Jack Feerick

Always acclaimed, always a musician's musician; but he couldn't make a living at it. Booze, the stress of touring, and the financial grind eventually led him to retire from music, and he retrained as a caregiver and did some work toward a nursing degree. An epileptic, he died in his sleep aged 48.

YouTube video by PublicImageLimitVEVO Public Image Limited - Disappointed

When the Armoury Show inevitably imploded, McGeoch wound up as a key element in Public Image Ltd. during their reinvention as slick, melodic pop-rock band. I remain fond of "Disappointed," where he brings a Middle Eastern/North African flavor.

YouTube video by 80sMTV Armoury Show - Castles In Spain (MTV2)

A lot of it WAITING FOR THE FLOODS is kind of goofy—the clattering drum programming, in particular, has not aged well—and a little of Jobson's bellow goes a long way; but I'm a sucker for that big rousing sound, and McGeoch smokes throughout.

YouTube video by MercifulRelease Armoury Show - We Can Be Brave Again - 1985

Stuart Adamson had left the Skids to form Big Country, and the Armoury Show was sort of Jobson's attempt to out-Big Country Big Country.

YouTube video by fery2 Armoury Show - Show Higher than the World

Some of my favorite McGeoch guitar work, though, comes on the sole album by the Armoury Show. This finds him reunited with Richard Jobson and Russell Webb from the Skids.

YouTube video by SiouxsieBansheesVEVO Siouxsie And The Banshees - Spellbound (Official Music Video)

And of course "Spellbound."

Siouxsie called McGeoch "the only man who can make an acoustic guitar sound foreboding." (This is about the only Banshees studio music video I could find with any good shots of McGeoch—mostly he's heard but not seen.)

YouTube video by A Short Term Effect Siouxsie and the Banshees - Halloween - Live 1981

"Halloween" is a great summation of his sound—chord voicings that sound like explosions of white noise into those dissonant arpeggios. And MAN, could he deliver the goods live.

YouTube video by siouxsio Siouxsie And The Banshees Israel Live

Just huge, epic sounds, lots of unconventional scales.

YouTube video by scythrop Siouxsie and the Banshees - Arabian Knights

AND THEN...

THE BANSHEES

YouTube video by FruitierThanThou THE SKIDS John Peel 1st September 1980

...and played on a Peel session with the Skids. He's sitting in for Stuart Adamson, who was too sick to perform at the time the session was scheduled, and he *nails* Adamson's signature tones and riffs.

YouTube video by Generation X - Topic Heavens Inside

He played most of the guitars on Gen X's final LP before Billy Idol went solo...

YouTube video by frenk4614 Visage Visage 1980

McGeoch took the gig in Visage mostly as a financial opportunity, and there wasn't much room for his brand of angular guitar heroics in their synthpop context. The eponymous track "Visage" is probably his crowning moment with the group.

YouTube video by Magazine - Topic A Song From Under The Floorboards (Remastered 2007)

More Magazine—"A Song from Under the Floorboards." Those opening arpeggios are the McGeoch paradox in a nutshell: the notes look delicate and ethereal on paper, but played with a heavily processed, aggressive tone, they're something else again.

YouTube video by pondscum77 MAGAZINE - THE LIGHT POURS OUT OF ME

Magazine, "The Light Pours Out of Me." Here it begins.

A moody black-and-white photo of the man, the legend, some time in the 1980s; leather trousers, leather jacket, open shirt, rings, floppy hair, sunglasses, standing in a cobbled alleyway

John McGeoch left us 22 years ago today, one of the greatest and most criminally undercelebrated guitarists of the rock era. Come with me on this tour of some of his finest moments, won't you?

Student and semi-pro companies are a crapshoot. Sometimes you get real brilliance; sometimes you get an AS YOU LIKE IT where the director decides for no reason that "melancholy Jaques" is a war vet with PTSD and gives him a ten-minute freakout scene scored to Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner"

What idiot called it Starfleet Academy and not Treks Education?

The Reverend David Black takes a pepper ball to the head for the cause of righteousness

This is what I think of these days when I hear that line. Slaughter in the air, protest on the wind.

I get what people are going for with the "Draft Barron" stuff but I think it would make the point better if it was someone Trump knows personally

I see the "Bluesky hasn't got the juice" arguments are ramping up again

YouTube video by VampireWeekendVEVO Vampire Weekend - Sympathy (Official Audio)

"Judeo-Christianity"? I never heard the word
Enemies for centuries, until there was a third

SEPTIC TANKS PUMPED SWIMMING POOLS FILLED NOT SAME TRUCK

Appreciate the clarity

*Fred Schneider voice*

SLAM!

With amateur and semi-pro companies, the comedies (unsurprisingly) tend to work better than the tragedies just on a "fun night out" level; but the lesson, I think, is that a smart directorial vision, one that plays to the strengths of your company, can make hay out of even "lesser" Shakespeare

MIDSUMMER with a double cast of Deaf and hearing actors; every speaking part was shadowed by a faerie who signed their lines and mocked them behind their backs, invisible to the speaking character -- except the two Pucks, who were aware of each other and functioned as a double act

Other highlights: A production of TWO GENTS where Verona was a sort of sitcom California while Milan was a Bollywood fantasia, complete with dance numbers and Desi local actors: What a joy to hear Shakespeare's language in the mouth of a middle-aged immigrant dentist as the Duke of Milan!

NOT-AT-ALL HOT TAKE: My ranking of favorite Shakespeare plays has nothing to do with reading the texts and everything to do with individual productions. e.g. A local troupe's staging of PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE (of all things) was the most purely entertaining evening of theater I've ever seen.

The title track, obviously, but also "Beauty & the Beast" (the world is dangerous and chaotic, but at least I'm facing it sober) and "Joe the Lion" (there's meaning in to be found in art, even if your chosen artform is self-destruction)

Dark, yes, but HEROES especially I find weirdly uplifting. Not just the title track, but there's a peculiar kind of optimism that I think comes from DB getting off coke. Not a feel-good record, but a record that gives me courage.