CHILDREN OF PARADISE MEMBER WAS 65
Artie Traum, who as a member of the trio Children Of Paradise wrote and recorded songs and music for Brian De Palma's Greetings in 1968, died Sunday at his home in Bearsville, New York, following a battle with cancer. He was 65. World Music Central's T. J. Nelson has posted an obituary, which makes mention of the fact that Traum was also "an enthusiastic documentary filmmaker." Another obit by Jeremiah Horrigan at the Times Herald-Record describes Traum as a vital musician "at the down-home, finger-pickin' center of Woodstock's musical family." The music in Greetings is terrific, and really marks the film as a sixties artifact with its Byrds/Monkees-like theme song, and instrumental passages that highlight a freewheeling, anything goes attitude. I especially love the crazy paranoid plucking that percolates the scene where Lloyd meets the conspiracy nut in the bookstore. Great stuff.