Culture Icons... R.I.P

Discussion in 'Art & Culture' started by R1D2, Aug 25, 2012.

  1. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Requiescat in pace -- Latin for "Rest in Peace."
    There's no limit on saying "Rest in peace" for someone who died.

    And there's no limit for eulogies in this subforum. Most people use it for recent demises, but you can eulogize Julius Caesar if you want.

    Sorry if I gave the wrong impression.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    His role in Galaxy Quest was my favorite of his. He got to have fun.

    The show must go on:
     
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  5. Bebelina kospla.com Valued Senior Member

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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Glenn Frey, one of the founding members of the Eagles, a band that is widely credited with inventing "California country music"--although I would give that honor to Creedence Clearwater Revival, a San Francisco band that debuted several years earlier with songs like "Suzie Q" and "Proud Mary" that are still tremendously popular.

    My wife and I were lucky to see the band in concert a few months ago in Baltimore. It was an extravaganza with several other musicians to create a fuller sound and giant screens showing scenes that were related to the subjects of the songs.

    Actually, I had seen the Eagles once before, before they were the Eagles. Although they came from many different parts of the USA, they eventually joined up in Los Angeles. Linda Ronstadt (who grew up in Tucson, Arizona, at the same time I was there, and our fathers knew each other although I never met her) had relocated to L.A. because at that time Hollywood was the center of the music industry. With her country-music sound, she and the Eagles quickly became friends and began playing together for fun. I saw her in concert many times, and in 1971 she stopped to introduce her band, and it was three of the guys who would become the Eagles! She let them sing "Chug All Night" and she sang their song "Nightingale."

    The Eagles have had members come and go over the years, so we're all hoping that they'll manage to continue to compose, record and perform without Frey.

    "Take It Easy" has a line about a fellow "standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona," and a beautiful woman stops to give him a ride in her flatbed Ford truck. The city of Winslow recently built a new park and named it "Standing on a Corner."

    They, too, created songs that are still immensely popular. "Hotel California" is one of the most beloved songs in the USA. I remember escaping from Arizona in order to go to college. I was on a train instead of a "dark desert highway," but when the train made its final stop in Los Angeles and I walked out of the car, it was like the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" when the world turns from black-and-white into Technicolor.

    I was very happy to be able to live in the Hotel California, although that song wouldn't be written for 16 years.

    "You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave." Yes, although my body has been living in Maryland for 13 years, deep down inside, I never left California.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2016
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  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Probably noted elsewhere, but Prince died - and he is truly mourned, by many people I know.

    Prince's music marks the separation of popular music from my life. But his prescient intelligence was undeniable, underrated if anything, and he meant a lot to a lot of people. RIP.
     
  9. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    I was never a Prince fan, but as a musician I was impressed by his talent. He could play something like 20 different instruments.

    The only songs I liked very much were the two that everybody loved: "Raspberry Beret" and "1999."

    It's sobering to realize that since the dawn of the new century, there hasn't been much to smile about. Kicking it off with 9/11 was a bad omen, to say the least.

    When someone sings "1999" at the karaoke bar I frequent, there's always a lot of muttering, "Yes, wouldn't we all like to party like it was 1999?"
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Last edited: Aug 3, 2016
  11. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Jimmy Breslin died March 19 - I just found out.
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...n-19282017-he-knew-how-to-play-this-game.html
    http://billmoyers.com/story/a-couple-of-things-about-jimmy-breslin/
    http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayed...y-breslin-about-the-catholic-church-1.4035246

    Some remember him as founder and main figure of New Journalism, known for such things as covering Martin Luther King's march in Selma by interviewing the very last man in the marching crowd (a black man who had paid his taxes and felt he therefore deserved to be able to vote). My own first awareness of him came from one of the plain language novels he wrote, a minor work that the memorials don't mention, whose characters I never forgot and whose reviews were part of my education in certain aspects of east coast liberalism. This one, with one of those reviews: http://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/16/books/books-of-the-times-211906.html.

