DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

[MisterCairo]

Perhaps. But it was his heart. He suffered a stroke aboyut 20-25 years ago, so I wasn't surprised this was the way he went.



It will make seeing Acoustic Tuna all the more bittersweet this April. I only ever saw the Mickey Thomas/Craig Chaquico version of Starship - never saw the Airplane. But for you, Anthony - Aynsley Dunbar was drumming the night I saw them. Also saw him drum for Journey. Incredible skin man.

John Entwistle and others have died of hear attacks, or strokes, and medically it was linked to prior drug use. I too am not surprised by the way some of these musicians go. Again, it's still sad. Sadder, really...

 

[Frunobulax]

John Entwistle and others have died of hear attacks, or strokes, and medically it was linked to prior drug use. I too am not surprised by the way some of these musicians go. Again, it's still sad. Sadder, really...

I don't disagree. But due to his earlier episode, I think it could have been congenital, as well. Many of these guys started taking better care of themselves after about 40 or so. I don't know why, but I had the impression Kantner may have been one of those - especially after the stroke.

Entwistle was shoving snow up his nose until the very end.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I don't disagree. But due to his earlier episode, I think it could have been congenital, as well. Many of these guys started taking better care of themselves after about 40 or so. I don't know why, but I had the impression Kantner may have been one of those - especially after the stroke.

Entwistle was shoving snow up his nose until the very end.

Kantner was on record as being pretty anti drug, at least most of them. I believe he dabbled in, and may have endorsed psychedelic drug use, but disdained things like heroin, cocaine, and especially alcohol, which considered the worst of the lot. And while 74 is not particularly old these days, it's not tragically young either. Lots of people in their mid 70s have heart attacks that have nothing to do with drug abuse.

 

[Frunobulax]

Kantner was on record as being pretty anti drug, at least most of them. I believe he dabbled in, and may have endorsed psychedelic drug use, but disdained things like heroin, cocaine, and especially alcohol, which considered the worst of the lot. And while 74 is not particularly old these days, it's not tragically young either. Lots of people in their mid 70s have heart attacks that have nothing to do with drug abuse.

True dat.

 

[Stearmen]

Mike Minor, beat known for his roll as Steve Elliott on Petticoat Junction. He was 75.

 

[MisterCairo]

TV and radio presenter Terry Wogan has died, aged 77. He was a well-known personality in the UK and Ireland over several decades. I've watched several of his programmes in the UK during visits over the years:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2016/01/31/terry-wogan-beloved-bbc-presenter-dies-at-77.html

 

[Kirk H.]

British actor Frank Finlay, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work in “Othello” and starred in the “Three Musketeers” films of the ’70s, died Saturday, according to a message on his official website. He was 89.

 

[belfastboy]

Dragonfly was pretty good. By Red Octopus, they were commercial pop.

If you've never listened to Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun, you're cheating yourself out of a tremendous pleasure. One of my essential albums.

Jefferson Airplane was one of just a few of my all-time favorites. I'll listen to 30 Seconds over Winterland tonight on the way home. None of the recent deaths have saddened me like this one.

I thought their first album the best, the one before Grace Slick joined. Signe Anderson (I think) was the co lead singer along with Balin. I saw them in Seattle after they had hit the big time with White Rabbit and it was used in a Levis commercial. They were heartily booed when they began the song and Grace's voice was not in great form and she did not hit the high note at the end. She backed off and the audience booed again. I never bothered to see them again.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Signe Anderson (I think) was the co lead singer along with Balin...

It was announced today that Signe Toly Anderson died on the same day as her former bandmate Paul Kantner, and that she was also 74 years old. Anderson's daughter said she had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

 

[MisterCairo]

British actor Frank Finlay, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work in “Othello” and starred in the “Three Musketeers” films of the ’70s, died Saturday, according to a message on his official website. He was 89.

This was sad to hear about!

I'll always remember Mr. Finlay for one particular role:

Thank you for the memories!

 

[belfastboy]

It was announced today that Signe Toly Anderson died on the same day as her former bandmate Paul Kantner, and that she was also 74 years old. Anderson's daughter said she had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

That is sad, I always thought she did not receive the credit she deserved for her contributions to the band. A far more nuanced voice than Grace Slick's

 

[kaiser]

All the ones from my youth are going right now, this is really getting sad.

RIP Signe, I always found your name to be very magical.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The last major surviving figure of American radio comedy has died at the age of 92. Bob Elliot teamed for over forty years with Ray Goulding as "Bob and Ray," a satirical duo whose entire act consisted of mocking the jejune parade of trivilalities that radio had become by the postwar era.

