R.I.P. Micky Mike/Snowy Red

[tequila]

It's the French speaking Belgian broadcast RTBF which has announced the death of the Belgian new wave / new beat legend Micky Mike (real name: Marcel Thiel), frontman of Snowy Red. Aged 52 he died in a Brussels hospital after months of health problems.

Snowy Red was the one-man electronic band of the former Chainsaw guitarist, Micky Mike. With the "Vision" LP and some tracks on the "The Beat Is Over" LP, Snowy Red was, for a brief moment only, a band. After the Belgian New Beat boom, Snowy Red called it quits and Micky Mike disappeared. In 2003 the band forced a come back and signed to the Weikersheim (GER) based Cabinett label. A re-release of the complete back-catalogue was supposed to follow plus a brand new studio album in 2004. But nothing happened and Cabinett Records closed its doors.

The same year the band played live again for the first time in years as a duo (with a guitarist) at the Belgian Independent Music festival. It's less known that Micky Mike also collaborated with the singer Carol. He also got quite some recognition due to his work with La Muerte and with Dirk Schoufs before Schoufs joined the million selling Vaya Con Dios.

In a post on his blog in March 2009, Luc Van Acker already posted not so good news: "I got a mail from Michael Thiel the son of Mickey Mike, his dad is in hospital and not doing very well... Mickey Mike released his first album 'Snowy Red' the same day as me ("Taking Snapshots Vol.1") in 1981 . We both ended up in the legendary record-shop Casablanca Moon in Brussels for distribution and we both played our first concert in the Beurs-schouwburg in Brussels.

We never worked together but have a great mutual respect for each other. Mickey has always been larger than live in his own sympathetic way. I saw him play at the BIM festival 2003 and he was GREAT! So it was very sad to visit him in hospital ... not able to speak ... but with a little smile he recognized me ... I was only aloud a few minutes ... so I'll go back and look forward to meet his son."