the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive

He was friends with Stravinsky if you can believe it

lol amazing

A "lovely, lovely man"... also handsome, talented, married to Angie Dickinson. Not bad really.

Wrote a few good tunes too, not too bad a life.

Watching Jeremy Isaacs interviewing Diana Rigg on BBC4, surprised to see that Isaacs is still around.

Dennis Lotis, popular big band singer in the UK in the 1950s, 97.

Norman Lear

― it me, Thursday, August 6, 2015 10:21 AM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.vulture.com/article/norman-lear-stories-memories.html

100 today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/archie-bunker-donald-trump-norman-lear.html?referringSource=articleShare

And one from the man himself!

Ruth Buzzi, 86. Although she just had a series of strokes.

Sad to hear about the strokes. She's been an enjoyable twitter follow.

My friends! Between Frankie Avalon, Chubby Checker and Gary U.S. Bonds and the rest of the gang, we are going to have an unforgettable BLAST!!! See you there!

Use promo code DIONFAN & book now at https://t.co/AbBuqaE5SO pic.twitter.com/U47BSS5F4m

— DION (@thewandererdion) August 1, 2022

.

Several thread mainstays on one cruise

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11076635/Spoon-bender-Uri-Geller-says-use-Mind-Power-prevent-Russian-nuclear-attack.html

Uri Geller. Although I assume shoddily built weapons and poorly trained troops will be the true risk to Russia.

I learn from the internet that Chubby Checker married Catharina Lodders - Miss World 1962 - in 1964, and they've remained together ever since. Awww:
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/american-singer-chubby-checker-pictured-with-his-fiancee-model-and-picture-id543479227?s=612x612

Part of me thinks "that's so sweet" and another part of me thinks "why should they be happy".

Maybe the Checkers are locked in a twisted game of one-upsmanship.

Danielle Steel (clued in by this article)

looking forward to this one next July

pic.twitter.com/6tXVY6f4ab

— New Beverly Cinema (@newbeverly) August 8, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/15/italian-actor-gina-lollobrigida-95-says-she-will-run-in-general-elections

Barbara Eden, 91.

Rosey Grier, 90.

Gary Busey, 163

Jerry Allison, drummer for the Crickets, turns 83 in a few weeks.

Artist Frank Stella, 86. And he's selling NFTs (learned this thanks to KM).

María Elena Holly, Buddy Holly's widow: she'll turn 90 in December.

Not a lot of middle ground with that crew!

Relative of famous person Buddy Holly - his older brother Larry Holley, 96.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, March 4, 2022 5:15 PM (five months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Died a month after I posted this. The Holl(e)y Curse strikes again!

Seeing reports from people who would know on FB that Jerry Allison of Buddy Holly & the Crickets has passed on.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, August 22, 2022 7:48 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

AND AGAIN

Well hell!

Hope Holiday, the woman who picks up Jack Lemmon in the bar on Christmas Eve in "The Apartment", 91.

abdullah ibrahim

thankfully

Sure this has been discussed before, but what's the oldest band whose members are all still with us? Asking because it just occurred to me that all of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are alive.

The five original members of Manfred Mann, formed 1962, are all still alive.

The Seekers were another band formed in 1962 in Australia, whose original members were alive, until a few weeks ago.

Tempted to say the Shadows - the Marvin/Welch/Bennett lineup from 1961 onwards is still alive and was together through all the various reunions. No real settled bass player after Jet Harris (who died about 10 years ago) and certainly nobody who did TV spots etc.

John Rostill was their bass player - and an especially good one - from 1963 till they first split up in 1969. He died in 1973 though.

Scratch that idea then.

The thing is they're not actually that old, Marvin and Welch were born in 1941, they were teenagers when the recorded "Apache".

When I saw the start of that post in MacZing I thought it was going to be about Lee Marvin and Raquel Welch.

Doc Severinsen, who just played his last concert and retired at 95.

Doc is here?

The three original Grand Funk dudes are still around.

As far as I know all the original members of The Sonics - formed in 1960 - are still around, and until fairly recently they still toured. They're not all that famous but there was a flurry of interest back in the early 2000s because "Have Love Will Travel" was in an TV advert for VW. They were also on Nuggets.

I wrote an Amazon review in 2007! Yes I did. Do people still write Amazon reviews? They're all robo-generated now. What happened to that woman who reviewed every book, and it turned out she was just reselling them without even opening them? Hannie something. Harriet. Whatever.

Apparently I went to the trouble of sampling the start of "Psycho" to see how tightly the band came in. The song goes clattery drums -> "whoah..." -> "...BABY!" and the band come in on the first syllable of "...BABY!" because they were drilled like a military band. My review ended with "there is no Mellotron anywhere on the album". It got three upvotes. 2007. Not that long ago. Only fifteen years. That's nothing, really. I remember I was in a funk at the time but that Here Come the Sonics snapped me out of it because it's a really good album. Fifteen years. Imagine if I'd put £1,000 into shares in Apple every year since 2007. Fifteen years. Can't go back.

Is Aerosmith still all found members?

^founding

I think Ray Tabano was their rhythm guitarist before Brad Whitford, but if you leave that aside I believe you are correct.

The most recent touring Sonics were the sax player + ringers, although the other guys still would do hometown gigs.

The Wikipedia article on the Sonics doesn't mention if any of them have died, which doesn't mean they haven't because they're not exactly notable individuals.

There are people with Wikipedia open in the background purely so they can dive into the article and add a death date, so I imagine if anybody in The Sonics died it would appear in the article immediately. Right now I imagine several dozen Wikipedia editors have Clint Eastwood as a perma-background-tab so that they can beat everybody else.

I often wonder how you can win the "update the death of a celebrity on Wikipedia" game. Presumably you'd have to live in Los Angeles and have a police or ambulance scanner, plus an intimate familiarity with the addresses of major stars. Obviously a lightning edit would be reverted because it wouldn't have a source, but you'd still beat everybody else. If the rules require that you make the edit stick, you'd presumably have to be the first journalist with a verified Twitter account.