Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Obit watch: September 9, 2017.

Saturday, September 9th, 2017

Dr. Jerry Pournelle, noted SF writer and longtime computer columnist for Byte magazine back in the day.

Official website. Lawrence. Borepatch.

I don’t have a lot to add here. I never met Dr. Pournelle, and I don’t think I’ve read any of his solo SF. I’m spotty on his collaborations with Larry Niven, though the ones I have read I think are better than Niven’s solo work.

I enjoyed his Byte column, though at the time some of his recurring tropes did kind of grate on my nerves. (See also: Gregg Easterbroook.)

(For the younger set, and/or those who may not know: the Internet Archive has a large digital collection of Byte.)

I’m very fond of Oath of Fealty. And I believe Lucifer’s Hammer has been a huge influence on a lot of people (including me, somewhat),

The only other thing I have to say is: I’m ordering a copy of The Survival of Freedom, as my personal tribute to the good doctor.

Also among the dead: Don Williams, noted country musician.

Troy Gentry, also a country musician with Montgomery Gentry, was killed in a helicopter crash yesterday.

And finally, Rick Stevens, not a country musician, but a funk-soul one. He sang with the group Tower of Power, and did the lead vocal on “You’re Still a Young Man” from the 1972 album “Bump City”.

Then he got into heroin and other drugs. Over about a two-day period in 1976, he killed three men. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but California declared the death penalty unconstitutional and he was resentenced to life. He was paroled in 2012 and started working again.

In January 2013 his old band brought him onstage at the Oakland club Yoshi’s to sing his signature song.
“When he got back onstage with Tower of Power for the first time in 40 years,” Mr. Maloney said, “he felt like he was levitating. That’s what he told me.”

While he was in prison, he became a Christian. He also did counseling and mentoring for other inmates, and formed prison bands.

He remained remorseful for the deadly events of 1976, which he said occurred during a time in his life when he was going from one drug high to another and not thinking clearly — “a jackass in a jumpsuit,” he would describe himself years later. When he began performing again after his release from prison he was realistic about his past.
“I know a lot of people won’t forget,” he said in a 2013 interview. “I won’t forget.”

Not exactly an obit, but:

Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted along with other members of Charles Manson’s cult in the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, was granted parole Wednesday by a panel of state commissioners in Chino.

Her parole still has to be approved by the governor. Jerry Brown rejected her bid for parole last year.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Geek, Law, Music, Obits, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 4, 2017.

Monday, September 4th, 2017

Walter Becker, co-founder of Steely Dan, passed away yesterday. He was 67.

As Steely Dan, Mr. Becker and Mr. [Donald] Fagen changed the vocabulary of pop in the 1970s with songs like “Do It Again,” “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” and “Peg.” Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen were close collaborators on every element of a song: words, music, arrangement. “We think very much the same musically. I can start songs and Walter can finish them,” Mr. Fagen said in a 1977 interview.
Steely Dan’s musical surfaces were sleek and understated, smooth enough to almost be mistaken for easy-listening pop, and polished through countless takes that earned Mr. Becker and Mr. Fagen a daunting reputation as studio perfectionists.

….

In a statement released Sunday, Mr. Fagen wrote that Mr. Becker “was cynical about human nature, including his own, and hysterically funny. Like a lot of kids from fractured families, he had the knack of creative mimicry, reading people’s hidden psychology and transforming what he saw into bubbly, incisive art.”

I think it is time for a longer than usual musical interlude. I’ll put in a jump.

(more…)

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 29, 2017.

Wednesday, August 30th, 2017

Week two. Gesundheit.

Our count is roughly 9,400 words. Will TMQ join the 10,000 Club this season? We would not be surprised.

(And this is why we’re running behind: we do plan to try to get these up on Tuesday, but if the Weekly Standard is going to let Easterbrook run on as long as he wants, without apparent editing or restrictions, we can’t promise that.)

After the jump, this week’s column…

(more…)

Posted in Music, NFL, Sarcasm, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 24, 2017.

Thursday, August 24th, 2017

Also among the dead: the print edition of the Village Voice.

In other news: WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Keeping your head up, your eyes open, and not driving into high water is probably a good idea. But. I remember the last time a hurricane came ashore near Houston, and was threatening Austin. I was still attending St. Ed’s at the time, and the university was sending out regular updates. There was tremendous hysteria. Everyone was hunkering down waiting for the storm.

