Celebrity (and not so) Deaths 2024/25

Typical boomer would be blaming gender identification for static wage growth for the last fifty years and ignoring free education, so no.

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The ā€œgo-show ā€œ.

Anthony Gobert , Australian superbike racer aged 48. Died in palliative care.

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Mary Weiss, Shangrilas.

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May he rot in hell

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Good riddance

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Norman Jewison, Hollywood director, passed on at 97.
You’d be hard pressed not to have seen at least one of his films in your lifetime.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/01/22/norman-jewison-director-dead/

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Laurie Johnson, composer of various theme songs for TV and film…

This one was definitely close to my heart as a child…

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Frank Farian, creator of Boney M/Milli Vanilli/various other limited-talent vocal groups

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Yeah I only learned later that Boney M was basically a Milli Vanilli situation except it was some of them who were faking it, not all.

Of course today everybody mimes all the time and people don’t bat an eyelid. Either that or they get auto-tuned within an inch of their lives.

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Pretty much straight to the point there Baakkeerrrr

No, look, fair play to the man… he made squillions from a conveyor-belt line of marginal (in some cases no) talent. He also clearly had an ear for a natty pop tune.
That absolutely can’t be denied or knocked…

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There’s an excellent doco on Paramount+ about the Milli Vanilli situation whereby Farian features heavily that would make people rethink their previous held beliefs about the group.

TIL Boney M are frauds.

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They were the original Milli Vanilli, no sang a word.

The women sang on the Boney M records, but the men didn’t. I think they were Jamaican or something. The male vocals were actually Frank.

Milli Vanilli was 100 percent fake. I remember seeing interviews with them before they were found out, and they could barely speak English. It was always kinda suss.

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From memory, the main female vocalist on the records wasn’t actually in the line-up used for promo purposes in their halcyon days, but she did eventually come into the line-up. There was only one bloke in Boney M - Bobby Farrell, who was there primarily as a dancer (and vibes? the original Bez). He made a pretence at singing in the promos but actually didn’t.

You’ve gotta hand it to Farian. He perfectly understood the marketing angle of music. To be fair though, he obviously had some musical chops too. I mean, some marketing people go into careers that they are very bad at and have no business being in… like being prime ministers as an example…

Edit: should’ve consulted Dr Google first, evidently the female vocals were done by one of the promo line-up. The other two were deemed by Farian to be ā€œunsuitableā€. Interesting, because Maizie Williams (one of the ā€œunsuitableā€ ones) was touring as lead singer of a Boney M line-up well into the 90’s…

There’s a very loose definition of ā€œcelebrityā€ in this thread

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There’s been a very loose definition of ā€œdeathā€ on occasion too…

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And this specific thread was initiated due to a very loose definition of ā€œ2024ā€.

It all balances out.

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