It is with extreme sadness that I report the death of my good friend/client Mark "Trip Trigger" Smythe as conveyed by mutual friends, from his longstanding battle with a rare disease that attacked him. It was sufficiently in remission for him to occasionally gig in recent years with his band Tripp Trigger, who played several gigs in L.A. this year, but the disease, so rare that it defied proper diagnosis for two years of testing, came roaring back this last month.
We conversed quite a bit when he briefly had a day job of being a landscaper/gardener. Twister and I had just moved to the Valley, and Trip advised us on what would or wouldn't work in our new biome. He planted several trees that are still here, which withstood our 6 year drought while too many others died.
Trip wrote great songs (unclassifiable, sort of outlaw country heavy metal), assembled great bands, seen here in the late 1980s with ex Dogs drummer Ron Wood (also r.i.p.) and current The Blessings' bassist Terry Love. But one of his stellar talents was knowing exactly how to come off in band photos. Trip knew how to pose without ever being a poseur. My first website designer thought these above shots were of Johnny Thunders, that's how confident Tripp's visuals were. The viewer's eye goes right to him in both my pics above, all without any direction from me in these photo sessions.
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