Guess who died in 2024

[Edgy MD]

Pause a moment for Terry Anderson, journalist, combat veteran, and American hostage in Beirut freed after seven years.

His memoir (along with that of Irishman and fellow hostage Brian Keenan) of his time held captive by Hezbollah is a stunning account of human resiliency. While the hostages were forbidden from interacting, held to a strict silence for months (or possibly years) at a time. Anderson made up a sign language and silently taught it to the others, peeking over the tops of the cells into which they were separated. He made message paper from drying out several layers of toilet paper, and ink from found materials, and they communicated further by dropping notes for each other during their trips to the toilet.

[Frayed Knot]

Moody Blues keyboardist Mike Pindar (82)

It's been a tough couple of years for M Blues-ists since their R&R-HoF inclusion

- Flautist (also Harmonica, Vocals) Ray Thomas died in 2018 after the MB's had been voted into the Hall but just prior to the official induction
- Drummer/Poet Graeme Edge in 2021
- Original (and mostly pre-fame) member Denny Laine in December '23
- and now Pindar this past week

All this pretty much leaves only guitarist Justin Hayward and bassist John Lodge still around. Those two were the ones steering the group
through their most prolific and popular era but don't think the two have worked together in years. Last I heard Lodge was working on
HIS version of one of their older albums but minus any input from Hayward or any other band members.

[cal sharpie]

Author Paul Auster at 77.

A personal favorite of mine and Gary Cohen's. Gary did a lovely tribute to him a couple of weeks ago, mentioning that Paul was a huge Mets fan and would surely be watching. I spoke with his agent last week and mentioned that and she told me that he was so touched by that. He used to play shortstop for the Penguin softball team and was involved in a league that was trying to change a few baseball rules, including a foul being a third strike.

[metirish]

I remember Gary mentioning that

Duane Eddy , influenced many a guitar player

[whippoorwill]

Moody Blues keyboardist Mike Pindar (82)

It's been a tough couple of years for M Blues-ists since their R&R-HoF inclusion

- Flautist (also Harmonica, Vocals) Ray Thomas died in 2018 after the MB's had been voted into the Hall but just prior to the official induction
- Drummer/Poet Graeme Edge in 2021
- Original (and mostly pre-fame) member Denny Laine in December '23
- and now Pindar this past week

All this pretty much leaves only guitarist Justin Hayward and bassist John Lodge still around. Those two were the ones steering the group
through their most prolific and popular era but don't think the two have worked together in years. Last I heard Lodge was working on
HIS version of one of their older albums but minus any input from Hayward or any other band members.

Moody Blues have always been a favorite of mine. I think their music had something special and watching Graeme Edge was a treat. Very sad that time is catching up with them but I guess it’s what happens.

[Edgy MD]

Paul Auster also wrote several produced screenplays and directed three films.

I think he and cartoonist Art Spiegelman were BFFs.

[metirish]

Steve Albini , hugely influential producer

[Edgy MD]

The Atlantic provided a brief but terrific tribute profile of Albini, giving equal space to Steve's commitment to the work alongside his late-career epiphany that he needed to find a way to correct his famously caustic personality.

He was especially good at capturing an artist as though they were playing right in front of you, a product of chemistry and ability rather than studio-driven artifice, and hiring Albini became a way for bands to signal their interest in being “realer,” both in sound and in attitude. His own outlook was perhaps best crystallized in his 1993 essay for The Baffler, “The Problem With Music,” in which he meticulously sketched out all the reasons making music on a major label was a sucker’s game. This idea, and its attendant aesthetic principles, felt just as important as the records themselves; to a certain kind of listener, it sometimes seemed like Albini was the last honest musician in the industry, though he would’ve shaken his head at such mythologizing.

So this was one dimension of the Albini I met: a man who, although still razor-sharp and hilarious, was clear-eyed about why he felt he should shed some of these more reactive traits of his former self. “It’s me owning up to my role in a shift in culture that directly caused harm to people I’m sympathetic with, and people I want to be a comrade to,” he said of why he had decided to be open about his evolved thinking. When I published the story, quite a few readers, and particularly men of his generation, said they were personally inspired by Albini’s perspective and growth—that if someone with his cutting reputation could be this reflective, then perhaps nobody else had an excuse for staying rude.

[G-Fafif]

Pete McCloskey, an independent-minded Congressman who took on Nixon in the 1972 primaries, 96.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/us/p ... -dead.html

[cal sharpie]

Drummer Dennis Thompson, the last surviving member of the MC5, at 75. In just the last few months Wayne Kramer, the guitarist and their manager, John Sinclair, also died. The jams are now totally kicked out.