Mark Stewart of The Pop Group. R.I.P.

[Brundle-Fly]

Yet another post-punker gone too early.

https://thequietus.com/articles/32864-mark-stewart-rip-dead

[buttgammon]

For fuck's sake! I'll always remember putting 'She is Beyond Good and Evil' as the opener on a post-punk mix CD-R I made for a girl I fancied.

[T ørs ø]

Damn rip

[Pink Gregory]

oh, bollocks

[Vodkafone]

Ahh fucking hell. A visionary, uncompromising force in music who made some brilliant records. I mostly love the stuff he did with Maffia, listen to this and tell me it doesn't reek of prefab concrete

Sometimes he felt the pain
Sometimes he felt the strain
But he never gave up and laid down his arms

[dissolute ocelot]

Very sad. The early Pop Group stuff still sounds unbelievable, She Is Beyond Good And Evil and We Are All Prostitutes, and the rest. I saw him live in the early 2010s, still sounding very good. And only 62. Started The Pop Group when he was 17!

[Goldentony]

an old Cab Radio favourite

[sardines]

Saw him not that long ago (turns out to be 2019) and like seeing Wire it was a show full of 'now' not settling into nostalgia.

I almost said this previously but the amount of men of this generation dying late 50s-early 60s feels fuckin bleak. Happy for someone to tell me this is statistically bullshit.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

christ this is a bad year

i dont have enough for words for how much i loved the pop group in uni

i think i listened to Y and the Peel sessions every single day for two years

[cosmic-hearse]

Just came across this Adrian Sherwood quote, even more poignant coming after Jah Shaka's recent passing:

"Mark Stewart used to go to Jah Shaka and tape it. It was all so distorted and he'd want to make his records sound like that, which I thought was brilliant. Mark Stewart is a genius, I love him to death. I thought at first he was taking the piss with his live Shaka tapes, but he wasn't, he was deadly serious. He wanted his records to sound like Shaka overloaded."

[poodlefaker]

This is a good thing: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jm5agp/vic-reeves-vs-the-pop-group

[justin_bennett]

This is a good thing: https://www.vice.com/en/article/jm5agp/vic-reeves-vs-the-pop-group

Thanks for that, had forgotten about the Vic / Test Dept link. Has been a sad 24hrs since hearing the news.

Last time I saw Mark was a year ago in Glasgow - he was well oiled, cadging drinks off folk in the crowd. Still managed to pull off a blinder of a gig though. RIP.

[NoSleep]

Fuck! I only found out about this today! Mark Stewart & The Maffia were one of the greatest live bands of all time.

I was at this gig; ULU (circa '86); they were supporting Swans and the Maffia were fucking awesome as usual.

RIP

[Head Gardener]

Digging through 12"s today I came across this one by Mark Stewart & The Maffia which has old phone numbers from Adrian, Rusty and others written on the fold-out poster sleeve, can't remember how I came by it but as it's 40+ years old I guess those numbers don't ring no more!

[NoSleep]

But that's not THE Mark Stewart & the Maffia that are playing in the clip I posted above; the one with the Sugarhill Record's house band of Doug Wimbish (channeling Jimi Hendrix thru his bass), Skip McDonald & Keith LeBlanc, plus Adrian Sherwood on the mixing desk, pulling off a live dub mix throughout.

Not that Learning To Cope With Cowardice doesn't have its high spots; Jerusalem (yeah, THAT heretical tune) is awesome.