RIP thread

[javierda]

Dave Hlubek, lead guitarist and co-founder of Southern rock icons Molly Hatchet, has died at the age of 66. The news was confirmed via a post on the band’s official Facebook page, although no details were provided.

They said in a brief message: “It is with great sorrow we announce the passing of our beloved friend and band member Dave Hlubek. Amongst his many contributions to southern rock is “Flirtin’ with Disaster.” Our condolences and our prayers go out to his family during this time of loss. He will be missed but never forgotten, as the music lives on through his legacy in Molly Hatchet.”

David Lawrence Hlubeck was born on Aug. 28, 1951, in Jacksonville, FL and returned there after several family moves. He founded the band in 1971 and they released their debut self-titled album seven years later, scoring their biggest hit with “Flirtin’ with Disaster,” the title track of their 1979 second LP.

Speaking to Kaos 2000 in 1999, Hlubek recalled the early years of his career as he endured the kind of rip-off experiences many bands so, saying of signing his first management deal: “We walked in with an imaginary eight-slice apple pie. When we walked out of the office we only had three slices.” But he added: “I can’t tell you I have many regrets because I don’t. I’ve had a good ride. When I signed in 1977 with Epic/CBS they gave us a bonus for signing which was six figured. We hadn’t done dick. They flew us, wined us and dined us. They put a booklet in front of each one of us and our life was going to forever change. I’ve been around the world 12 times now. I never had to join the service like my dad did.”

The current lineup had a number of U.S. and European tour dates booked over the coming up between Sept. 16 and Dec. 15, but as yet have given no word on whether they’ll proceed. Former Molly Hatchet bassist Banner Thomas died at 63 in April.

[johnbear]

Was an American actress and acting coach she began her career appearing in the television series Love of Life in 1973 after having studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and at the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg she went on to become an acting coach and faculty member of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University she died age 65.
https://www.horrorsociety.com/2017/0...p-passed-away/

[johnbear]

Was an Italian stage television and film actor in his film career he alternated character roles and more rarely leading roles such as in Seven Times Seven and Caliber 9 his most famous role is that of Rambaldo Melandri in the Amici miei film series (1975–1985) he won two Nastro d'Argento Awards for Best Supporting Actor in 1967 for Pietro Germi's The Birds the Bees and the Italians and in 1986 for Nanni Loy's Amici miei – Atto III is also well known for the role of Don Fanucci in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II he died age 88.
https://translate.google.com.au/tran...9/&prev=search

[tsunamiSD]

Since he posted it on his blog, I'm including the text of it here:

I've been collecting comedy records as long as I can remember. There was a time when if you went to the Comedy section in any record store — this is back when there was such a thing as a record store — you found albums by Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Nichols and May, Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg, maybe Lord Buckley…and Shelley Berman. This would be a record store in a mostly-white neighborhood. In mostly-black areas, you also found a lot of "party records" and a ton of Redd Foxx.
Freberg was my favorite but he was singing and doing musical numbers. For just funny talking, I loved Shelley Berman, especially that first record of his, Inside Shelley Berman. Here, on a TV show of the sixties, he performs one of the best cuts from that album…

Shelley Berman - "Department Store"


This is so good…every word, every inflection is just perfect. It's all the more impressive though when you consider that when Shelley first began doing this routine on stages, there was almost no one else doing acts like this. Performers had done this kind of thing, though not as well, in vaudeville. Shelley was the guy who modernized it and introduced it into his generation. Others, most notably Newhart, picked up on it…and yeah, there was some bitterness there. Newhart had greater success and Shelley was always rankled when someone would mention the two of them in the same paragraph without noting who'd imitated who.
Shelley was a sweet man but a nervous, paranoid man. There's a joke about two psychiatrists passing each other in a hall. One says, "Good morning" and the other thinks to himself, "Hmm…I wonder what he meant by that." Shelley always made me think of that joke. You could tell him how good you thought he was and absolutely mean it (as I did) and you could almost read the comic book thought balloon form over his head. It said, "Does he really mean that or does he want something from me?"
I got to know him through a comedians' social group I'm part of called Yarmy's Army, and also because I had him in once to do a voice on a Garfield cartoon. Yarmy's Army sometimes does shows for charity and they learned to put Shelley on stage last. There were two reasons for this. One was that he was so funny, no one could follow him. The other was that if the show ran long (or even if it didn't), Shelley would get pissed-off at having to wait so long to go on…and he was even funnier when he was pissed-off.
His peers — to the extent he had peers — worshipped him. Whereas he sometimes accused others — Newhart, especially — of stealing from him, no one ever accused Shelley of stealing from anyone. He was an absolute original with an act that clearly built out of his own worries and frustrations and angers and inability to understand why some people do some things he thought were so insane.
The New York Times obit on him is quite good and I'm going to quote a few paragraphs from it…

In 1963, at the height of his success, Mr. Berman was the subject of an NBC-TV documentary, "Comedian Backstage," which portrayed him as excitable and demanding and captured him losing his temper after a telephone rang backstage during his "Father and Son" monologue. The reviews were mostly favorable (although Jack Gould of The Times called the documentary a "portrait of disagreeableness"), but Mr. Berman nonetheless said that the unflattering picture painted by "Comedian Backstage" made him a "pariah" in the industry, and that his comedy career never fully recovered.

