Just saw this. Jan Berry, a member of the duo Jan & Dean died Friday. You may recoginze him by this song, The Little Old Lady from Pasadena.
Sorry cant link you to it, members only on this particular webpage.
by cattwoman98111 » Sat Mar 27, 2004 3:46 pm
by Diebrock » Mon Mar 29, 2004 5:43 am
Quote:
Mon Mar 29, 2004
Oscar-winning British actor and author Peter Ustinov, renowned as being one of the world's most entertaining raconteurs and mimics, has died at the age of 82.
"He died last night in Switzerland," his London agent, Steve Kenis, said on Monday. "I shall remember him for always seeing the bright side of everything."
His son Igor, a sculptor, said that the actor had died of heart failure. He had been in a Swiss clinic beside Lake Geneva, near his home, since being taken ill on his return from a Christmas holiday in Thailand.
"It was not a surprise, he was pretty ill. He had had a busy life and he was tired, but he certainly was not ready to go," Igor Ustinov told Reuters by telephone.
_________________
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
I've kissed her best friend. I've reached into her best friend's pocket and fished around for keys. And I gave her best friend my number. I must be doing something totally, totally wrong... - TBSOL by Dreams
by mollyig » Mon Mar 29, 2004 9:30 am
by urnofosiris » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:03 am
by SySnootles » Mon Mar 29, 2004 11:42 am
Catie
When I'm 130 years old, I want a pill that makes me so happy and so unself-conscious and so randy I'm willing to make love to my fuzzy bed slippers on my front lawn and yodel at the same time. -- Scott Adams from Dilbert and the way of the Weasel
by WebWarlock » Mon Mar 29, 2004 1:01 pm
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Web Warlock
Coming Soon to The Other Side, The Netbook of Shadows: A Book of Spells for d20 Witches
"Razzle, dazzle, drazzle, drone, time for this one to come home." - The Replacements, "Hold My Life"
by Gatito Grande » Mon Mar 29, 2004 4:36 pm
) made a delightfully campy Herod the Great, too.
Out by WebWarlock » Tue Mar 30, 2004 12:36 pm
Quote:
Legendary broadcaster Alistair Cooke dies
By MICHAEL McDONOUGH
Associated Press Writer
Published March 30, 2004, 10:12 AM CST
LONDON -- Alistair Cooke, the broadcaster who epitomized highbrow television as host of "Masterpiece Theatre" and whose "Letter from America" was a radio fixture in Britain for 58 years, has died, the British Broadcasting Corp. said Tuesday. He was 95.
Cooke died at his home in New York at midnight, a spokeswoman at the BBC's press office said. No cause of death was given, but Cooke had retired earlier this month because of heart disease.
"I have had much enjoyment in doing these talks and hope that some of it has passed over to the listeners, to all of whom I now say thank you for your loyalty and goodbye," Cooke said when he stepped down on the advice of his doctor.
Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed sadness at the broadcaster's death.
"I was a big fan. I thought they were extraordinary essays and they brought an enormous amount of insight and understanding to the world," Blair told the BBC, referring to Cooke's broadcasts.
"He was really one of the greatest broadcasters of all time, and we shall feel his loss very, very keenly indeed," Blair said.
"For many Americans he will always be associated with the best of Britain," said William Farish, the U.S. ambassador in London. "He had movie star good looks, a poised and effortless manner, a first-class mind, and -- most flatteringly -- a sincere and abiding interest in all things American."
Cooke's family informed BBC reporter Nick Clarke of the death, the BBC spokeswoman said. Clarke has written a biography of Cooke.
"I think he thought retirement was a very bad idea and when he was forced to stop work three weeks ago, I thought, this won't be long now, because here was a man living for this one task," Clarke told Sky News TV.
"Letter from America," which was carried on the BBC World Service and on Radio 4 in Britain, started in 1946, and was originally scheduled to run 13 weeks.
"Alistair is a national institution," said Christopher Sarson, the original executive producer of "Masterpiece Theatre," once said. "He has defined what public television was and is for so many people that it is difficult to imagine life without him."
Born Alfred Cooke in Salford in northern England in 1908, he earned an honors degree in English from Cambridge University. In 1932 he came to the United States to study at Yale University, and he journeyed across the country by car.
