RIP Dale Brooks
by Christian Kidd of The Hates
Before I went to bed last night, I saw a post about Dale Brooks’ passing on the Island group page on Facebook. This morning I spoke with Ella, Dale’s wife, and she confirmed that he’d suffered a massive heart attack. I’m still working through how to feel.
Oddly, he’d been on my mind for a while.
I first met Dale Brooks after he graduated in 1973 from Sharpstown High school. I’d recently stopped playing funk with Nathan Faulk and started making tentative musical steps forward with Robert Kainer when I was introduced to Dale. Robert and Dale had become fast friends while at KPFT; Dale had a show called “Taking Over Television,” and Rob was a volunteer. A few years later, Robert and I teamed up for our own show, “Destroy All Music.”
Dale seemed born to be involved with video- before he’d even left high school he’d made a video of the downtown tunnel system, which was brand new at the time. He also tackled other projects such as a film about female prisoners in Texas and a collaboration with Ted Barwell on a performance art project that was being pitched to the curator of the Museum of Fine Arts. For a while he was even a VJ at Bellaire Cable Television.
Coinciding with the birth of The Hates came the Video Boyz, made up of Dale and Ted, who would not only film The Hates’ shows at the Island but also would set up televisions on the stage and play videos between sets. And eventually the Video Boyz added a third member, Robert Burtenshaw. In addition to wild music, the technical aspects of video, and the occasional foray into late 70s/early 80s drug culture, the three of them shared a great love of motorcycles. Ted favoured British touring bikes, Dale preferred German motorworks, and Robert loved Japanese street bikes. They made quite the entrance wherever they went.
Dale’s first “real” video for The Hates was “Science’s Fiction.” He used a recording of the very last practice that Robert, Glenn Sorvisto, and I had together before that lineup faded into history, along with video of me that he shot on equipment from the cable company where he was working at the time. He even got an award for it from MTV. Throughout our many years of collaboration, he shot about a dozen videos that still get hits on YouTube every day.
After The Hates’ second lineup dissolved, Dale came to me with an offer I couldn’t refuse. A colleague of his at Channel 13 named Charles Shannon, who also taught television production at the Lincoln Institute, proposed to give Dale some free recording time. And that was how Xenophobia was born.
Helping to produce that EP seemed to power a light within Dale—he borrowed Ted’s 4-track recorder with the idea producing another one. When former Hate’s bassist Paul Minot heard that we were going to use such “primitive” equipment, he offered to let us use the recording studio that he’d built in his house—in Austin. New World Oi!, Texas Insanity, and Greatest Hates were created there with Dale’s help.
We were not only music fans together, but we were also traveling companions. Dale and I went abroad twice, and spent substantial time in Wales with mutual friends. He even opened up his home to me once when a sudden change in my circumstances left me without a place to stay for a while. While living with friends can sometimes be awkward, I will always be grateful for his generosity at that time in my life.
Dale was a highly intelligent, creative, restless, and complicated man who has had a profound influence in my life and the life of my music. Even though we were not as close in these last few years as we once were, the mark of his place in my world is indelible. I hope with all of my heart that he now finally knows the peace that sometimes eluded him in his life.
