Friday 17 March 2017

R.I.P. Jak


Jak Sowerby: 1954-2017

One of my oldest friends, Jak Sowerby, passed away on the 3rd March 2017 after a short battle with cancer.

Jak was one of those highly creative people who wove in and out of people's lives: he was always buzzing with thousands of amazing ideas, from comix, to music, to video. He left behind pages and pages and pages of comix, untold lo fi tapes and a whole series of video projects. He had an infectious enthusiasm that would get people joining in the most unlikely of projects and ideas - dressing up as robots in cardboard boxes, singing into an old pair of headphones as a microphone while playing a three string guitar..

Lots of us got swept up in the mad ride that was Jak - without him there would be no Conny Plankton, and this blog would not exist. This post in the blog is a small showcase sent in by various friends and collaborators as a memory of Jak.

He will be sorely missed.

First is a tribute remix piece from Conny Plankton:





Next we have a series of Photographs from Dave Johnston - he and Jak went on many weird and wonderful adventures together:






 ..Jack chillin' at the Cannabis March in Brixton...




 An artistic rendering of our Jack by Dave...




Jack and Dave as Trekkies!

A Movie made with Jak and his brother Anth...





Next we have some comments and a contribution from Prawnshocker:




"Just heard that Jak died on Friday. Very sad news.
I improvised a lead vocal on this track of his, apart from the final rap, which was delivered by Jak.

Jak once told  me that he had a plan for the perfect crime. Then he added, "But it's only a two-man job, so one of you already knows too much"." 

Very sad news indeed."



From Michael Gilham we first have Bullshit Detector Van...




...and then, Atomic Bliss...




...and New! Just in - with production from the Reverend Dhumpa Phatti (to get all tracks converted to digital format and arranged in order) and new artwork cover from Conny Plankton, is the full length album from Jak Sowerby and Friends - Sanity Vampires is one of Jak's many musical projects, and the first full one to surface here on the pages of the blog (although some tracks from the album can be checked elsewhere in this post)...




...and there is more to come: watch this space!


2 comments:

  1. Great work with the tribute to Jak, Kev.
    Just a quick addendum re the album. I didn't remix any of the tracks. In fact, I didn't even tidy up the ends or beginnings of the recordings. They're just the way they came out of their 1999 zip files (with two very minor exceptions). All I did was sequence it into a running order. - Rev D. Phatti

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  2. i guess the description i wrote for the 'Bullshit Detector Van' video on youtube is also an obituary of sorts now too but one i'm happy that Jak got to read it before he died and that i wrote it before he found out he was ill, or had even lost his voice for that matter. basically, he knew it wasn't just empty words and that i'd not been prompted to write it or anything. i'll be in touch with you (Kev) again soon about tapes i have of Jak that no-one else will have. i have an idea for them. more soon.

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