John Blades
| John Blades | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | John Thomas Blades |
| Born | 8 December 1959 |
| Origin | Sydney, Australia |
| Died | 25 November 2011 (aged 51) Greenwich, New South Wales, Australia |
| Genres | Experimental Music, Tape Loop |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, radio presenter, civil engineer |
| Instruments | Reel-to-reel Tape Machine |
| Years active | 1980–2011 |
| Associated acts | The East End Butchers, The Loop Quartet, The Loop Orchestra War Meat and the Dictator, Men Like Licorice |
| Website | thelooporchestra.com at the Wayback Machine (archived 5 March 2009) |
| Notable instruments | |
| Reel-to-reel Tape Machine | |
John Thomas Blades (8 December 1959 – 25 November 2011) was an Australian experimental music artist and member of The Loop Orchestra; he also worked as a radio broadcaster and documentary maker, and as a civil engineer. In 1982 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and used a wheelchair from 1993. In 2010, his radio documentary, The Too Hard Basket, won the Walkley Award for 'Social Equity Journalism – All Media', and the 'Radio Documentary of the Year Award' from the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. Blades died on 25 November 2011 after complications from cancer therapy.
John Thomas Blades was born in December 1959 as the son of Douglas and Pam Blades with a brother Bruce. He grew up in Sydney and from the mid-1970s he listened to local radio, Double Jay, "[It] was like the breath of fresh air that people like me needed who had been swamped by disco, American soft rock ... rock opuses ... and the English Glam rock". In 1977 Blades and a group of school friends provided their favourite music for a radio presentation on Double Jay. His early preferences were for punk music by Ramones and The Saints, innovative music of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and reggae. By 1978 he preferred Peter Doyle (writer) programme which featured post-punk and experimental music, "[which] incorporated the punk ideal with new elements such as electronic noise and rhythms, spoken word, dub, electronically processed voice and experimental acoustic and electronic sound".
In 1980 while studying civil engineering at University of Sydney, Blades was a founding member of electronic music group The East End Butchers with Doyle. In 1982 he was a founding member of The Loop Quartet, with Richard Fielding (ex-Severed Heads), Ron Brown and Jaimie Leonarder. During that year, the quartet performed a radio studio live to air experimental performance using loops on reel-to-reel tape machines. Blades also formed and performed in other groups: War Meat and the Dictator, and Men Like Licorice, both in 1982. That year, Blades also started working as a structural engineer for Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA): he specialised in bridge engineering. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) – his mother Pam also had the disorder – and he was hopeful of retaining mobility.
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