Remembering: Mike Noga

It’s been a very, very long time since doing one of these kind-of posts but the unbelievable sad news broken yesterday about Mike Noga passing away. He was a solo artist and one of the drummers of The Drones so everyone should know by now how much I love them? He did three studio albums with them: Gala Mill (2005), Havilah (2008) and I See Seaweed (2013) and three solo albums: Folk Songs (2004), The Balladeer Hunter (2011) and King (2016) plus his fourth album entitled Open Fire was just announced last month, recorded last year in America with Alan Sparhawk from Low as the producer. No cause of death has been given yet but he was only aged 42. Here’s some of his stuff I’ve been listening to last night and this morning so you can tooo now because I’ve embedded them below:

His third solo album entitled King album of 2016 is up on Bandcamp:

My fave track from his second album The Balladeer Hunter is Piss On A Butterfly:

His debut solo album called Folk Songs is pretty hard to find online but here’s Long Summer Days:

Only one song for each of his three The Drones albums, my fave from I See Seaweed is Nine Eyes here it is played live on RRRfm:

Playing drums on a guitar case on Oh My from Havilah as played live on JJJfm:

Playing his harmonica on Sixteen Straws from Gala Mill:

Joel Silbersher 7″ No Teeth did have a little mini-Drones reunion with both Mike and Gareth joining him in 2017:

 Noga did played drums for Dirty Three’s Mick Turner for years when he was doing his solo gigs:

He also played drums when Something From Kate’s Paul Dempsey did solo solo shows too but here’s both of them on acoustic guitars doing a cover of Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen:

A couple of years ago he did this wicked cool cover he uploaded to his own youtube profile Keep Me In Your Heart by Warren Zevon:

Finishing with something a bit funny, it’s Mike and Dan Luscombe of The Drones doing a karaoke version of Men At Work classic song Down Under:

The most spooky, oddest MN photo I can find!

My fave Drones Noga line-up pic, it’s Mike, Fi, Rui and Gaz (l-r) back in 2004.

R.I.P 😥