Vale Sam Marini
The photo above is of me with my colleague Sam Marini. We worked together for the Melbourne band Stiletto for at least a year or so. During that time we spent more time together than with any of our respective significant others. Sam always had a ready smile, worked like a bitch and could roll a perfect three-paper hash joint while driving up the Newell Highway at 100+ k’s an hour.
Stiletto were on a roll at the time and we worked hard with weekly residencies all over the Melbourne pub scene and gigs up and down the east coast.
It was years later that I heard he’d topped himself and I’ve never been able to find out any details as to why.
Nowadays we lose contact with people by unfriending them and just about everyone can be tracked down without looking too hard. But it was very different in the early ’80s. Back then you could lose track of people in a blink, no matter how good your networks were.
I still look at this photo and wonder what troubles lay behind that angelic face and willing smile that caused Sam to take his own life.
ARCA runs a thoroughly depressing – but informative and necessary – Roll Call of brothers and sisters in the trade who’ve passed on.
Sam Marini isn’t on that list but I’ll attend to that matter in due course.
Sadly I recognise more than a few of those names on the ARCA Those We Miss.
ARCA has a scheme that proposes that a 5c (10 cents more better) levy be paid on every ticket to every live gig across the country to support road crew that have fallen on hard times.
This is a GOOD THING.
By Robert Gosford
