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.

[MFS62]

Susan Blacklinie - 77 the first victim in Jaws.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... g-actress/


Later

[kcmets]

The jams are now totally kicked out.

Well put! RIP

[G-Fafif]

Dabney Coleman, brilliant at playing unlikable leading men (indelibly so on Buffalo Bill), 92.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I don't have to take that, you pig-eyed sack of shit.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Dabney Coleman, brilliant at playing unlikable leading men (indelibly so on Buffalo Bill), 92.

9 to 5 as well, right?

The last time I saw him was on Boardwalk Empire.

[Frayed Knot]

I remember him mostly for TOOTSIE, where he played an unlikable supporting boss/boyfriend.

[Edgy MD]

Survived by his three administrative staffers who thought they had killed him with rat poison 44 years earlier.

[metirish]

Bill Walton , age 71

[Edgy MD]

Few people live up to their team's nicknames like Bill Walton did. A true trailblazer.

[Frayed Knot]

One of a kind.

Great college career which turned into a less than stellar pro career due to many injuries -- feet and back mostly -- at least
some of which he claims were misdiagnosed and/or blown off by team doctors (not a stretch to believe in those days). A
very guarded and taciturn player as a youth, due in part to a stuttering problem early on but also was shielded by his college
coach (John Wooden) back when college coaches wielded massive power in their days.

Was a radical, a hippie, an intellectual, a dope smoker, a Dead Head, later a spirited basketball announcer after his playing
days (he turned very loquacious eventually) and an avid bike rider (must have been a custom bike built for that frame).

[Frayed Knot]

The man with his finger on the shutter release for the above snapshot which came to be known as 'Earthrise' -- Bill Anders, 90.
One of the three Apollo 8 astronauts -- also Frank Borman (died last November at 95) and Jim Lovell (still ticking at 96) -- they
became the first humans to see both the moon from up close and also the earth from far away. Their spacecraft rounding the
moon in low orbit caused the earth to 'rise' above the horizon and Anders snapped that shot which almost instantly became one
of the most famous photographs in the world.

Anders died on June 7th in a crash of a vintage plane which he owned and was flying!! off the coast of Washington State.
He was the only one aboard. And the fraternity of living men who have traveled to the moon decreases by one more notch.

[MFS62]

Jerry West - NBA star 86
https://www.yahoo.com/sports/nba-legend ... 46038.html
His silhouette is used for the NBA logo.

Later

[Frayed Knot]

A star in HS, college, pros, coaching, and the front office - so a big name in basketball from the age of
roughly 15 right up until maybe sometime last week.

[MFS62]

Howard Fineman - journalist and political commentator - 74

Fineman's career spanned from his time at Newsweek as a political correspondent and columnist to his role as global editorial director at The Huffington Post, with regular appearances on NBC News, MSNBC, PBS, and CNN.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/howard-finem ... 18995.html

Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Sal Boca, who was surveilled on a wiretap being told by his wife Angie of Sal & Angie's to bring home a pizza pie with anchovies is dead. Or at least the actor who played Sal Boca -- Tony LoBianco, 87.