In my part of town, the skies turned dark…and we got maybe three drops of rain, total. The hurricane was a giant bust.

I suggest being careful. But I’m not going to put any faith in apocalyptic predictions until the water starts coming over the top of the dam.

Whatever happened to Alice Goodman? She wrote the librettos to John Adams’s “Nixon in China” and “Death of Klinghoffer”…and then she just sort of vanished.

Turns out, she’s an ordained Anglican priest living in England.

“I never drifted away from music,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I couldn’t get work commissioned, so I did what members of my family do when that kind of thing happened: I started another degree. By 1997, I was being offered commissions and collaborations again, but none of them were particularly interesting to me, and my ideas didn’t interest my colleagues.”

Posted in Hysteria, Media, Music | Comments Closed

Now I’m only falling apart…

Monday, August 21st, 2017

Posted in Art, Geek, History, Hysteria, Music | Comments Closed

Headline of the day.

Tuesday, August 15th, 2017

Live scorpion reportedly found in bag of Costco bananas

This is ridiculous, and Costco should be ashamed.

Everybody knows that a beautiful bunch of ripe bananas hides the deadly black tarantula, not scorpions. Is this just cost-cutting on Costco’s part? Are scorpions cheaper than tarantulas?

(Sorry. I’m feeling a little punchy. You might even say me wanna go home.)

Posted in Food, Music, Regular, Spiders | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 9, 2017.

Wednesday, August 9th, 2017

Glen Campbell: NYT. South Texas Pistolero.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 21, 2017.

Friday, July 21st, 2017

If you are outside of the United States, the TVTropes page linked on the sidebar has resources for other countries.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 17, 2017.

Saturday, June 17th, 2017

Helmut Kohl, former German chancellor.

John G. Avildsen, noted film director. Among his credits were “The Karate Kid” and “Rocky”, the movie that shouldn’t have won Best Picture in 1977, but beat out the far superior “Network”.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anita Pallenberg, sometime actress:

In quick succession, she was cast in “Candy” (1968), based on Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg’s erotic novel, as a sexy nurse; in “Barbarella” (1968), Roger Vadim’s futuristic space fantasy, as a cruel brunette dictator who dresses in black lace and sparkles and calls Jane Fonda’s character “pretty-pretty”; and “Dillinger Is Dead” (1969), as a woman whose husband (Michel Piccoli) is inspired by a newspaper headline to shoot her.

She may, perhaps, have been better known for her relationships with Brian Jones (“who was reported to have physically abused her”) and after him, Keith Richards. (“She lived with Mr. Richards from 1967 through 1980, and had three children with him.”)

In 1977, Mr. Richards was arrested and charged with heroin possession in Toronto, and as a couple the two entered rehab.

Finally, there’s an interesting obit for Marine Corps Capt. Arthur J. Jackson, who passed away at 92 last Sunday.

During WwII, Jackson (at the time a private first class) committed serious acts of badassery during the invasion of Peleliu:

Loaded up with grenades, he charged the pillbox, raking it with automatic fire while discharging white phosphorus grenades and other explosives. He was credited with killing all 35 occupants.
Continuing alone and again at tremendous peril, he repeated the same maneuver at 11 smaller pillboxes that contained another 15 Japanese soldiers.

He received the Medal of Honor for his actions. After the war, he became a commissioned officer in the Army and then in the Marines.

On the night of September 30, 1961, as a company commander at Guantanamo Bay, he discovered a Cuban who worked as a bus driver (“even though he expressed openly pro-Fidel Castro sympathies and was under surveillance by naval intelligence”) in a restricted area of the base. Jackson and his executive officer decided to escort the Cuban, Ruben Lopez, off the base. But the gate they were using was locked: Jackson sent his XO to get something to break the lock with. And while the XO was gone, Jackson claimed that Lopez “lunged at him” so he shot and killed Lopez with his sidearm.

Jackson and some other Marines buried Lopez in a shallow grave on base. Cutting to the chase, the truth eventually came out, and Jackson was allegedly “thrown out” of the Marines.

Capt. Jackson, who said he long felt “ashamed” of his Guantanamo killing, did not speak publicly about the incident until an Idaho Statesman reporter interviewed him in 2013.
He said his key concern was his “understanding” of a treaty between the United States and Cuba that could have resulted in his detention in a notorious Cuban prison.
“I hoped no one would find out,” he told the newspaper. “The world found out.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.

