Happy Music Monday! The bizarre musical banshee of 2016 has claimed more than just big artists. Today Scott pays tribute to five really cool musicians who passed recently. He liked them all, but they aren't really the sort of musicians who could support a whole blog post. Nevertheless, they did their thing and did it well.
Richard Lyons of Negativland - The Greatest Taste Around
No one ever talks about how Negativland's U2 might actually have been the reason that U2 started paying attention to sampling and video art. The stuff U2 did while touring in the 1990s was almost a direct steal from Negativland's style of art. I was lucky enough to see Negativland a few times in my life, and it was always something interesting and different. I wouldn't have noticed the guy if he passed me on the street, but I think I might have loved this particular Negativland the most.
Hopefully, we're all done with the doom after this. Four more comin' up.
Despite having a huge hit with this song, there were a lot of people in the world who didn't know Billy Paul's name. It also didn't hurt that he died alongside Prince, when everyone was distracted. But I've loved this song for years and I'm glad Billy Paul helped give it to us.
Candye Kaye was a trained opera singer, a porn star, a punk rock hero, a mother, a award-winning blues musician, and probably a damn fun person to hang out with. This is one of her earlier performances (you can see how punk rock they made the set) and even though I don't know her story as well as I could, how could anyone with that list of accomplishments not be interesting as hell?
John Stabb of Government Issue - Plain To See
Although I never saw them live, I was aware of Government Issue as sort of a big blob with bands like Fugazi and Bad Brains that formed from the D.C. Hardcore scene. I never did too much research into the men themselves, but I had this record on a cassette I kept in my car, and I always remember it sounding great when I was driving around. I'm thankful I somehow found the band, and I'm thankful that John Stabb kept it alive long enough for me to find it.
If you stayed up late watching Doctor Who on PBS you probably heard this song before learning about astronomy. Tomita was a pioneer at mixing the tools of the future with the music of the past, and his classical pieces are all very lovely.
Let us just remind you: some images come from the corresponding Wikipedia page and are here under fair use. RIP to all the music heroes we've lost this year. And see you next week.