I'm sad to report the death of singer/songwriter/guitarist
Dave Kusworth, best known as half of the Jacobites with Nikki Sudden, but also a solo artist with a sheaf of records. Not sure of his age (early 60s?), and cause of death is unknown at this time. He died in his sleep.
Like his pal and on-and-off partner Nikki, Kusworth was a rock & roll true believer, with that meaning the lifestyle as much as the music itself. In mourning his death, I think about his style of rock - greasy, sexy, melodic, blues- and R&B-informed, glam-infused, punk-frosted, a style extrapolated from that pioneered by the Rolling Stones and the Faces. There aren't a lot of folks who play this kind of rock & roll anymore - I mean, the Stones became drop-a-coin-in-my-slot corporate rockers decades ago. And I have to wonder: maybe that's OK. Maybe it's time for certain values to be laid to rest. I'm not saying Keith Richards needs to roll over and die, or that the Dogs D'amour's catalog needs to be deleted from history. But between the cliches inherent in blues-based sleaze rock - especially that created by copies of copies of copies of copies of copies who don't quite grok the era from which the originals came - and the auras of sexism and
faux-decadence that comes with so much of it, even if the musicians don't actually practice what they preach...maybe it's time for the kind of rock & roll the Stones, etc. represent to sail off into the sunset, existing only in the historical record of albums and streams.
Don't get me wrong - I love the Stones (well, the Stones in their prime), Faces, Nikki, Dave, the Dogs, the Pontiac Brothers, late-period Makers (though it was as much of a pose as their garage punk stuff), even more modern adherents like the Blessings, Lions in the Street (sadly defunct), Diamond Dogs and the Breakers. But in 2020 that style no longer feels relevant. Maybe Dave Kusworth shuffled off this mortal coil because the time had simply come.
I don't know if any of this makes sense. I know a lot of you never had any use for this kind of music in the first place, and in many ways the music we discuss and write about here is meant to be the antithesis of Kusworth's kind of rock & roll. (Once I'd delved deeply into Nikki, Dave and the Jacobites, I wondered what they were doing in the TP guide in the first place.) (And I write this while listening to the Australian band the
Sound Movement, whose high velocity jangle and melodic sweep has next to nothing to do with greasy glam rock.) I'm just word-vomiting. But I'm gonna miss Dave and what he represented musically, while at the same time thinking that maybe it's time to let it go.
I could be wrong.
