Requiem for a Hero of Punk (NYT on the death of Pig Champion)

[swag]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/arts/music/09sann.html



By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: February 9, 2006

Every year, some of the biggest winners at the Grammy Awards are also some of the oldest. That's partly because voters stick with what they know. And it's partly because every year the show includes a slew of tributes, honoring veteran musicians alive and dead.

This year's schedule included a lavish tribute to Sly Stone, as well as a salute to the music of New Orleans. And every year the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences also honors musicians who have achieved something more momentous but less enviable: they died.

But at least one influential — and recently deceased — musician didn't seem likely to get a grand send-off last night. His name was Tom Roberts. He was a guitar virtuoso and a cult hero, revered by some of the biggest bands of the 1990's. And last week, on Tuesday morning, his body was found in his apartment. He was 47. His eldest sister, Jo Ann Jones, said he had been battling a kidney infection, though no cause of death has yet been determined.

If even longtime fans have never heard of Tom Roberts, that's because he was better known by his nickname: Pig Champion. He was the guitarist for the Portland, Ore., hardcore punk band Poison Idea, one of the greatest groups to emerge out of the fertile — yet still relatively unsung — American hardcore punk scene of the 1980's. The fast-and-ugly sound of hardcore punk sometimes seemed like a musical dead end, but the members of Poison Idea saw that as an advantage. Like the Germs before them, they took dead-end-ism seriously, writing a string of powerful and sometimes quite moving songs about lives barely worth living and nights well worth wasting.

From the start, the band members cultivated — or at any rate, declined to dispel — a reputation for extreme decadence, even nihilism. In 1986, they released their thrilling album debut, "Kings of Punk"; to prove the title was no idle boast, the front cover had the band's name razor-bladed into the ample belly of the singer, known as Jerry A. As his nickname suggests, Roberts was even bigger. The most common estimate is 450 pounds, and in interviews he talked about his diet of drugs and alcohol.

. . . more

[Redstone]

1. 450 pounds. Diet of drugs and alcohol. And he wonders why he's dead?

I'm no ascetic, but you'd think that after the 400th pound, you'd be hearing some alarm bells...

Redstone

[swag]

2. I doubt he wonders anything any more.

[Redstone]

3. Probably not. And, furthermore, HERO? Come on. A hero is someone

who risks his or her life to save someone else's.

Not a guitar player. Or a guy who plays sports, for that matter.

Redstone

[swag]

4. Whatever you say, man.

[Redstone]

5. Hey, I'm not trying to insult the guy. Just the writer.

"Hero" does get thrown around too much these days, wouldn't you agree?

Redstone

[ghostsofgiants]

12. Hero can mean different things in different contexts.

One of those meanings: "An object of extreme admiration and devotion."

If punk fans admired him greatly, then he was a hero. A different kind of hero than say a firefighter, sure, but the word does have legitimate appliation.

[GirlinContempt]

7. Thought twins

[swag]

8. You and me 'til the wheels fall off.

[GirlinContempt]

9. You and me. We just fit.

[flamingyouth]

6. Thanks for posting this.

Ah, memories.

[swag]

10. A kick before dying for the morning punks.

[blackcatpgh]

11. i was really surprised to see this

i posted about pig here in the lounge last week when i heard that he had died, but never expected to see anything in a paper like the NYT about it. nice writeup.