Elliot and Goulding met at station WHDH in Boston in the mid-1940s, Elliot as the host of an early-morning chatter-and-platter show and Goulding as a staff announcer and newscaster. They became fast friends, and discovered a common fondness for the radio satirists of their youth, notably Raymond Knight of "The KUKU Hour" and the team of Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd. Emulating these 1930s personalities, Elliot and Goulding developed a series of ad-libbed comedy routines satirizing soap operas, fatuous commerical spokesmen, and other fixtures of then-contemporary broadcasting, and attracted enough notice that WHDH gave them half an hour every weekday to get it all out of their system. "Matinee With Bob and Ray" ran in Boston for five years, until the team came to the attention of NBC, which brought them to New York and put them on the network in an early-evening time slot. For the better part of the next four decades they would be on the air, somewhere, in some form or another, up until their final series on NPR in the late 1980s.

Right to the end of their careers, they continuted to satirize the conventions of mid-1940s radio, even after mid-1940s radio itself was long forgotten. Elliot's role in the sketches was always the same -- the flummoxed, confused interviewer, the blundering husband, the clueless naif -- his lines always delivered in a flat, nasal monotone that played beautifully off Goulding's blustery blowhards or frantic falsetto females. After they left WHDH they began to use written scripts, but they always managed to make it seem as though they were ad-libbing, even when they weren't.

Elliot retired from radio after Goulding's death, but he did appear -- memorably -- with his son, the absurdist comic Chris Elliot, in the early 1990s TV sitcom "Get A Life," as a phlegmatic suburban father whose deadpan insults were among the funniest bits on the series. He lived in retirement in Harpswell, Maine, and with his passing, my home state has grown just a bit less funny.

 

[MisterCairo]

Maurice White, founder of the group Earth, Wind and Fire, has died:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/maurice-white-earth-wind-and-fire-dead-1.3434586

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The last major surviving figure of American radio comedy has died at the age of 92. Bob Elliot teamed for over forty years with Ray Goulding as "Bob and Ray," a satirical duo whose entire act consisted of mocking the jejune parade of trivilalities that radio had become by the postwar era.

Elliot and Goulding met at station WHDH in Boston in the mid-1940s, Elliot as the host of an early-morning chatter-and-platter show and Goulding as a staff announcer and newscaster. They became fast friends, and discovered a common fondness for the radio satirists of their youth, notably Raymond Knight of "The KUKU Hour" and the team of Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd. Emulating these 1930s personalities, Elliot and Goulding developed a series of ad-libbed comedy routines satirizing soap operas, fatuous commerical spokesmen, and other fixtures of then-contemporary broadcasting, and attracted enough notice that WHDH gave them half an hour every weekday to get it all out of their system. "Matinee With Bob and Ray" ran in Boston for five years, until the team came to the attention of NBC, which brought them to New York and put them on the network in an early-evening time slot. For the better part of the next four decades they would be on the air, somewhere, in some form or another, up until their final series on NPR in the late 1980s.

Right to the end of their careers, they continuted to satirize the conventions of mid-1940s radio, even after mid-1940s radio itself was long forgotten. Elliot's role in the sketches was always the same -- the flummoxed, confused interviewer, the blundering husband, the clueless naif -- his lines always delivered in a flat, nasal monotone that played beautifully off Goulding's blustery blowhards or frantic falsetto females. After they left WHDH they began to use written scripts, but they always managed to make it seem as though they were ad-libbing, even when they weren't.

Elliot retired from radio after Goulding's death, but he did appear -- memorably -- with his son, the absurdist comic Chris Elliot, in the early 1990s TV sitcom "Get A Life," as a phlegmatic suburban father whose deadpan insults were among the funniest bits on the series. He lived in retirement in Harpswell, Maine, and with his passing, my home state has grown just a bit less funny.

This really makes me sad. Bob and Ray were without equals for spot-on satire and for creating and maintaining absurd characters. Few utilized the medium of radio as well as they did. They were hilarious even when they just talked about the trivialities of life.

 

[MisterCairo]

45 years after Apollo 14, astronaut Edgar Mitchell has died:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/edgar-mitchell-apollo-astronaut-obit-1.3436622

 

[Trenchfriend]

Just on radio. What the hell??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Willemsen

Cancer, cancer, cancer...

 

[Worf]

Maurice White, founder of the group Earth, Wind and Fire, has died:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/maurice-white-earth-wind-and-fire-dead-1.3434586

"Do you remember.....

Saw them in 1975 or so at The Garden... (Madison Square). They were on the bill with "War" and some others.... Oh what a mighty time!

Worf

 

[Bamaboots]

"Do you remember.....

Saw them in 1975 or so at The Garden... (Madison Square). They were on the bill with "War" and some others.... Oh what a mighty time!

Worf

Worf, used to work with a guy who went to AL A&M on a music scholarship who played trumpet. He toured with them for a couple of years and "what a time" is exactly the way he described it. Love their music. Damn, getting old sucks. Just beats the alternative.

 

[Bushman]

Supreme Court Justice Scalia is Dead at 79