Tag: obits

Tony

June 18, 2014 / DB

What a week.

Late last week, former MLB pitcher Bob Welch died. He wasn’t an icon of his era, nor one of my heroes. But for kids who grew up watching baseball in the late 70s through the 80s, his passing was noted.

Then Casey Kasem.

And just as I was posting my thoughts about Casey on Monday came word that San Diego Padres legend Tony Gwynn had died.

Such a terrible run of days for our generation.

The remembrances of Tony Gwynn have been amazing. I loved him growing up, but because of where he played and who he played for, he was far down my list of favorite players. In fact, I probably heard him talk about baseball, and hitting in particular, than I actually saw him play. But his love of the game and the art of swinging the bat rang through in every interview and rendered that unfamiliarity pointless. Here was a great player who loved the game, loved talking about it, and seemed like a great guy.

I’m sure Tony wasn’t perfect. But, holy hell, these stories about him that have come out in recent days… They make me a bit sad that I didn’t appreciate him more, that I didn’t get to see him play live more, that I didn’t place him higher on my list of favorite players growing up.

So I’ll share three with you.

First, Tyler Kepner’s wonderful accounting of how Gwynn treated him with kindness and respect and may have helped launch his professional career.

In a .338 Lifetime Average, Every Day Counted

Next, from David Johnson, the story of his year as a Padres bat boy, and the enduring memory of Gwynn: his laughter.

I Was Tony Gwynn’s Bat Boy

Finally, a classic Keith Olbermann monologue about Gwynn.

RIP Casey Kasem

June 16, 2014 / DB

We knew this was coming, based on recent, terrible, news reports. But it still hurts.

Casey Kasem, 1932-2014.

It is not hyperbole to say no pop culture figure influenced my life more than Casey. I began listening to “American Top 40” way back in its earliest days. My parents listened to “AT40”. Their friends listened to “AT40”. My uncles listened to “AT40”.¹ My grandmother listened to “AT40.” Some of my earliest radio memories are of Casey’s voice in the background during car trips or just lazy weekend days when I was playing outside and my parents were lounging or doing yard work with the radio on.

To a kid that did not grow up belonging to a church, “American Top 40” was the closest thing to Sunday service for me. It was a weekly opportunity to take stock, be part of a community, sing, and receive knowledge from a man with a pulpit. In the name of the DJ, the microphone, and the turntable, Amen…

When I got older, had my own radio, and was able to choose my own music, Casey remained an integral part of my life. While there were still plenty of 1970s stalwarts on the charts, slowly the New Wave and New Romantics and synth-pop and hair metal and classic 80s pop artists began to take over the charts. Especially in the cold Midwestern winter months, he got me through Sunday mornings. And, often, I would listen to the replay again that evening.

A favorite “AT40” memory came one Sunday night when I decided to cruise through the AM band² trying to see how many stations I could pick up that were playing “AT40”. I chose roughly the time they were playing the numbers two and one songs in Kansas City, so I could quickly tune through the entire band and assume each time I heard “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, or “I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner, I was listening to “AT40.” I don’t remember how many stations I caught, but I know it was in double figures.

Fast forward to 2007. We were at a local appliance store, pricing some new items for our kitchen. Our salesman was named Philip Bailey. The entire time he was explaining the differences in dishwashers and refrigerators, I kept thinking of the other Philip Bailey and the night I heard his falsetto voice blanketing the AM band.

Eventually I grew up, as we all do. AT40 began to sound a little square as I was discovering hip-hop, Casey’s act a little tired. When Shadoe Stevens took over in 1988, it was kind of the end of AT40 for me. Soon I was listening to “alternative” rock, the music world began to drift from the center, digital music became the norm, and a national countdown show made little sense in the age of 1000 sub-genres.

Every now-and-then, while traveling, I would come across a station that played old AT40’s on the weekends. I would listen happily, trying to guess the next song or who mystery artist Casey was teasing in the lead-in to the commercial break. The weekend L. was born, I found a station here in Indy that played the old AT40s. Again, 20-some years later, Casey and the music of the 1980s became a part of my Sunday routine.³

As I said, given the details about Casey’s health that have become public in the last month or so, the news of his death was not a surprise. But I was surprised at how emotional I got last night. I read many retrospectives of his life.⁴ I searched on YouTube and found several audio clips of entire countdowns, albeit with the actual music stripped out to avoid copyright issues. I loaded one up from 1984 and began working my way through it, stopping to find the appropriate song on Rdio and then listening to it in full before starting Casey’s commentary again.

