean. no i don't him, he don't know me. and likely neither of us knew this winehouse character Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J3FF3R00 Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 Russell Brand's tribute... Within -> For Amy July 24th, 2011 When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone. Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene. I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable. I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief. From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register. Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live. I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius. Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive. Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call. Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred McGriff Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 well said? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Adam Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 Resized to -Infinity% (was 0 x 0) - Click image to enlarge That's totally illogical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YEK Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 the day idm died.... and we were singing. bye bye, miss american pie don't mind me. juss sayin, if aphex or someone else like that died i'd be totally gutted. not so much amy, but yeah, it's tragic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 russell brand gets a lot of stick, but that is an extraordinarily eloquent piece. respect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Coalbucket PI Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 I like Russell Brand and I think that was nicely said Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SR4 Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 i cant stand Russell Brand but i respect that statement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AcrossCanyons Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 yeah nuff respect for that statement. well written/said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baph Posted July 25, 2011 Share Posted July 25, 2011 Russell Brand occasionally drops out of High Annoyance Mode and when he does he tends to be quite an upstanding guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr lopez Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 well she's going on 72 hours sober, let's see how it lasts... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred McGriff Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 who amy? she'll be eternally cracked out on her brain's DMT drip now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kaini Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 says you and whose amy? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest hahathhat Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 well she's going on 72 hours sober, let's see how it lasts... best lol of the thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lumpenprol Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 well she's going on 72 hours sober, let's see how it lasts... I heard she went cold turkey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keltoi Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 sad news. young talented girl destroyed herself. but i keep hearing how she created a new sound... to me she was an homage (at best) or pastiche (to be less generous) to ella fitzgerald, billie holliday, etta james, nina simone, etc. not just her voice but the accompanying music and arrangements. talented all the same. a waste of a young life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Coalbucket PI Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 People talk like she only started being addicted to stuff in the last few years. As I recall she was visibly pissed or otherwise out of it to some extent on TV performances since I first ever heard of her in about 2004, I remember it being treated jovially on Jools Holland or something like that. I'm not really sure if thats wrong or what... Russell Brand wrote about the media needing to change the way they deal with addiction but then he also said there is nothing people could do to intervene. This has got all the makings of a legend in it, one huge album and at least one massive song that directly talks about what killed her (pending test results, they are still saying it's wrong to speculate that it was an OD but if it was organ failure or something its probably drug related anyway, and they would have seen that in the autopsy). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keltoi Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 it's rumoured she was on pills that night (probably amongst other things). apparently there's lots of strong e going about just now. and wasn't that russell brand thing (good point aside) typically self indulgent and a little insensitive? i thought so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tec Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 apparently there's lots of strong e going about just now. About bloody time, I'm going clubbing this weekend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velazquez Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 says you and whose amy? lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred McGriff Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 thrilled the word pastiche was used in this thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J3FF3R00 Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 it's rumoured she was on pills that night (probably amongst other things). apparently there's lots of strong e going about just now. and wasn't that russell brand thing (good point aside) typically self indulgent and a little insensitive? i thought so. I'm kinda with you (even though I posted it). I think it was a tad impersonal. Also, I agree with the final points he tries to make, but only to an extent. I'm sorry, but I'll never be able to see a junkie in the same light as say a cancer patient. He is completely ignoring the fact that there is an element of choice involved. Side note: every junkie I've ever known was completely full of themself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest theSun Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 brian williams was describing the situation, saying things like "chased down by addiction" and basically putting the responsibility of her death somewhere besides her own head. i have a lot of respect for people able to overcome a hard drug addiction, especially when they are thrown headfirst into an environment full of that shit. but you are responsible for yourself. i'm just sick of all the rhetoric that this singer was somehow innocent or blameless in her own demise. really though, it's the same with every drugged out celeb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baph Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 thrilled the word pastiche was used in this thread I always thought of Amy's intertextuality first and her drug addictions second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Promo Posted July 26, 2011 Share Posted July 26, 2011 Another casualty of the media.i figured it was something like crack cocaine that killed her yeah seriously. it's never nice news when someone dies, but honestly... It's pretty stupid to blame the media or the music industry. Pleanty of people manage far more successful careers without needing to off themselves, and pleanty of unknown people OD each year. Indeed wise words man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.