Rolling Obituary Thread 2023

Shocked to read that George Winston’s December sold three million copies.

Probably a lot of them to people who didn't have that many other records.

SERENITY NOW!

George Winston is the tits, anyone who says otherwise has not accepted love into their hearts

Fun fact: I took a 15-year-old girl to see George Winston at the Kennedy Center in 1988. It was our first quasi-real "date" after being best friends for years. I thought this was like the classiest move possible, and would help me get further with this girl. I was somewhat mistaken.

Anyway Winston took a break from the piano to play Hawaiian slack-key guitar; I remember that being kind of interesting.

Yeah, he self-IDs as a folkie & trad jazz player, piano, guitar, harmonica too---as wiki sez:

Winston played in three styles: the melodic approach he developed that he called "rural folk piano"; stride piano, primarily inspired by Thomas "Fats" Waller and Teddy Wilson; and his primary interest, New Orleans R&B piano, influenced by James Booker, Professor Longhair, and Henry Butler.[3] While the majority of his recordings were in the folk piano style, Winston said he mostly played R&B piano.[2] Winston's musical style has frequently been labelled new age and sometimes classical, but Winston himself rejected both these labels as descriptive of his music.[1][2]

Also, he's responsible for this Professor Longhair reissue, as saluted by xgau:

Rock 'n' Roll Gumbo [Dancing Cat, 1985]
Everybody should own a Longhair album, and this exceptionally consistent 1974 session--which adds two tracks and a hotter piano mix to the sporadically available French version--won't disappoint. It's got Gatemouth Brown on guitar and fiddle and makes an excellent companion piece to Alligator's peakier Crawfish Fiesta, with which it shares a tough uptempo edge and zero songs, not even "Bald Head" or "Tipitina." It does, however, duplicate a lot of material on Atlantic's endlessly seductive double live Last Mardi Gras. So cogitat emptor, and kudos to none other than George Winston for making such reflection possible in the good old U.S.A. A-

Between you all and Matana Roberts, of all people, shouting him out on Twitter and IG, am I gonna have to go listen to George Winston now?

And Nels Cline too! Amazing story he told on FB.

Yes!

George was a terrific ragtime and slide guitarist, and he & I would improvise on acoustic guitars occasionally, he playing in open tunings. Eventually, he famously met Windham Hill Records guitarist and chief William Ackerman, something I had a lot to do with but which I will not go into here.

I meant to post on this thread earlier about Pat Robertson. I'm glad you're dead, you folksy hate gnome.

Should have died long ago

Good day for 80s assholes to be dying -- James Watt:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/08/james-watt-interior-secretary-dead/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPQnZmI2Sqw

I hope the Beach Boys cover "Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" in his honor.
https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/entertainment/music/how-rock-music-was-banned-then-brought-back-to-the-national-mall-the-beach-boys-james-watt-ronald-reagan/77-439ad6a5-1266-4529-8915-e15f6910ee7a

THE MAN CAN'T BUST OUR DAD ROCK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpL-eVpgJpY

Wasn't there in '83 a National Mall-adjacent protest concert by the Dead Kennedy's? I seem to recall some stage banter where Jello compared the Washington Monument to a giant Klansman.

I would have first guessed Sylvan Theater (a venerable venue adjacent to the Washington Monument) but you may be thinking of Rock Against Reagan, which was by the Reflecting Pool.

https://dcplislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/dcplislandora%3A37420

Good day for 80s assholes to be dying -- James Watt:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/06/08/james-watt-interior-secretary-dead/

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, June 8, 2023 7:43 PM

He has competition but it's worth noting he presaged Trump Cabinet assholes by 30 years -- the guy embodied conflict of interest.

Ted Kaczynski

https://apnews.com/article/ted-kaczynski-unabomber-dies-federal-prison-95fdd4f398fbfe20aaadf5d53a91dc26

Well, that was unexpected.

🥳

and i read it on the internet

suck it ted

“brilliant” “mastermind” who’s bomb victims were carted away in hefty bags yeah good fucking riddance

let him rot, "he was certainly brilliant", fuck off with that bullshit. Brilliance imo involves more than whatever he showed the world.

"While I certainly disagreed with his methods..."

granted that his bomb craft was more meticulous than the average nutter and he could write a tedious tldr anti-tech essay, any dickhead with a lot of time on their hands can do that. I hate these "brilliant" murderers

If he was so fucking brilliant why was he so fucking incarcerated

Silvio Berlusconi

good

Vaffanculo!

Good riddance.

this fucking guy

boom. had the opportunity of meeting him once. i still kind of wish i’d taken it up, but i really didn’t want to attend the Lega Nord meeting where he’d be. Really significant example of political trends we’ve seen since, I think.

yeah, he does feel like the prototype for a lot of world leaders since

So, farewell then
Silvio Berlusconi
"Bunga Bunga" was your catchphrase
I hope you fucking burn in hell

Vaffanculo!

― steely flan (suzy), Monday, 12 June 2023 08:56 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

What Suzy said!

yeah, he does feel like the prototype for a lot of world leaders since

It's far down on the list of his sins, but Berlusconi's TV station was the first to show porn in Italy, thus cutting off the last big source of revenue for Italian cinemas and speeding along the end of the golden age of Italian genre/exploitation cinema.

Roger Squires, crossword compiler extraordinaire. Rufus was always my favourite in the Guardian and for years the only setter whose puzzles I could even hope of completing.

The news was apparently first released via clues in Saturday's prize crossword in the Guardian (set by Paul), which is a nice touch.

Treat Williams, 71, from a motorcycle crash
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/treat-williams-dead-everwood-prince-of-the-city-1235513850/

RIP, I'm not sure I've seen him in anything but Hair, but he's super charismatic and likable in that.

I saw "Dead Heat" in the theater.

Seems like he was one of those guys who was <always> on TV in the late '80s into the early '90s.

And beyond! Everwood ran in the 2000s.

... which I see was some TV Movies & Mini-Series, plus a couple short-lived series, including a single com with Shelley Long called Good Advice

IMDb:

CBS renewed the series for a second season, set to premiere Friday, Oct. 22, 1993, but production was halted after Long became sick with the flu. Long's illness prompted the network to put the show on indefinite hiatus; the season premiere aired in the summer of 1994, but the show was canceled after the season ended.

Yeah, 'sick with the flu'...

creepy and great in smooth talk

Rock Writer Scott Schnider

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/scott-schinder-music-writer-dead-dies-1235640897/?

SCOTT SCHINDER

Shouldn't be, but amazing to me that Treat Williams was 71. Memorable in Prince of the City, though may be too method-y for some.