Uncle Brain R.I.P.

Brian Redman R.I.P.

I can’t pretend that Uncle Brain and I hung out all the time cause we actually only met the one time. I can’t believe that! Looking back, I would have thought that we’d hung out a whole bunch. But the truth of it is, that we only hung out face to face that first night I met 3 inches of Blood in London. But we got on pretty fucking well. I adopted him as a big brother soon after, but then later christened him Uncle as everyone needs an Uncle that behaves badly. I had 2 – Uncle Bob Slayer and Uncle Brain. We kept in touch with emails, I called him now and again, he helped me with my love life, I stayed in touch when he left 3 inches of Blood, as he was and is one of my favourite members that band has had. No offense to the others but Brain was the man. We had a mutual love of Pinky and the Brain. I was Pinky, he was Brain. We had a Pinky and the Brain referencing friendship. We had a talking shit friendship. We had a talking Black metal friendship. I tried to get to visit him in Tacoma, but I didn’t have the time or the money in the end last year. He was gonna come to London in January. When we discovered facebook we had a “poke” ing friendship. When we discovered we both had Blackberry messenger we had a “BBM” ing friendship. I spoke to him on BBM when I was in Delhi a few hours before he died. He sent me this photo:

He told me “I want to molest China”

As I was on my way to Tibet.

That was the last I heard from him.

Uncle Brain was a guest on my radio show. I wanted to phone him every week. Sometimes I couldn’t get hold of him cause he was sleeping. Sometimes he picked up and was fuckin funny. 2 weeks before he died from a moped accident he was on my show talking about bike accidents. My friend Lucy had been hit by a car whilst on her bike in Camden. She was shaken up but reasonably unhurt. I dedicated my radio show to her as she’s one of my best friends and we played various accident related tracks. I phoned Uncle Brain; he picked up and was on the show about half an hour discussing accidents and telling stories. He told me a story about how a car went into him once when he was drunk cycling home. He got real mad and got up off the floor ready to fight the guy behind the wheel who’d knocked him off the bike, only to find out that the car was parked and there was no one behind the wheel – it had been stationary the whole time. Doh!

Uncle Brain was a party animal. But I only got to party with him once. What a fucking loser I am I should have made the journey out to see him. It’s the nature of friends in this business, sometimes you meet people who you get on with so well, you know you’ll be friends for life, and just hope your paths cross again soon. Well, life was a shorter time than I expected. And our paths didn’t cross again as soon as I hoped they would. I know that all the people who got to spend more time with him, and Dana who I know loved him to bits must miss him a whole bunch because I miss him and I only hung out with him that one time face to face. I hope you all can treasure the memories and times you’ve had with him – all I have is a photo of his smelly feet and Pinky and Brain cartoons.

What a fucking awesome guy. I’m so sad you’re not around to make the world more rock n roll.