Perhaps it was the long weekend of sun and water and travel, but I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a tear or two thinking of Casey, who always seemed like the most decent guy in the world, full of Hollywood cheese but free of airs about himself, and how his life ended. We all deserve better, but a man like Casey, who brought so much so to so many people, certainly deserved more dignity at his end.

Casey was the father figure of my musical youth. He taught me to love bits of trivia about my favorite songs and artists. When I’m putting together my year-end lists of favorite songs and albums, it’s because of Casey. When I’m excited to share the music I love with others, it’s because of Casey. When I fantasize about winning the lottery and buying a radio station to play whatever I want, it’s because of Casey.

It seems appropriate to play my all time favorite song to honor Casey’s passing. So, from 1987, here’s a song by a band formed by New Zealander Neil Finn and Australians Nick Seymour and the late Paul Hester. Originally named the Mullanes, for Finn’s middle name and his mother’s maiden name, the band changed their name to reflect the lack of space in their rehearsal apartment in West Hollywood. Reaching as high as #2 on the Hot 100 and finishing #13 in the year-end countdown, here is Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”

One of my uncles desperately wanted to be a radio DJ. It never worked out as his full-time career, but he did spend a few years as a late night and weekend DJ. One of his prized possessions, and one I wanted to steal from my grandparents’ house many times, was the pack of LPs from the week he was in charge of playing “AT40” in the early 80s. That’s right, back then they pressed the entire show to vinyl and couriered it out to stations. I forget how many albums it took to get the whole show on, but it was a hefty box. ↩
That, perhaps more than listening to Casey, dates this story. Music on AM Radio? Seriously? ↩
A few of my brothers and sisters in music are familiar with my Monday emails detailing the highlights of the countdown from the previous weekend. ↩
I don’t know if I knew his big break came from working on a show with Dick Clark. Holy star power! ↩

Zander

April 14, 2014 / DB

The name Zander Hollander may not mean much to the majority of my readers. But for some of us, mostly men who grew up in the late 70s and early 80s loving sports, he played a huge role in our formative years as sports fans.

Mr. Hollander, who was the creative force behind the Complete Handbook series, died last week at the age of 91.

One of the few splurge purchases I was allowed to make when I was young, and my parents were short on cash, was the occasional book from the Scholastic book flyers that came home from school. Whenever one of Hollander’s new guides to the NFL, NBA, or MLB appeared, I pounced on it. Once it arrived, I quickly turned to the section on my favorite team and devoured all the profiles and stats. Then I flipped around and read the details on my favorite players who weren’t on my team of choice. Then I’d read through the reviews of the previous season and previews of the coming season. Eventually, I made it through the whole thing, although never from front-to-back.

As this terrific profile from last summer states, Hollander’s books were the best source for information-hungry sports fans in the pre-Internet era. They were jam-packed with statistics, schedules, and essays to keep you busy for months, but small enough to throw into your book bag or take along wherever you went.

I think I’ll go dig through the boxes in the attic and see if, by chance, any of my old Complete Handbooks have survived 30-plus years of moves and purges.

For Sports Fans, Before the Internet, There Were the Complete Handbooks

The Original, And Best, Disco Diva

May 22, 2012 / DB

I wanted to write something about the passing of Donna Summer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized her music never really qualified as “mine.” Sure, I heard her songs a million times growing up, but her peak – 1976-79 – came before I was reposnible for the music that I listened to. I heard tons of Donna Summer songs because I had young parents who listened to pop music, especially disco.

So while her passing is sad, I feel like my mom, who would have been 60, would have reacted more strongly. Perhaps a little like I responded to Adam Yauch’s death two weeks ago.

He’s not my mom’s age, but Joe Posnanski is a couple years older than me, and thus fell into Donna’s era more directly. Of course he wrote a brilliant piece about her death and his childhood. Go read it.