"That trip was an absolute eye-opener for me," he recalled. "Even then, even in the Depression, there was a tremendous energy and vitality to America. The landscape and the people were far more gripping and dramatic than anything I had ever seen.
"It truly changed me. You see, from then on my interest in the theater began to wane, and I began to take up what I felt was the real drama going on -- namely, America itself."
Returning to England and, having changed his name to Alistair, Cooke joined the BBC in 1934 as a film critic. He has been the BBC commentator on American affairs since 1938.
In a speech to the Royal Television Society in New York in 1997, Cooke traced the development of his urbane, soft-spoken style to his wartime work with the BBC.
"During the end of the war, the BBC in New York invited various famous exiles, Frenchmen mostly, to come and talk to the underground in France -- famous, famous, great literary men," Cooke said.
"And I had the privilege of sitting in the control room, and I thought that I will learn about broadcasting from listening to these men...
"What I learned is that they were dreadful broadcasters. They wrote essays, or lectures, or sermons and they read them aloud. And I suddenly realized there was a new profession ahead. Which is writing for talking. Putting it on the page in the syntactical break-up and normal confusion that is normal talk," he said.
Cooke also recalled some advice when he started the program.
"A wise old talks producer came to me and said, 'Cooke, a word in your ear. Could I give you a bit of advice?' I said, 'of course.' He said, 'don't get too popular ... or they'll drop you.'"
Cooke published 12 books including "Alistair Cooke's America" (1973) which sold more than 800,000 copies in hard cover.
In addition to his BBC work, Cooke was London correspondent for the NBC network in 1936-37, The Manchester Guardian's United Nations correspondent from 1945 to 1948, and chief U.S. correspondent of The Guardian until 1972.
He was host of the "Omnibus" television program in the United States from 1952 to 1961, and presented "Masterpiece Theatre" on the PBS network from 1971 to 1992.
He received four Emmy awards, three George Foster Peabody awards for broadcasting, and he was made an honorary Knight Commander, Order of the British Empire. It was an honorary award because Cooke, the consummate Englishman, had become a U.S. citizen in 1941.
Cooke's "insight, wisdom and unique ability to craft words enabled millions of listeners in the UK and around the world to understand the texture of the United States and its people," said Mark Byford, acting director general of the BBC.
Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press
-----
Web Warlock
Coming Soon to The Other Side, The Netbook of Shadows: A Book of Spells for d20 Witches
"I am the god of hellfire! And I bring you Fire!" - Arthur Brown, "Fire" The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
by Gatito Grande » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:21 pm
by gspiggott » Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:16 am
by WebWarlock » Tue May 18, 2004 8:32 am
Quote:
By Associated Press
Published May 18, 2004, 9:24 AM CDT
NEW YORK -- Tony Randall, the comic actor best known for playing fastidious Felix Unger on "The Odd Couple," has died. He was 84.
Randall died in his sleep Monday night at NYU Medical Center, according to his publicity firm, Springer Associates.
-----
Web Warlock
Coming Soon to The Other Side, The Netbook of Shadows: A Book of Spells for d20 Witches
"D&D doesn't teach children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters are real.
D&D teaches them that monsters can be defeated."
- Unknown
by mollyig » Wed May 19, 2004 3:06 am
by cattwoman98111 » Wed May 19, 2004 8:51 pm
Quote:
Wed May 19, 3:08 PM ET
By Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jazz drummer Elvin Jones, who rose to fame as a driving force behind the John Coltrane Quintet ensemble of the 1960s, has died of heart failure, his wife said on Wednesday. He was 76.
Keiko Jones, who was married to the drummer for 38 years and also served as his business manager, said Jones had been in and out of hospital for five months before passing away on Tuesday at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey.
"He was fighting," she said, adding that he played his last show with his five-piece jazz group at Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland, California, last month while drawing oxygen from a tank he had with him on stage.
Known for his explosive drumming style, Jones was a fixture in Coltrane's influential quintet from 1960-66. A pioneer of greater improvisation among jazz percussionists, he was viewed by some jazz critics as the best drummer in the world.
"His main achievement was the creation of what might be called a circle of sound, a continuum in which no beat of the bar was necessarily indicated by any specific accent, yet the overall feeling became a tremendously dynamic and rhythmically important part of the whole group," the Encyclopedia of Jazz wrote about Jones.
