Tuesday July 25th, 2023
Dearest Friends of Biff Rose ~
Biff passed away this morning, sitting comfortable in his rocking chair, listening to Tibetan morning chants, Jennifer massaging his head, while I rubbed his feet. Biff's transition into the light was incredibly peaceful, dignified & beautiful. (time of death 9:56 am CT) https://www.facebook.com/biffrose
Some Great Songs:
Buzz the Fuzz!
Paradise Almost Lost:
Ain't No Great Day Coming Tomorrow 'cause it's Here Today!
Hello, Dolphin - They have that Natural Christlike Zeitgeist!
Gentle People performed on TV... I think this was the inspiration for Spinal Tap's Listen to the Flower People...
Fill Your Heart: "Love Cleans the Mind and makes it FREE"
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| Cabin in the Short Forests of Mendocino |
and Biff Said:
that particular land where Laurel's cabin was is known as the Pygmy Forest...there is a saline solution in the sol..makes the redwoods banzai tree size///redwoods that grow no taller tan your neck.....befriend Josh Lowell now..he's Laurrel's kid...he gives tours of..or gave tours of the pygmy forest and knows every tree by name
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| Library in the Cabin... We stopped at a Grocery store on the way to the Cabin and bought Salmon for dinner... all paid for by Biff's "Obamabucks" - what he called Social Security... After Dinner we watched a Trump/Hillary Debate on TV and the Gentleman who lived in the Cabin was OUTRAGED! and he was Very Knowledgeable about the details of Politics, foreign policy... gee... I guess reading all those books made a difference! |
Pacific Ocean near Ft. Bragg, CA
as WE were driving from Highway 101 to the Coast we came to the Top of the Hill and I could see Blue Sky behind the Last Row of Redwood Trees... and the Anticipation of Viewing the Pacific Ocean was... Extreme! and then... WHOOSH... we were over the hill and there was the Ocean... and I pulled over at the very first place to get out and experience the View, Cool Breeze and the Smell.
Pacific Ocean near Ft. Bragg, CA
Back Deck at the Cabin near Mendocino
Inside the House was an Electric Piano... and After Biff and I Got Stoned on Marijuana, he Played it... for his own amusement... and we got to listen...
Earlier we went to that Fancy Restaurant in Eureka.
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| In the Restaurant at Woodley Island Marina |
Instrumental Music by
Biff Rose on the Mighty Kurzweill...
https://biffrose.bandcamp.com/track/the-best-of-the-beast-or-vice-versa Psychedelic with Synth Sounds!
and
Mostly Piano sounds...
and
Outer Space!
and
Swinging Progressive Jazz...
Talking... excellent but, WHO IS JOE???
and the Movie Phantom of the Paradise?
Even More Talking by Biff... World Trade Organization Protests
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| Eureka, I Have Found It, California |
Paul "Biff" Rose ~ American comedian / singer-songwriter passed away at the age of 85 at his home in Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday July 25th.
Born in New Orleans, Rose's popularity in the Greenwich Village folk scene prompted a 1964 NY Times profile on the young singer. Biff moved to Hollywood in 1966 where he found a job working as a comedy sketch writer with George Carlin on the John Davidson show. In 1968 Rose released his first album The Thorn in Mrs. Rose's Side, containing his best known composition, Fill Your Heart, co-written with Paul Williams and famously covered by both David Bowie on his album Hunky Dory and Tiny Tim on the B-side of his hit single Tip Toe Thru The Tulips. Rose made 10 appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show from 1968 to 1970, bringing his cherubic wit and wondrous piano playing to millions of viewers. He also performed on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, American Bandstand, and Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark. Biff emceed the Atlantic City Pop Festival of 1969 and the Atlanta Pop Festival of 1970.
Rose spent the better part of the 70's performing in every small town in America, driving his piano equipped red Volkswagon bus further off the beaten paths of the music industry and deeper into uninhibited improvisations & poetic free expression. Biff's 1978 album "Roast Beef" was produced by Monkee Mike Nesmith and all 14 songs were recorded in one continuous take.
