You'll be pleased to know that we hit our Kickstarter target for the latest issue of Department of the Peculiar, so Rob has come up with an excellent "extra" to give away with the comic if we hit our stretch goal. (Believe me, I don't understand any of this stuff.)
Because the writer is a sadist, the script for the latest issue required Rob to draw a wall full of portraits of dead rock stars. To be honest, when I wrote that, I thought he'd just do thumbnail sketches... but, Rob being Rob, he ended up doing full portraits... of loads and loads of them.
(Believe me, that's not all of them.)
These went down pretty well when he posted them on Facebook, so Rob came up with the idea of publishing them in a CD booklet. And because it wasn't really fair that the lazy writer got away with doing bugger all for this venture, Rob asked me to write the liner notes.
I came up with a couple of ideas, thinking about what else you'd find in a CD booklet, and decided to write up a track-listing for this imaginary record. Just like the kind of nonsense list / mix I've been writing here for years.
So I've started compiling a list of songs by dead rock stars about death / dying / living forever / etc. etc. etc. This kind of thing...
Hank Williams - I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive
John Prine - When I Get To Heaven
Faron Young - Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young
Jeff Buckley - Last Goodbye
John Denver - Leaving On A Jet Plane
Warren Zevon - Keep Me In Your Heart
I have a few more, but because I'm scared of missing out some obvious ones, I thought I'd throw it open to you guys and see if you had any further suggestions.
Here are the rules...
1. The singer (preferably songwriter) has to be dead.
I rejected Who Wants To Live Forever? by Queen because it was written by Brian, not Freddie.
2. The song title has to be about life or death, heaven or hell... it can't just be in the lyrics.
I rejected Come As You Are by Nirvana... but I'd probably have included it if Kurt had called the song "I Don't Have A Gun".
Similarly, I couldn't include My Generation by The Who even though it contains the perfect line ("Hope I die before I get old") because the title doesn't allude to life or death, and the songwriters are still with us.
3. I'll also accept songs where the songwriter appears to have eerily predicted their own demise - like the John Denver one above.
Above is the cover to the "Heroes" booklet, featuring Mal (our character) posing as Bowie.
As always, your wisdom will be gratefully received.
And now, because I didn't have time last week to pay proper tribute to Little Richard...
More information on the Department of the Peculiar Kickstarter here.