That documentary — which one dared not ask Shelley about — might not have harmed him ten or twenty years later when America got more accustomed to seeing the dark side of stars. In '63, when celebrities came packaged with carefully-controlled images, it was a jolt, though not as big a one as some recalled. Folks who saw it claimed they'd seen him — with their own eyes! — rip the phone right off the wall when it rang, interfering with his performance. He did not rip it off the wall. He merely took it off the hook but people remembered what they remembered. Comedy writer Pat McCormick once told me, "Shelley was a pain-in-the-ass to club owners and other people who booked him because he was always worried about the sound and the lighting and every little thing that could go wrong on stage. His complaining got exaggerated like he was way crazier than he actually was, and then the documentary validated the exaggeration."

His focus shifted back to acting. He appeared in numerous regional and summer-stock productions and played Tevye in a 1973 touring production of "Fiddler on the Roof." In the 1960s he was in movies like "The Best Man" (1964) and "Divorce American Style" (1967); from the '70s through the '90s he was on numerous TV shows, including "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," "St. Elsewhere" and "L.A. Law."

Shelley was a superb actor. He also appeared in numerous productions of The Odd Couple, sometimes as Oscar, sometimes as Felix. He got rave reviews as both and you have to be a real good actor to manage that.
It is said though that the creators of The Mary Tyler Moore Show originally wanted him for the role of Lou Grant, and when they called his agent to try and arrange an audition, Shelley's own agent talked them out of it. He then guested in one of the early episodes of the series and after that week of rehearsals and filming, the producers called the agent and said, "Thank you for talking us out of making him a regular." Finally…

A few years later he began teaching a course in humor writing at the University of Southern California, which he continued to teach until 2013.

That sentence exaggerates how long he taught at U.S.C. and when he did stop doing it, the person who replaced him was me. Several students the first semester I did it had signed up for Shelley's class and quit before they completed it because, they said, he was becoming snappish and too critical when they asked what he thought was a foolish question or handed in a writing assignment that he did not understand. Some of that was because he increasingly felt out-of-sync with the current world of entertainment.
We talked about it once and he told me, "I made a mistake. I taught the class as the Shelley Berman who performed 'in one' [as a solo performer] all those years. I should have taken the toupee off and taught it as the comic actor on Curb Your Enthusiasm. That guy was more in tune with young people and their comedy today."
I don't think Shelley was ever truly out-of-sync with comedy. He may not have known all the current references but I saw him performing many times up until Alzheimer's slowed his timing and he knew it was time to stop. He was always funny and his work was so organic and built on common human foibles that it reached across all generations. Just check out any record or any video of him talking to an audience. You'll agree

[Nightjar]

Very very sad news.

Following on from the death of Walter Becker, another utterly unique, innovative, influential eccentric and brilliant bassist, Holger Czukay of Krautrock legends Can has died, aged 79.

Holger Czukay, bassist with Can, dies aged 79

The man who helped give the German psychedelic rockers their driving rhythm section was found at his apartment, with the cause of death currently unknown

Of course it's far short of adequate to describe HC as merely Can's bassist.

He was a real creative driving force in the band and beyond, throughout multiple genres and shades of experimental, world music.

A wonderful, talented, ebullient, spirited, mischievously humorous man.

I don't want less Holger Czukay...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yWItRfjg8w

[K_D]

Holger Czukay
March, 1938 - September, 2017
Bassist and Co-Founder of the Pioneering Krautrock Band Can
Sampling Pioneer

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ne...-at-79-w501368

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holger_Czukay



Can - Mother Sky (1969):
https://tmblr.co/ZoHQpk2HXrler


Can - Come Sta, La Luna (1977):
https://tmblr.co/ZoHQpk1kNMnAK

[haroldeye]

It is with great sadness that I report the passing of Mike Neville MBE.

Mike was the ultimate anchorman and was on NE news (both BBC and ITV) for what seems like most of my life. You had to see him to believe him.

Thanks for everything especially the laughs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41011268

One hell of a bloke.

[diamelsx]

Gene "Stick" Michael, the beloved Yankees executive who built the foundation of their late-1990s dynasty teams and drafted Derek Jeter, died of a heart attack on Thursday morning at age 79.
source

[diamelsx]

The French fashion tycoon Pierre Bergé – the business brains behind the Yves Saint Laurent empire – has died aged 86.

Bergé, the longtime partner of the late designer Yves Saint Laurent, died in his sleep early on Friday at his country home in St-Remy-de-Provence, in southern France, his foundation said.
source

[ball7]

Don Williams 78 and Troy Gentry at 50 have passed away.

Don Williams has passed away after a short illness.
http://www.tmz.com/2017/09/08/countr...ms-dead-at-78/

While Troy Gentry was killed in a helicopter crash in New Jersey.
http://www.tmz.com/2017/09/08/troy-g...gomery-gentry/