Friday, June 2nd, 2017

For some reason, I’ve been even grumpier than usual most of this week. But there were two stories in the NYT this morning that brought a smile to my face.

1) The rise and fall of Bleecker Street.

During its incarnation as a fashion theme park, Bleecker Street hosted no fewer than six Marc Jacobs boutiques on a four-block stretch, including a women’s store, a men’s store and a Little Marc for high-end children’s clothing. Ralph Lauren operated three stores in this leafy, charming area, and Coach had stores at 370 and 372-374 Bleecker. Joining those brands, at various points, were Comptoir des Cotonniers (345 Bleecker Street), Brooks Brothers Black Fleece (351), MM6 by Maison Margiela (363), Juicy Couture (368), Mulberry (387) and Lulu Guinness (394).

“six Marc Jacobs boutiques on a four-block stretch”. I have no joke here, I just like saying: “New Starbucks Opens In Rest Room Of Existing Starbucks”.

How’s that working for them?

Today, every one of those clothing and accessories shops is closed.

Oh.

While quirky independent stores couldn’t afford the new Bleecker, it became apparent over time that neither could the corporate brands that had remade the street. An open secret among retailers had it that Bleecker Street was a fancy Potemkin village, empty of customers. Celebrities shopped there because they wouldn’t be bothered. The “Sex and the City” fans lining up at Magnolia and snapping photos of Carrie’s stoop weren’t willing or able to fork over $2,000 for designer heels.
“Jimmy Choo — I never saw anybody in the shop,” Ms. Bowman said. “I don’t get it. Who’s buying this stuff?”

2) There was a music festival scheduled for the middle of Joly – the “Pemberton Music Festival in the mountains of Canada”. Tickets were $275.

The festival was cancelled, and the promoters filed for bankruptcy, about two weeks ago.

Pemberton, held in a picturesque spot about 100 miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia, was a typical entry into the frothy festival business. It was revived in 2014 by Huka Entertainment, a well-known independent promoter, after an earlier iteration failed. According to bankruptcy filings, the festival lost money for three years, and sold 18,000 tickets in 2017, down from 38,000 last year.

But wait, there’s more! The ticket buyers are being told that they are “unsecured creditors” in the bankruptcy proceedings! Which translates into, “Good luck getting any part of your money back, suckers!”

In filings, the two entities that controlled the festival — Pemberton Music Festival Limited Partnership and 1115666 B.C. Ltd. — declared $5 million in assets and $12.5 million in liabilities, with ticket holders listed as having an unsecured claim of $6 million. The first meeting of creditors is scheduled for June 6 in Vancouver.

Even better:

Music executives are now aghast over the failure to provide refunds and the maneuvering of investors in the weeks before the festival fell apart. Marc Geiger, the head of music at William Morris Endeavor and an outspoken voice in the business, called Pemberton’s collapse “a fraud and a scam” that could have a domino effect on the industry, hurting smaller promoters the most.

…

Mr. Geiger reserves a special ire for Pemberton’s investors, among them several wealthy Canadians with no background in the music business. As secured creditors, they now stand a better chance of getting their money back than the fans who paid $275 a ticket. One investor, Amanda Girling, is also chief executive of a company that owns the land on which the festival was held, and which is for sale for $12.5 million.

I hate to sound like a cranky old man who doesn’t get these kids today and their music (which is why I’ve avoided expressing an opinion about the top-billed artists) but: I don’t understand the point of spending that much money to stand around outside for two or three days in order to see one or two bands that maybe I kind of like, and a whole bunch of other ones where my feelings go from “totally indifferent” to “actively hate”.

If this really is “the symbolic end for independently promoted festivals”, would that be a bad thing?

Posted in Law, Music, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 28, 2017.

Sunday, May 28th, 2017

Gregg Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band and “married to Cher” fame.

In 1977, Mr. Allman and the singer Cher, to whom he was married at the time, released the album “Two the Hard Way.” (They were billed on the cover as Allman and Woman.) The project was poorly received by critics and the record-buying public alike.

Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame baseball player, perfect game pitcher, and later a congressional rep and a senator frim Kentucky.

He was the second pitcher, after Cy Young, to win at least 100 games, record at least 1,000 strikeouts and throw no-hitters in both the American and National Leagues. When he retired after the 1971 season, his 2,855 strikeouts were second only to Walter Johnson’s 3,509.

And, of course, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and soccer theorist.