More than anything, I listened to Last Dance. I don’t remember hearing that song as a child … I mean, I know heard it many, many times because I still know all the words but I don’t remember any specific time I heard it. I connect no particular moment to it (even though I know it was on the Freaky Friday soundtrack). But there is something I connect to it, a time, a vague, indeterminate feeling. I didn’t ask to be a child of disco. I didn’t not ask to grow up in an AM radio time and place where Elton John lip synching on American Bandstand felt like the cutting edge of music. I didn’t choose to hear Last Dance again and again and again rather than, say, Darkness of the Edge of Town or Elvis Costello or The Clash or whoever might have been cooler.

Also, rest in peace Robin Gibb.

R.I.P. MCA

May 6, 2012 / DB

We spent most of Friday preparing for a couple social engagements, so I wasn’t able to write anything immediately after learning about the passing of Adam “MCA” Yauch. Here are some semi-related thoughts.

Since I didn’t know MCA, I can’t really write about him as an individual. Rather, I must write about him as one of the Beastie Boys. It’s impossible to determine with exact certainty what the Beastie Boys’ full impact on music was. Were they the most important hip-hop group ever? Second? Fifth? Who knows. I think the best way of characterizing their contribution is that they kicked the door that RUN-DMC had opened off its hinges. LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Eric B & Rakim, and countless other artists of the late 80s may have still had mainstream success. But without the Beasties forcing hip-hop into the mainstream, who knows how long it would have taken hip-hop to ascend from a niche loved only in New York.

Every white rapper/rap group has to answer questions of authenticity. The black music community, seeing rock & roll taken from them a generation earlier, were fiercely protective of hip-hop. The only white MC’s who didn’t have to answer those questions were the Beastie Boys. Part of it was because they were goofy, didn’t pretend to be “black”, and were viewed at first as gimmick artists. They were operating in an area where no black artist was working, thus they weren’t perceived as a threat. It also helped that they were on Def Jam, the biggest label in the game in the late 80s. But a big part of it is that they were always authentic to themselves, rather than trying to portray themselves as products of the black community. Because they were always carving out a path that was uniquely theirs, the critics, the protectors of hip-hop, the other artists never questioned the Beasties’ motives.

The Beastie Boys were a remarkable group. They recorded music for 30 years. While their introduction to the world was as foul-mouthed, drunken hooligans, they quickly reinvented themselves and created some of the most amazing collages of sound ever heard. They operated on their own terms, breaking from Def Jam and taking control of their releases when other bands would have happily ridden the hype wagon. They took breaks when they wanted. They zigged to computer-built sound collages then zagged to playing their own instruments. They made remarkable videos when investing them with time, money, humor, and artistic value was rare. There were never rumors that they were on the verge of breaking up. They not only respected those around them, but also seemed to always respect each other.

The most sobering thing about MCA’s death are the conditions of it. He didn’t die in a car or plane accident (Buddy Holly). He didn’t OD or drink himself to death (Shannon Hoon). He didn’t go for a swim and never come back (Jeff Buckley). He neither took his own life nor was the victim of a shooting (Kurt Cobain, Biggie, Tupac). He got cancer and died, like thousands of other people each day. His passing is a reminder to our generation that we’re all getting older, and such demises are no longer unexpected or shocking.

The Beastie Boys were an important part of my youth. I was interested in hip-hop but reluctant to explore it too deeply until they came along. Just as they were becoming the biggest thing in music, we moved halfway across the country. Knowing all the lyrics to Licensed to Ill helped me find my footing in a school that was much more diverse and accepting of hip-hop than where I came from. It’s amazing the group continued as long as it did. They made two epic albums, and a collection of unforgettable songs. MCA was the political and spiritual center of the band. He played a huge role in carving out their visual image. My generation, and music, is better for his efforts.

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Icons

February 14, 2012 / DB

Saturday was another sad night for us children of the 80s. Whitney Houston’s death wasn’t a huge surprise; we all saw the way she lived. The surprise was that this didn’t happen a decade ago. Yet it is still a little chilling when someone who was such a big part of your youth dies before we think they should.

This isn’t going to be a long ode to Whitney. As a fan of Top 40 music, I liked her a lot from her debut until 1988 or so. But I never owned one of her albums¹ and as my tastes changed, she became less relevant to me. Even as I continued to listen to R&B into the mid-90s, I was a much bigger fan of younger singers like Mary J. Blige than Whitney.

