It is probably a matter of public record that modern pop music, in whatever form, guise, wrapping or even exhumation passes me by. I can count on one hand the number of pop records, melodies, songs, whatever; which have impacted upon my psyche and my mind. From ‘Matchstalk Men’ to ‘Take my breath away’ by Berlin, through a strangely prophetic ‘Ride to Agadir’, to the Mary Fahl version of ‘Going Home’, the superb theme music to the Civil War epic ‘Gods and Generals’; and especially ‘The Living Years’; a song which reminds me constantly of the fact that my brother died without my reconciling with him.
The deaths of five young men in a car which sped past traffic barriers and then hurtled off the gap in the Stockholm road where the bridge had risen; to fall eighty feet to the riverbed below, has yet to be fully explained; as blood, drug and toxicity testing remain unfinished; but it is plain that something went tragically wrong. This was no accident, as the vehicle drove past stationary cars, and a traffic barrier, before their fatal plunge to the riverbed. Four of the five were members of an ‘Indie rock band’ named Viola Beach, and the fifth was their road manager.
Their music will live on, in the minds and memories of their families, and their fans; but it is probably a sad fact that the lifestyle which helped give them the ‘spark’; helped kill all five.
Fire, Pillage & Plague 