Born in 1927 in Pontiac, Michigan, Jones was the youngest of 10 children. His father was a lumber inspector for General Motors, a Baptist deacon and a church choir singer.
Jones was one of three jazz players among his siblings. His brother Hank is still active as a jazz pianist and brother Thad, who died in 1986, was a successful trumpet and fluegelhorn player, arranger and band leader.
After being discharged from the military in 1949, Jones embarked on a long career as a professional drummer, playing with luminaries of jazz from Miles Davis to Milt Jackson in a career that led to over 500 recordings.
A trip to New York to audition for the new Benny Goodman Band ended disastrously but led to a slot in Charlie Mingus' band. Joining Coltrane in 1960 became his most celebrated alliance, leading to recordings like, "A Love Supreme" and "Coltrane 'Live' at the Village Vanguard."
"If there is anything like perfect harmony in a human relationship that was as close as you can come," Jones once said of his musical relationship with Coltrane.
"It was one of the happiest period of my life," he said. "It was like a young boy going to the circus and stopping at the stand selling cotton candy and ice cream cones. It was that kind of feeling."
To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting..
by jixer » Wed May 19, 2004 10:20 pm
by maudmac » Sun Jun 06, 2004 6:42 am
), he just did too much Bad Stuff for me to have more of a response than 
and i don't really care if you think i'm strange / i ain't gonna change
by skittles » Sun Jun 06, 2004 6:57 am
skittles
In vino veritas
by Diebrock » Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:10 am
_________________
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
I've kissed her best friend. I've reached into her best friend's pocket and fished around for keys. And I gave her best friend my number. I must be doing something totally, totally wrong... - TBSOL by Dreams
by skittles » Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:34 am
skittles
In vino veritas
by Diebrock » Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:44 pm
_________________
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
I've kissed her best friend. I've reached into her best friend's pocket and fished around for keys. And I gave her best friend my number. I must be doing something totally, totally wrong... - TBSOL by Dreams
by Warduke » Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:53 pm
Quote:
Grammy-Winning Crooner Ray Charles Dies
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Ray Charles, the Grammy-winning crooner who blended gospel and blues in such crowd-pleasers as "What'd I Say" and ballads like "Georgia on My Mind," died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 73.
Charles died at his Beverly Hills home surrounded by family and friends, said spokesman Jerry Digney.
Charles last public appearance was alongside Clint Eastwood on April 30, when the city of Los Angeles designated the singer's studios, built 40 years ago in central Los Angeles, as a historic landmark.
Blind by age 7 and an orphan at 15, Charles spent his life shattering any notion of musical boundaries and defying easy definition. A gifted pianist and saxophonist, he dabbled in country, jazz, big band and blues, and put his stamp on it all with a deep, warm voice roughened by heartbreak from a hardscrabble childhood in the segregated South.
"His sound was stunning — it was the blues, it was R&B, it was gospel, it was swing — it was all the stuff I was listening to before that but rolled into one amazing, soulful thing," singer Van Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine in April.
Charles won nine of his 12 Grammy Awards between 1960 and 1966, including the best R&B recording three consecutive years ("Hit the Road Jack," "I Can't Stop Loving You" and "Busted"
His versions of other songs are also well known, including "Makin' Whoopee" and a stirring "America the Beautiful." Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell wrote "Georgia on My Mind" in 1931 but it didn't become Georgia's official state song until 1979, long after Charles turned it into an American standard.
"I was born with music inside me. That's the only explanation I know of," Charles said in his 1978 autobiography, "Brother Ray." "Music was one of my parts ... Like my blood. It was a force already with me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me, like food or water."
Charles considered Martin Luther King Jr. a friend and once refused to play to segregated audiences in South Africa. But politics didn't take.
He was happiest playing music, smiling and swaying behind the piano as his legs waved in rhythmic joy. His appeal spanned generations: He teamed with such disparate musicians as Willie Nelson, Chaka Khan and Eric Clapton, and appeared in movies including "The Blues Brothers." Pepsi tapped him for TV spots around a simple "uh huh" theme, perhaps playing off the grunts and moans that pepper his songs.
"The way I see it, we're actors, but musical ones," he once told The Associated Press. "We're doing it with notes, and lyrics with notes, telling a story. I can take an audience and get 'em into a frenzy so they'll almost riot, and yet I can sit there so you can almost hear a pin drop."