Posted in Music, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Hookers and blow watch.

Saturday, May 13th, 2017

I swear that I wrote about the “resignation” of Don Pitts as the city of Austin’s “music manager” ($97,000 a year) back in February when it happened. But I can’t find that blog entry now, and even search engines don’t help.

Anyway, Mr. Pitts resigned after a city audit turned up the fact that one of his employees had submitted a fake invoice so she could get reimbursed for what was represented as a “zero-cost” “2014 work trip to Europe to promote Austin’s music scene”.

There’s a little more to the story than that, however. The employee claims that Mr. Pitts told her to submit the trip as “zero-cost” so the approval would go through, and told her to submit the fake invoice so she could get reimbursed. Mr. Pitts denies that he told her to submit the fake invoice, but he admitted that he didn’t tell anyone about the fake invoice when he found out about it: that’s what led to his forced resignation, apparently.

And meanwhile, the city filed an ethics complaint against the also now-ex employee.

That complaint was dismissed Wednesday evening.

A divided and half-present Ethics Review Commission cleared [the employee] of wrongdoing Wednesday night after failing to reach consensus on whether she or Pitts was primarily responsible for the scheme.

…

Because only six of the ethics board’s 11 members were present, they needed a unanimous vote to find that [the employee] abused her position and violated city policies. Four members were inclined to give her a pass in light of testimony that Pitts was at least aware, if not the architect, of the attempts to pay [the employee] under the table.

It seems odd that almost half of them didn’t even bother to show up.

Also worth noting: the employee in question made other complaints about Pitts.

…a Human Resources Department investigation into a dozen of [the employee]’s claims, which found three violations by Pitts of employee conduct policies. Records show he sent staff a copy of a resignation letter from a former job in an effort to motivate, but it came across as threatening, and he said he wouldn’t hire a temporary employee who complained that [the employee] was mistreated in the department.

Not sure how saying “I’m not going to hire a temp” is a violation of HR policy, but okay. Nut:

A third violation involved using the slang term “hookers and blow,” which Pitts said was common in the music industry when referring to excess, but human resources investigators deemed inappropriate. Investigators also found Pitts had called [the employee]’s mother to try to talk about her performance at work, though they didn’t consider that a violation of city policies.

So you can’t say “hookers and blow” at work. But you can call someone’s mother to talk about their work performance. Good. To. Know.

Remind me again: why does this office exist?

Posted in Austin, Music, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 7, 2017.

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

Bruce Hampton, aka “Col. Bruce Hampton”, jam band guy.

The Hampton Grease Band released an album on Columbia — Mr. Hampton liked to claim that it was one of the worst-selling albums in the label’s history — and opened for the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers Band and other nationally known acts. It was also known for its twisted sense of humor, which included playing practical jokes.

I actually remember “Col. Bruce Hampton & The Aquarium Rescue Unit”: not any of the songs off of it, but just the title. What can I say, it tickled my fancy.

Peter Flawn, former president of the University of Texas. Among his many other accomplishments, he’s the guy who fired John Mackovic.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 1, 2017.

Monday, May 1st, 2017

Dick Contino, noted accordion player and sometime actor.

In the late 1940’s, Mr. Contino was pulling down “up to $4,000 a week”. Then, in 1951, he got drafted into the Army. He didn’t take well to this:

…after reporting to Fort Ord, near Monterey, Calif., bolted before his induction, overwhelmed by persistent neuroses including claustrophobia.

He ended up serving 4 1/2 months in federal prison and paying a $10,000 fine for “refusing to submit to induction”. He was later pardoned, but his career never completely recovered.

He did go on to do a couple of B-movies, including “Daddy-O” (which some of you may remember as a Joel episode of MST3K). And even later on, he was the inspiration for James Ellroy’s “Dick Contino’s Blues”.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

As a connoisseur of disaster…

Friday, April 28th, 2017

…I am enjoying reading about Fyre Festival so, so much.

It’s the feral dogs that really make a good music festival.

That reminds me. (adds Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus to his Amazon wish list.)

William N. Finley IV’s Twitter feed: Finley was boots on the ground at Fyre Festival and is quoted in many pf the stories I’ve seen.

Questions, so many questions: could Ja Rule and Kendall Jenner be prosecuted for fraud? Would this have been a justified use of a MOAB? And is it true that United Airlines was an official Fyre Festival sponsor?

Posted in Books, Music, Sarcasm, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »