I was shocked to learn from Skiv of the sudden death of Darren Brown aka Wiz lead singer of Mega City Four and laterley Iponema.

I am sure you will not read about this on the front page of any of the muisc tabloids, in fact it will be lucky if this is mentioned in a foot note in the NME or something. But it should be.

Mega City Four were a band that were in their element in the early ninties, playing festivals, writing brilliant songs and releasing excellent albums. Back when “Indie” was classed as your “Stone Roses”, “Inspiral Carpets” and “James” bands like the Megas, PWEI, Senseless Things, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Midway Still and the Doughboys, were the real Indie bands they never quite made it while the shit ones did!

They are probably one of the reasons that i am mates with Skiv. I used to see him cutting about Uni with a Mega City Four T-shirt on, so I knew he had a similar music taste as me and our friendship grew from there.

I was privelaged to see Mega City Four live and liked them alot and then saw Iponema earlier this year when Skiv surprised me with tickets.

My thoughts are with his family, friends and fans. He was a great musician that, like so many, was underappreciated in the grand scheme of things. The world of music is a little less talented without him.

This is taken from the unoffical website

Former Mega City Four singer Darren “Wiz” Brown died from a blood clot on the brain on December 6, 2006.

He was taken ill at a rehearsal earlier in the week and died Wednesday afternoon at St Georges Hospital, Tooting, South London.

Wiz, 44, was living and working in Farnborough, Hants. He had just finished writing material for an album for his current band Ipanema and returned from a successful tour in America.

With his guitarist brother Danny, bassist Gerry Bryant and drummer Chris Jones, the band released 6 studio albums between 1989 and 1996 and achieved success as a live touring band travelling the world.

Darren “Wiz” Brown:
18/01/1962 - 06/12/2006
“The Original Awkward Kid”

Mega City Four

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 7th, 2006 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Music, Thoughts for the day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.