Scene & Heard: Farewell to Frankie Knuckles

FRANKIE KNUCKLES RIP: House music fans around the world are mourning the passing this week of Frankie Knuckles, a man who had such a hand in the development of the genre.

The 59-year-old New Yorker’s death was attributed to complications from type II diabetes — he had also had a foot amputated in 2008 after a snowboarding accident.

Knuckles provided the bridge between the fading disco scene and the birth of house music with his legendary DJ sets at clubs such as the Warehouse and Powerplant in Chicago in the mid-late 1980s, where he helped perfect such techniques as perfectly segueing tunes and using tapes to record and loop certain parts of a track to suit the dancefloor.

Irish DJ Shane Johnson, who would have played many of Knuckles’s tracks over the years, said: “The word legend is thrown around far too readily but, in his case, it fits perfectly.

"From those early years in New York with Larry Levan as they experienced the birth of disco, to his genre-defining residency at the Warehouse in Chicago, then on to production and remix work with everyone from Jamie Principle to Marshall Jefferson and, of course his Def Mix partner, David Morales, Frankie’s life and legacy is huge and will live on.”

His ‘Your Love’ track was used as the basis of Candi Staton and the Source’s hit ‘You’ve Got the Love’ and his many classic remixes include ‘Talking with Myself’ with Electribe 101, as well as more commercial work for the likes of Michael Jackson.

Incidentally, the street where the Warehouse stood in Chicago was renamed ‘Frankie Knuckles Way’ in 2004, after legislation was pushed through by a young senator named Barack Obama.

MUSIC NEWS: Hot Press reports that Jack White is to release a new solo album on June 6, with the track ‘High Ball Stepper’ already available for an online listen.

The Cure’s next album is set to be a combination of new material and leftover tracks from the 2008 offering 4:13 Dream. Former Guns’n’Roses bass player Duff McKagan has hinted he may get back with his old bandmates. McKagan is probably also giving a few thoughts to this week 20 years ago when he sat next to Kurt Cobain on a flight to Seattle, where the Nirvana singer went on to take his own life.

GIG WISE: Paul Weller will be supported by Tom Odell at Kilmainham on June 24, while Martha Reeves, 72, brings her Vandellas to the Button Factory on May 8.

If you’d prefer something a little harder, Anthrax have announced an appearance at the Academy on July 2. In Cork, hotly-tipped Dublin singer Gavin James is at Cyprus Avenue on April 25.

FILM TIPS: The annual Japanese Film Festival is on the road over the next few days, with various venues in Cork, Limerick, Dublin, Galway and Waterford hosting screenings from Sunday. See www.jff.ie.

As well as being part of that event, Triskel Christchurch in Cork has more Asian flavours on Sunday when Dalai Lama Awakening, a documentary on Western thinkers’ encounters with the Tibetan spiritual leader, will be accompanied by a Q+A with director Khashyar Darvich.

In mainstream cinemas, some of the quality Oscar winners are still doing the rounds, while Rio 2 is this weekend’s big release for junior audiences.

ALL AND SUNDRY: Mary McEvoy and Jon Kenny star in a production of John B Keane’s The Matchmaker at the Everyman in Cork from Monday. Irish artist Tadhg McSweeney has his first London exhibition since 1986 opening at the Embassy Tea Gallery in SE1 on April 15.