Charles was no angel. He could be mercurial and his womanizing was legendary. He also struggled with a heroin addiction for nearly 20 years before quitting cold turkey in 1965 after an arrest at the Boston airport. Yet there was a sense of humor about even that — he released both "I Don't Need No Doctor" and "Let's Go Get Stoned" in 1966.
He later became reluctant to talk about the drug use, fearing it would taint how people thought of his work.
"I've known times where I've felt terrible, but once I get to the stage and the band starts with the music, I don't know why but it's like you have pain and take an aspirin, and you don't feel it no more," he once said.
Ray Charles Robinson was born Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga. His father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his mother, Aretha, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to Gainesville, Fla., when Charles was an infant.
"Talk about poor," Charles once said. "We were on the bottom of the ladder."
Charles saw his brother drown in the tub his mother used to do laundry when he was about 5 as the family struggled through poverty at the height of the Depression. His sight was gone two years later. Glaucoma is often mentioned as a cause, though Charles said nothing was ever diagnosed. He said his mother never let him wallow in pity.
"When the doctors told her that I was gradually losing my sight, and that I wasn't going to get any better, she started helping me deal with it by showing me how to get around, how to find things," he said in the autobiography. "That made it a little bit easier to deal with."
Charles began dabbling in music at 3, encouraged by a cafe owner who played the piano. The knowledge was basic, but he was that much more prepared for music classes when he was sent away, heartbroken, to the state-supported St. Augustine School for the Deaf and the Blind.
Charles learned to read and write music in Braille, score for big bands and play instruments — lots of them, including trumpet, clarinet, organ, alto sax and the piano.
"Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory," Charles said. "I can sit at my desk and write a whole arrangement in my head and never touch the piano. .. There's no reason for it to come out any different than the way it sounds in my head."
His early influences were myriad: Chopin and Sibelius, country and western stars he heard on the Grand Ole Opry, the powerhouse big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie, jazz greats Art Tatum and Artie Shaw.
By the time he was 15 his parents were dead and Charles had graduated from St. Augustine. He wound up playing gigs in black dance halls — the so-called chitlin' circuit — and exposed himself to a variety of music, including hillbilly (he learned to yodel) before moving to Seattle.
He dropped his last name in deference to boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, patterned himself for a time after Nat "King" Cole and formed a group that backed rhythm 'n' blues singer Ruth Brown. It was in Seattle's red light district were he met a young Quincy Jones, showing the future producer and composer how to write music. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Charles developed quickly in those early days. Atlantic Records purchased his contract from Swingtime Records in 1952, and two years later he recorded "I Got a Woman," a raw mixture of gospel and rhythm 'n' blues, inventing what was later called soul. Soon, he was being called "The Genius" and was playing at Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival.
His first big hit was 1959's "What'd I Say," a song built off a simple piano riff with suggestive moaning from the Raeletts. Some U.S. radio stations banned the song, but Charles was on his way to stardom.
Veteran producer Jerry Wexler, who recorded "What'd I Say," said he has worked with only three geniuses in the music business: Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Charles.
"In each case they brought something new to the table," Wexler told the San Jose Mercury News in 1994. Charles "had this blasphemous idea of taking gospel songs and putting the devil's words to them. ... He can take a gem from Tin Pan Alley or cut to the country, but he brings the same root to it, which is black American music."
Charles released "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volumes 1 and 2" in the early '60s, a big switch from his gospel work. It included "Born to Lose," "Take These Chains From My Heart (And Set Me Free)" and "I Can't Stop Loving You," some of the biggest hits of his career.
He made it a point to explore each medium he took on. Country sides were sometimes pop-oriented, while fiddle, mandolin, banjo and steel guitar were added to "Wish You Were Here Tonight" in the '80s. Jones even wrote a choral and orchestral work for Charles to perform with the Roanoke, Va., symphony.
Charles' last Grammy came in 1993 for "A Song for You," but he never dropped out of the music scene. He continued to tour and long treasured time for chess. He once told the Los Angeles Times: "I'm not Spassky, but I'll make it interesting for you."
"Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead," he told the Washington Post in 1983. "I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal."
