Rolling Obituary Thread: 2018

Does that make Elvis's Sun band one of the few groups along with the Ramones and Jimi Hendrix Experience where every member is now dead?

most bands are now all dead taken as a whole id imagine

The "classic" lineup of Motörhead (Lemmy, Fast Eddie Clarke, Philthy Animal Taylor) are all dead.

There's a thread for this iirc.

Bands in which all of the main members are dead

Bands formed in the 60s or later, with every single member dead

https://www.npr.org/2018/06/14/619932066/elvis-presleys-longtime-drummer-d-j-fontana-has-died

Leslie Grantham

civil rights leader Dorothy Cotton

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/dorothy-cotton-civil-rights-leader-and-confidante-to-martin-luther-king-jr-dies-at-88/2018/06/12/0f3e402c-6e4d-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html

Dot Cotton and Leslie Grantham on the same day!

Sorry Morbs, that'll mean nothing to you.

June Brown still alive, don’t DO that!

Seeing Nick Knox, drummer for the Cramps and Electric Eels.

Yup, seeing that too. Damn shame, what a drummer and a performer.

Matt "Guitar" Murphy

https://deadline.com/2018/06/matt-guitar-murphy-dies-blues-brothers-guitarist-and-noted-sideman-was-88-1202411826/

;_;

aw damn

remember him this way
https://www.music-graffiti.com/thumbnails/tn_215BLUES_BROTHERS-159.jpg

and this way
https://youtu.be/rT8D_L2bBGQ

that's excellent

Thank you for posting that, VG.

That's some absolutely masterful riffing

damn that dude could play

I could be wrong, but didn't Murphy play w/Sonny Boy Williamson II on "Bring It On Home" and "Help Me"?

I'd think Lorraine Gordon and Matt Murphy could tell you some stories. Those are a couple of people that were first hand witnesses and participants in a whole lot of good music.

For those NYC ILXORs, have you been to the Village Vanguard and what is it like today? It seems that it is still a pretty key jazz club in that music scene even today.

Beautiful, re Nick Knox: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155280445832016&set=a.236094977015.147373.560312015&type=3

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Russian conductor noted for his advocacy of Dmitri Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, among others:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/jun/17/gennady-rozhdestvensky-obituary

xpost Went a few times in the mid 2000s when a good friend's band had a mini residency there. Iconic, subterranean and you could literally hear a pin drop in between tunes ( after applause). I was in awe of the place. Also very small.

For those NYC ILXORs, have you been to the Village Vanguard and what is it like today? It seems that it is still a pretty key jazz club in that music scene even today.

Yeah, I've been there a half dozen times or so over the last 20 years (first show: Cecil Taylor, 1997). It's exactly the same room it was in the 1930s, 40s, 50s...they've upgraded the sound system, I guess, and probably bought new furniture a time or two, but that's pretty much it. It's a small triangular room, one flight down from the street, with almost no good sight lines unless you're directly in front of the stage. It's not very tourist-friendly, so the people that are there are usually attentive listeners rather than folks on dinner dates. You can hear the sound of the subway mixing with the band sometimes. I think they're pretty testy about people taking pictures during the show, too; I rarely see any on social media, though I see lots of pictures from places like the Jazz Standard, Smalls, the Jazz Gallery, etc.

XXXTentacion, according to Stereogum.

Apparently confirmed. Damn - shot.

(confirmed by the sheriff's office, that is:

#BreakingNews The adult male that was taken to the hospital has been pronounced dead.

— Broward Sheriff (@browardsheriff) June 18, 2018

It is.

https://www.voanews.com/a/leo-sarkisian-voa-music-time-in-africa-program-dies/4432645.html

97 year-old ethnomusicologist, I saw him give a talk at age 77. Smart, nice guy who had traveled the mid-east and Africa, played music himself and spoke numerous languages. His radio program was popular throughout Africa from the 1960s onward.

Sarkisian arrived in Africa as a soldier in the U.S. Army. In 1961, a fateful encounter changed the course of his life. Edward R. Murrow, newly minted as the director of the U.S. Information Agency, came to Sarkisian's apartment in Conakry, Guinea, and asked if he'd like to join The Voice of America. Four years later, he went on the air with "Music Time in Africa."

He spent the next 47 years traveling the continent with his wife, Mary, whom he married in 1949. Together, they met thousands of local musicians and gave their art a global stage.

Stanley Cavell

RIP. He was a hero.

Very cool thinker, RIP

Koko the sign-language gorilla

nooooooo :(

Very cool thinker, RIP

Volunteer: Where do gorillas go when they die?

Koko: Comfortable hole bye.

Aww. I was recently pleasantly surprised to learn that Koko was still alive.

So many articles with headlines saying that Koko "learned sign language" or "mastered sign language" - really reflects how generally poor reporting on science is. Koko did not learn or master sign language, Koko learned a limited set of signs, Koko never demonstrated any understanding of grammar, without which there is no language.

can't believe you're maggie thatcher-ing koko

Whatever criticisms you may have about the quality of the reportage, the one thing you have to admit is that Koko sure knew her sign language.

This tweet is amazing. (And BTW, if you can lie, you understand a language.)

Koko the gorilla once ripped a sink out of the wall and, when her keepers confronted her about it, she blamed her kitten, signing "cat did it." That HAD been my favorite Koko story, until I saw this:

RIP to an absolute legend pic.twitter.com/sH6mGQVVZ3

— Red Durkin (@RedIsDead) June 21, 2018

Nothing against this perfectly nice gorilla, who absolutely did not "master" any kind of language.

The tweet is bullshit

She may have signed 'cat' but there is no evidence she ever stitched together a sentence in ASL.

Yeah, yeah, intelligence on the wrong end of the telescope and all that, but to the lay readers of press about Koko, “language” means “being able to communicate in a human like medium” and she certainly did that. Two year olds have little grammar at first but their parents don’t stand back and say “well it’s not actually language.” The value of Koko is to publicise the notion that other species may have cognition and understanding. Which is demonstrably true.

I am beginning to suspect a gorilla used sign language to lure mfktz into an alley for unsavory purposes. Thus, pity not scorn is the correct response here.