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pot
> Teenager of the Year <

Iceland
3909 Posts

Posted - 08/09/2019 :  14:20:39  Show Profile  Visit pot's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Pavement and all that...

Guy deserves his own thread now, a true artist. And someone who had a few problems in his personal life and with drugs it seems.

He only just returned with a new album (and band under the name Purple Mountains) and he was due to start a new tour tomorrow night!

It's a great album, full of darkness and wonder now.

No official cause of death but I think drug induced suicide is probably what happened. Why now though, and was this part of his come back plans? He was always such an enigmatic figure.

I printed out the cartoon strip promoting his new album and put it up on my bathroom, so every time I go for a piss I can read some of it and appreciate it. Now it's just freaking me out.

Here are my two favourite songs off the new album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZKMa-ByLBQ

Nights that wont happen :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxJzN0asbqg

pot
> Teenager of the Year <

Iceland
3909 Posts

Posted - 08/13/2019 :  12:48:06  Show Profile  Visit pot's Homepage  Reply with Quote
He hanged himself.

"Light of my life is going out tonight"

The song and video is about the break up of his marriage to Cassie Berman, who (I think) features in the video Darkness and Cold. At the start of the video there's a disclaimer stating the characters in the video are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. But it's clearly a song about him and his ex-wife, who are clearly in the video?

Self deprecating humour perhaps (I'm not that deep into poetry, not even Berman's) or his own personal eulogy to a suicide that he planned?

Maybe he just got strung out about touring (which he wasn't keen on) or this album return was part of that plan. I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

Edited by - pot on 08/13/2019 12:48:43
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pot
> Teenager of the Year <

Iceland
3909 Posts

Posted - 08/17/2019 :  13:46:46  Show Profile  Visit pot's Homepage  Reply with Quote
The last gig by the Silver Jews in Cumberland Caverns in Tennessee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNwAE4grxp4
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Stevio10
* Dog in the Sand *

United Kingdom
1066 Posts

Posted - 08/19/2019 :  05:01:32  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Have been listening to the Purple Mountains album the last week, it is very good.

I've only listened to it since his death sadly. Post death it sounds like he's singing from beyond the grave in a I told you so sort of way. However it's tough thinking this has gone from a very good comeback to a farewell in such a short space of time.
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pot
> Teenager of the Year <

Iceland
3909 Posts

Posted - 08/20/2019 :  09:42:20  Show Profile  Visit pot's Homepage  Reply with Quote
I've never been so shocked by a celebrity death. He's not that well known, but certainly he is 90's indie/alt rock alumnus.

I heard about it on twitter. Came up on trending "In memorial: David Berman" and I was like, eh? Surely they don't mean... but sure enough the news was he was dead. He'd only just returned to the scene! A surreal moment.

It says on his wikipedia page that in 2005 he stayed in some hotel that had a well known Al Gore Suite (probably named so because Al Gore stayed there during the 2000 elections) which he demanded to stay in. In the lift on the way up he is reported to have said that he "wanted to die where the presidency died". Then went up to his room, took crack cocaine and swallowed 300 xanax pills and had to have his stomach pumped. So it's not the first time he's tried to top himself.

A troubled soul he was..
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pot
> Teenager of the Year <

Iceland
3909 Posts

Posted - 08/20/2019 :  13:10:58  Show Profile  Visit pot's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Maybe reading too much into the last video...

Can't watch it without thinking of the weird guy who came into the old folks home in Ricky Gervais's series Derek and sat around drinking cans of lager though?

Symbolisms.. asides from the obvious Jewish stuff. The candy necklace? And when he pulls the cord to turn out the light near the end. Upside down weed pland, then he's eating the candy necklace and "peace be to this house".

Too many happy pills and not enough of the good stuff (marijuana) maybe. I know how that feels.

Know what I mean?

If you're planning to kill yourself, and you used to be a semi-famous musician who feels slightly let down by the world and not perhaps appreciated as much as his contemporaries, might as well make it an art project...

Edited by - pot on 08/20/2019 13:22:15
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TarTar
* Dog in the Sand *

1963 Posts

Posted - 09/01/2019 :  18:35:08  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Huge loss. In my circle, he was legendary, and an old friend of mine was quite close with him. She's devastated by his loss but wants people to know there was more to him than sadness and depression. "He was hysterically funny and quick witted and so generous," she said. Describing being neighbors with him in recent years: "He installed a hook outside my back door so he could leave goofy gifts for us that put us in better moods. His memes and nicknames were genius. He was genius."

My life is dirt but you seem to make it cleaner... reduce my felony to a misdemeanor
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