    Best intro may be this book, at least if you are a baseball fan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can't_Anybody_Here_Play_This_Game?
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Robert Pirsig died Monday, age 88:

    http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-robert-pirsig-obituary-20170424-story.html

    Two recognizably informative reviews of his first, and biggest, book:
    http://www.mrbauld.com/steiner.html
    And a one sentence review by a philosophy student of my acquaintance, back when: "Jonathan Livingston Seagull for intellectuals".

    I lean more toward the first. But the second is worth minding.

    As a side effect, and probably one the author would squint at, it opened a door for books of a tangentially related type that I like to read ( there's a straight line of publishing from ZAM to this http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/books/29book.html , for example ).
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2017
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Lonnie Knight died a couple days ago. He was a local guy in my world, kind of the epitome of the "ordinary" accomplished musician - the perennial backing musician, opening act, ubiquitous presence, fill in guitar player electric and acoustic, one of those guys who has played with everybody but never dramatized himself enough so that everybody played with him.

    http://www.thecurrent.org/feature/2017/05/09/lonnie-knight-dies-68
    Lonnie's partial list of who he opened for: http://www.mylespaul.com/threads/rip-lonnie-knight.390845/
    (The list would be longer, and even more varied, if it included more folks he played with.)

    btw: In the role of studio musician at Sound 80 back in the 70s, Lonnie played some guitar notes on the first commercial digital recording ever made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flim_&_the_BB's
    note that his name is not mentioned in the article.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2017
  15. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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    Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

    (not me (reviewer) caption)

    Nice! Thanks for the recommendation.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Glen Campbell died. Famous singer of pop country.

    Underrated player, from (apparently) lack of Great Artist ambition and oversupply of fundamentally decent personality - he was a child prodigy multi-instrumentalist, a member of the "Wrecking Crew" (you have heard his guitar, largely uncredited, if you have heard any significant amount of American popular music from the time), and the first good sound I ever heard from a 12-string guitar, but he just never did anything like, deep, you know? Nothing self-destructive, nothing tormented, nothing dark in his soul that he was self-indulgent enough to delve into.

    Just a pleasant man, in public anyway. And it came off as lightweight. Something about that bothers me - it's not wrong, it's just off kilter somehow.

    The man could play. Let's put that on the tombstone - it didn't happen by accident:


     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2017
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  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Doug Harvey died, a couple of days ago. 87. A baseball umpire, from the era of baseball rules and baseball order and baseball umpiring as central in American culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Harvey_(umpire)

    Poker and baseball, American in their inclusion of both fate or chance and threat or bluff as factors. Negotiated chance. Poker for the frontier, baseball for civilization.
    Consistently doing what's best in an uncertain and unfair world, putting the effort in and doing right consistently even when clearly seeing the odds, faith without naivety or innocence,

    and pivoted on the umpire. The baseball umpire, not the cowboy, may be the central American masculine icon.

    Harvey's (claimed) legacy is visible, even as another game built on injurious violence and clock-timed committee meetings takes the center stage of the post-civilization phase, in youtube videos like this:

    Note (in addition to the positioning, which is accomplished with no more warning than the catcher gets) in the modern videos the little split second beat before the tough calls. Making sure. Harvey claimed that as a change of custom on his influence. Nobody argued afaik.
     
  19. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    She died young, didn't she.
    For most of us, that would be dying old - for her, too soon.
     
  21. parmalee peripatetic artisan Valued Senior Member

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  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    UK Le Guin's death

    is already noted, but this found its way to my screen just today: a video of Neil Gaiman presenting her with the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution To American Letters in 2014. (For the unbookish: that's a big deal)
    Her six minute acceptance speech is classic:
     
  23. Stoniphi obscurely fossiliferous Valued Senior Member

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    The Lathe of Heaven stuck in my mind. I have been a Sci - Fi addict since I was a puppy, she is one of my favourite authors.
     

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