___
Associated Press writer Dave Zelio contributed to this report.
by Gatito Grande » Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:56 pm
Out by skittles » Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:29 pm
skittles
"You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here." Desiderata, Max Erhmann
by oneyedchicklet » Thu Jun 10, 2004 4:54 pm
Now serving Bitter, party of one. Your table is ready.
by WebWarlock » Thu Jun 10, 2004 6:11 pm
-----
Web Warlock
Coming Soon to The Other Side, The Netbook of Shadows: A Book of Spells for d20 Witches
"D&D doesn't teach children that monsters exist. Children already know that monsters are real.
D&D teaches them that monsters can be defeated."
- Unknown
by dekalog » Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:24 am
by seurat » Tue Jun 15, 2004 6:16 pm
"Life's complications and frustrations/they disappear when the music starts playing/I found a place where it feels alright/I hear a record and it opened my eyes/do you remember what the music meant?" - Speakers Push Air, Pretty Girls Make Graves
by Gatito Grande » Wed Jun 23, 2004 1:38 pm
Quote:
Child poet Mattie Stepanek dies
One of the best-selling poets in recent years
Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Posted: 12:30 PM EDT (1630 GMT)
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (AP) -- Mattie Stepanek, the child poet whose inspirational verse made him a best-selling writer and a prominent voice for muscular dystrophy sufferers, died Tuesday of a rare form of the disease. He was 13.
Stepanek died at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, the hospital said. He had been hospitalized since early March for complications related to the disease that impaired most of his body's functions.
In his short life, the tireless Stepanek wrote five volumes of poetry that sold millions of copies. Three of the volumes reached the New York Times' best-seller list.
"Mattie was something special, something very special," entertainer Jerry Lewis, who chairs the Muscular Dystrophy Association, said in a statement.
"His example made people want to reach for the best within themselves."
Stepanek, of Rockville, had dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy, a genetic disease that impaired his heart rate, breathing, blood pressure and digestion, and caused muscle weakness.
His mother, Jeni, 44, has the adult-onset form of the disease, and his three older siblings died of it in early childhood.
From deathbed to huge publishing success
Stepanek began writing poetry at age 3 to cope with the death of a brother. In 2001, a small publisher issued a slim volume of his poems, called "Heartsongs." Within weeks, the book reached the top of the Times' best-seller list, the MDA said.
He wrote four other books: "Journey Through Heartsongs," "Hope Through Heartsongs," "Celebrate Through Heartsongs" and "Loving Through Heartsongs."
His poems brought him admirers including Oprah Winfrey and former President Carter and made him one of the best-selling poets in recent years.
Stepanek was hospitalized many times over the years. He rolled around his home in a wheelchair he nicknamed "Slick," and relied on a feeding tube, a ventilator and frequent blood transfusions to stay alive.
In the summer of 2001, Stepanek nearly died from uncontrollable bleeding in his throat and spent five months at Children's National. When it seemed he would not survive, the hospital got in touch with a Virginia publisher on his behalf.
Stepanek and his mother had sent the book to dozens of New York publishers, all of whom rejected it, according to Peter Barnes of VSP Publishers. Barnes said he was caught off guard when he read the work.
"I was stunned. Some of it was really good," he said Tuesday. "It was very perceptive and thoughtful."
VSP Books printed 200 copies of "Heartsongs" to be handed out to friends. But after a news conference publicizing the book, interest exploded. "Heartsongs" went on to sell more than 500,000 copies.
"Mattie rallied after that," Barnes said. "He went from being on his death bed to becoming this huge publishing success."
Despite his condition, Stepanek was upbeat, saying he didn't fear death. His work was full of life, a quest for peace, hope and the inner voice he called a "heartsong."
"It's our inner beauty, our message, the songs in our hearts," he said in an interview with The Associated Press in November 2001. "My life mission is to spread peace to the world."
He is survived by his mother.
Outby WebWarlock » Wed Jun 23, 2004 2:17 pm
-----
Web Warlock
Coming Soon to The Other Side, The Netbook of Shadows: A Book of Spells for d20 Witches
"If you see me getting mighty, if you see me getting high, knock me down.
I'm not bigger than life." - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
by Diebrock » Fri Jul 02, 2004 10:14 am
_________________
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
I've kissed her best friend. I've reached into her best friend's pocket and fished around for keys. And I gave her best friend my number. I must be doing something totally, totally wrong... - TBSOL by Dreams
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