The 80's found Rose living above a jazz club in San Francisco, before moving abroad to Germany, and teaching an English slang course to university students in Göttingen. Returning to live in New Orleans, Biff rooted back into the local culture. His album Bone Again (1996) paints a picture of his colorful surroundings, where face painting tourists in the streets became one of his main artistic expressions for the next 25 years.
In 2009 Biff began regular trips to Cambridge Massachusetts and started Mythological Records with Apollo Sunshine singer Jesse Gallagher. The two recorded & released numerous albums including The Thorn 2 (2010) and in 2017, Biff & Jesse toured the United States, performing in clubs from NY to Los Angeles to celebrate Rose's 80th birthday. Mythological Records continues to release new and unreleased archived Biff Rose material. There are over 30 albums spanning his entire career available to download on www.biffrose.bandcamp.com
Later in his life, Biff curated an "infamous" Facebook page that he operated like a tabloid newspaper, reflecting on the times with daily satirical writings and cartoons that would rouse up his readers and consistently get him into trouble with the censors. Fans knew where his heart was, and trusted some of his more far out humor would be laughed at in the future.
Biff is survived by his 4 children, Terry, Andy, Eben & Quicksilver Rose. A celebration of life is being planned for October in New Orleans, where Biff will be placed in a tomb alongside many notable jazz musicians in one of the oldest historical graveyards in the city.
and Jennifer Pendur Wrote on FaceBorg:
Biff tended to get up in the middle of the night and sit in his chair in the front room, waiting quietly until something moved in him to write or make a cartoon, sometimes several cartoons, and essays and refining the phrasing of certain routines as you do... knowing that "that hard-core of faithful readers" would be right there as soon as he posted... he took this on as a sort of a mission, up until he couldn't bear to do it any more, for various reasons, and at that point he was sent to FB jail, so it was no longer a choice. I will continue to maintain this page and hope everybody will continue to contribute any Biff-related material, stories and anecdotes, things that happened in your connection with him that were important to you, whatever you want to share. I am hoping to get together another book in addition to what he left for publication in those many famous trunks... a book of "fans and friends" writings... pardon me if I have already said this... and I am very likely to say it again in the future... if you would prefer to send things to my email instead of posting online, that would be swell. I would like to encourage you all to make videos or voice recordings that might be possibly used in a documentary, or played at some point in the October 15th Birthday Celebration and Memorial Gumbofest. If you have not heard, there are plans for his ashes to be installed in the Musicians Vault in New Orleans, thanks to his peemp Rob de Florence... keep in touch and also check out the Friends of Biff Rose page where people are also posting a lot of great material!
and then Biff Said on FaceBorg:
AI Music won't destroy music..it will just be known as AI MUSIC to distinguish it from Country Music or Classical Music or Commercial 3 minute song music whose unofficial "leading" is randy newman from the last century with those dollar signs painted in his eyes....those solo so called white guys..are rich and amous and put on the back burner or side burner now that the kids have more buttons to press and fewer real reelings to make us go wow...we who know the limit of tricks right where the he_art stops and don't care to press on ( the buttons ) but use the VISUALS.like you never have to HEAR a dylan song again just check out the profile....look..Springsteen has his sleeves rolled up....oh look...tony bennet has an extra punch thanks to Lady GaGa...Billy Eyelash ? Oh..THOSE are the bland runaways...bridging and brimming a lyric and musical gap.....ooh look how short......that must be Paul Williams.....who's that guy wears a red and white t-shirt? Hmmmmm....using Facebook to prolong a solo white male spermacy....hmmmmmm...sticky issue.
and here's a Classic Biff "Improvisational Jazz Word Thang" Post:
Letter to my vyfe Susanna Menke ins Deutschhland...
Hey Suss..you're turning into a real rock writer...you blended courageous with carousing to my posthumous...and last nite was a revolutionary nite in nooAWlinz and therefore THE VURLD'S musik....My Peemp Rob of Florence put together a band of volk uniting Fats Domino rock with john prine country folk..
You'd never find a convention of domino
-prine fans under one roof over any circumstances
plus Al "Carnival Time " Johnson....Al wrote THE mardi gras national anthem...GO 0n youtube and check out Because it's Carnival time...so Al is there with Patricia Diamond Billy Diamond' s daughter...Billy Diamond was Antoine Dominoes best friend and nicknamed him FATS..