That doesn’t minimize her passing.

What it made me think about, though, was how little Michael Jackson’s death affected me when he passed. The explanation for that is easy: he had become a freak, a joke, someone I didn’t necessarily want my children to know about. His antics and time and completely disconnected the man in the 21st century from his artistic peak. When he died, I remember kind of rolling my eyes and thinking, “Big surprise,” and never really taking the time to honor his career.

But since then, each time I hear one of his songs, I realize I owed him more than that. He was a brilliant entertainer. Even when it wasn’t necessarily cool to like him, I did. And while I was always a bigger Prince fan, I still loved every single second of Thriller and most of Bad. His music was an undeniable part of my childhood and one of the true voices of my generation. I love how my girls recognize his voice and ask me about him.²

Had he lived, Michael Jackson would not be making great, or even relevant music today. But it’s a shame that he, and Whitney for that matter, had so many demons that he was unable to manage.

So rest in peace Michael. I should have said that long ago.

And rest in peace Whitney.

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My mom did, though. ↩
You may recall how L. said she missed him awhile back. ↩

Don Cornelius

February 2, 2012 / DB

One of the greatest of the many gifts my parents gave me was my appreciation for music. Part of my musical education was our weekly, family viewing of Soul Train. For a white kid growing up in a small, Kansas college town, the show opened my eyes to not only a different kind of music than was commonly played in Hays, KS¹, but also to the broader world in general. There were people out there who looked different than me, talked different than me, dressed different than me. Soul Train helped my parents teach me that while there are all kinds of different people around the world, we’re all humans and worthy of respect.

Don Cornelius, the man behind Soul Train, took his own life yesterday. I know I wasn’t the only person of my generation, of all backgrounds, that was influenced by his creation. Thank you, Don.

But for the most part Mr. Cornelius didn’t preach about civil rights or the marvels of African-American art. He was manifesting them. With a smile he’d sign off each show wishing his audiences “love, peace and soul.”

Not to mention an important balance to shows like Hee Haw and Lawrence Welk, which were weekend staples at my grandparents’ homes ↩

R.I.P. Spike

January 13, 2012 / DB

We lost a dear friend yesterday. C.’s fish, Spike, passed on to the great fishbowl in the sky. It was not unexpected, as he hadn’t been right for months. That didn’t make the loss any easier for her.

He had always been an odd fish, but since the fall he spent most of his time curled up on the bottom of his bowl. While his brother Sparkle would swim around and eat his food as soon as we put it in his bowl, Spike just sat in the rocks. Each week when I cleaned his bowl, it looked like most of the pellets I had given him were still in the water.

In recent weeks, he took to taking occasional wild swims around his bowl, moving rocks around, smacking the glass, and zipping just under the water level. A few times I put a saucer over the top of the bowl because I feared he would leap out. Just as quickly as these jaunts would start, they ended, and he would sink to the bottom and flip over. He looked as dead as can be, but somehow kept going.

Until yesterday.

We disposed of him while C. was at school. She didn’t notice anything was amiss when she got home, so we waited to tell her. M. noticed his bowl was gone as soon as she got home, so I took C. aside and explained that Spike had been sick for a long time and had finally died. Her eyes got big, she asked what I had said, I repeated it, and then she burst into tears. I was not expecting that reaction at all, mostly because we had explained to her awhile back the Spike probably wouldn’t live much longer and she seemed to understand that. I figured she would be a little sad, but not beside herself.

She cried and hugged me. I told her she did a great job taking care of him and the fish I had when I was a kid didn’t live nearly as long as him. That didn’t help. Eventually she disappeared into her bed where she laid and cried for half an hour or so. Then, periodically for the rest of the day, she would get sad and start crying again.

I worked last night and when I got home she was on the couch with S., unable to sleep because of her sadness. Between her sobs she said she wanted to get another red fish and name him Spike, too. I asked her if she wanted to name him Spike II or Spike Jr. That got about a quarter smile out of her.

We’re lucky; we have happy kids. They get their feelings hurt sometimes, or overreact to small things because they’re tired or hungry. But this was our first real heartbreak, and it was heartbreaking to watch.

Fortunately, C. has a friend from school over right now and seems as happy as can be. They bounce back quickly.