John Balance / Geff Rushton RIP (?)

I am afraid that it is true.

john balance - you have given me 20 years of love, inspiration and hope. may yr heartworms be in a better place.

Walk on, John, and thank you. R.I.P.

R.I.P. John.

coil is/was absolutely one of the most magical bands ever, they did something to me that most bands cant.

The first Coil record lit a path for me. I was reluctant at first to follow it: Geff's words, his voice and his music had a directness that, at sixteen, in a small minded Kentucky town, cut me to the quick, and left me both spooked and seduced, scandalized and hooked. I was still unprepared for the solar flush and flash of gay sexuality in these words and songs, the esoteric and magickal connections they forged, the spidery network of meanings, associations, and references that opened out from this work; it was both threatening and intoxicating, and I studied the records, and learned to sing the songs, and scoured libraries and record stores to follow the trails and lifelines that they had marked out. Since that first moment of exposure, I have never stopped feeling the gravitational pull of this work, and it remains and will remain, as a monument to a life lived ambitiously and beautifully. Geff's creative and personal connection with Sleazy was an exemplary partnership for me as a young gay man; it provided a kind of standard of lifelong mutuality and support that I will always be inspired by. Together, and with the help of many close friends and associates, they have produced some of the most transformative recordings I have had the privilege to hear, recordings that nurture and sustain, that summon and invoke, that ring true now and will ring true. Though we were not close friends, in our social interactions at music festivals, at bars and parties, and at the homes of mutual friends, Geff was alternately charismatic and shy, but always affectionate. I can still recall swooning and pinching myself when I first began corresponding with him online, and I don't think a true friendship between us could ever have emerged because of my perpetual nervous adulation in his presence, but despite that stumbling block Geff remained gracious, curious, and eager to keep the conversation going. He was also capable of humility, and had his own occasional fits of nerves in the presence of people he admired, as I recall when I watched him inform Karlheinz Stockhausen that he was regarded as an honorary member of Coil. It will take time to recover from the shock of his passing, but his place in a pantheon of uniquely English poet-singers is, to me, assured, and stands at an opposite pole to the shocking newness of his vision when I first encountered it. There is then, at last, between the violent intensity of his musical testimony and its binding to the greenwood of a distinct tradition, a balance in place, as is fitting. My last memory of Geff is of our conversation at the Columbia Hotel in the afterglow of the Throbbing Gristle reunion performance. I remarked to him that his beard seemed to relocate the wildness in his eyes to another century; recasting his face in the mold of a Friedrich Nietzsche or a Walt Whitman. Then we both laughed at my nonstop pretentious adulation and joked about the transhistorical threeways that might have been. We talked about his boyfriend Ian, about Gerhard Richter and Sun Ra, about the incredible generosity of the TG concert, about his recording plans. He was celebratory, and seemed rekindled and revived, both creatively and personally. I am not someone who was close enough to Geff to have had to confront his darker moments, the deep troughs of depression and unhappiness that can be the inevitable consequence of rare flashes of deeply inspired living and creation. I am glad that my last memory of Geff is simply of him shining, joyous, impish, and aglow.

As is fitting, and as I said before, a Coil lyric comes to mind when I think of my wishes for Geff:

"There are thrones underground
With monarchs upon them
They walk serene
In spaces between"

May you walk serene.

of all those groups coil are typically lumped in with, they were the one that stuck to me the most.

Yeah, Ned, I just read your entry, and there IS a kind of weird resonance to these oddly simultaneous deaths. It's pure chance that Geff and ODB have both died now, but within their respective genres, both were troubled by demons, equally erratically brilliant and brilliantly erratic, both had a charm and presence (in the everyday and magical senses of those words) that totally overwhelmed the technical limitations of their voices, and they will be greatly missed.

One day, you're going to fall or I'm going to fall...

We loved and will always.

This sucks.

It also explains why coil has been getting so much attention on my soulseek.

It feels very weird to hear John Balance's voice sing the words:

Death, he is my friend
He's promised me a quick end

through two sets of walls.

The noise collage that tumbles in after those lines is amazingly powerful, still.

three years ... RIP

;_; ;_; ;_;

Rest well, still.

I played "The Anal Staircase" very loudly earlier, much the pronounced displeasure of the rest of the household.

RIP again.

:(

I just played my live cover of "Anal Staircase" last week, and now the anniversary comes round.

Sigh.

Speaking of occult pranks: there's a film about Coil and John Balance dfirected by... Oliver Stone? Is this any good?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3cVgzuG3Ds

Doesn't exist, that trailer was an April 1st prank on a Coil tumblr/blog.

hahaha. thank gods. i thought i was going nuts.

lol