Billy died in LA six or seven years ago but always wanted to be buried in nooAWlinz so you can see us all at the cemetary...me giving Fats some tips on how to construct a real non binary Vienese Waltz...it's on one of m FB pages....so we're all at the same table in the overcrowded jam and jelly packd Pontchartrain Hotel...bar.....and Curling Herman whats his name on drums right next to Lady P's left ear or what's LEFT of her ear....and Petey her French shitsu one hundred year old puppy winding his way biting people on the leg and drinking way too much.....Mike Fulton the giant Seattle Dixieland trumpeteer brings a Russian jazz musician who owned a club in Moscow but left day after the war started..he teached
taught me "wordplay" in russian......something sounds like....e-gra slovo....I tell him develop the theme for a sing a long a russian kumbaya and remind him how we hate the russians.....with Carnival Time and his one huge hit Carnival Time I tell him ":listen Al you gotta write the flip side..LENT TIME....
He laughed..I'll remind him of it in 5 years...Hey Suss..you're turning into a real rock writer...you blended courageous with carousing to my posthumous...and last nite was a revolutionary nite in nooAWlinz and therefore THE VURLD'S musik....My Peemp Rob of Florencce put together a band of volk uniting Fats Domino rock with john prine country folk..
You'd never find a convention of domino
-prine fans under one roof over any circumstances
plus Al "Carnival Time " Johnson....Al wrote THE mardi gras national anthem...GO 0n youtube and check out Because it's Carnival time...so Al is there with Patricia Diamond Billy Diamond' s daughter...Billy Diamond was Antoine Dominoes best friend and nicknamed him FATS..
Billy died in LA six or seven years ago but always wanted to be buried in nooAWlinz so you can see us all at the cemetary...me giing Fats some tips on how to construct a real non binary Vienese Walyz...so we're all at the same table in the overcrowded jam and jelly packd Pontchartrain Hotel...bar.....and Curling Herman wahts his name on drums right next to Lady P's ear and Petey her French shitsu one year old puppy winfin his way biting people on the leg and drinking way too much.....Mike Fulton the giant Seattle Dixieland trumpeteer brings a Russian jazz musican who owned a club in Moscow but left day after the war started..he teached
taught me "wordplay" in russian......something sounds like....e-gra slovo....I tell him develop the theme for a sing a long a russian kumbaya and remind him how we hate the russians.....with Carnival Time and his one huge hit Carnval Time I tell him ":listen Al you gotta write the flip side..LENT TIME....
He laughed..I'll remind him of it in 5 years.
I taught the Russkie my Japanese Chinese translation of Blueberryy Hill....."I found my threar on Brew belly hear."
Dylan and Baez came to see me at the Gaslight Caf� in November 1964 after the above article appeared in the NY Times on Nov. 14th. I was opening for Mississippi John Hurt�.or Son House or Skip James�maybe Dylan and Baez came to see them�..Dylan wanted to meet me after my two encore show�the best show I ever did at the Gaslight�.he stuck his hand out to shake�it was limp�I like that�.rednecks like to squeeze it�I'm a piano player�I like to take it easy�Dylan said, "And this is Joanie Baez�"�.actually it was Clarence "Sam" Hood,Jr. who came backstage after my show. "Biff" he said, "come here..there's someone I want you to meet�.." Dylan and I shook hands and he said, "And this is Joanie Baez�" I said, "Joanie WHO?" to settle a score between us from a year and a half before�.a bunch of us were singing "We Shall Overcome" onstage after a Baez concert at Earlham College in Richmond,Indiana�1963�Baez came over to me looked me in the eye and said, "You're singing too loud." "Joanie WHO?" says I�the teaching here being..you CAN'T sing TOO LOUD for Civil Rights�she's a big phony and Dylan just wanted to phuck'er anyway then cop out explaing to Scorsese some bullschitt about mixing up ""love"" with "wisdom" �yawn�boring�.only Biff rose above anything they have to say because he heard that same old schitt yesterday�..yesterday their raves fell in a maze of old cliches�. .
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