Sad, sad news. Alex Chilton has passed away.

Teenage soul savant, power-pop progenitor, indie rock idol and Memphis music legend Alex Chilton has died.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal confirmed the news Wednesday night, but rumors flew through South By Southwest, where Chilton’s influential 1970s band Big Star was scheduled to play Saturday night at Antone’s.

“Chilton, 59, had been complaining of about his health earlier today,” according to the Commercial Appeal. “He was taken by paramedics to the emergency room where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is believed to be a heart attack.”

SXSW director Roland Swenson found out late Wednesday and said he was not sure about the status of Big Star’s showcase, which could become a memorial show. The other members of Big Star are scheduled to be on a panel on the group’s history and legacy Saturday afternoon.

A lot will be written about Chilton in the coming days, but Paul Westerberg already wrote the best tribute to the man.

If he was from Venus, would he feed us with a spoon?
If he was from Mars, wouldnt that be cool
Standing right on campus, would he stamp us in a pile?
Hangin' down in Memphis all the while

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice.
Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice.
Feeling like a hundred bucks, exchange good lucks face to face.
Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's place.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

I never travel far, without a little Big Star

Runnin' 'round the house, Mickey Mouse and the Tarot cards.
Falling asleep with a flop pop video on.
If he was from Venus, would he meet us on the moon?
If he died in Memphis, then that'd be cool, babe.

Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round
They sing "I'm in love. What's that song?
I'm in love with that song."

This comes out of the blue. Sad news.

T-Bone Wolk, best known for his work with Hall And Oates, died Saturday, 27 February, of a heart attack at the age of 58.

Since the late '70s, Wolk has been one of the steadiest-working bassists in popular music. A small sampling of his discography is as follows: Carly Simon, Shawn Colvin, Elvis Costello, Roseanne Cash, Cyndi Lauper, Harry Nilsson, Amanda Marshall, Grey Eye Glances, Paul Carrack, Diane Ziegler, Charlie Musselwhite, Jewel, Ivo, Jellyfish, Avril Lavigne, Billy Joel, Joe Pesci, Leslie Miller, John Eddie and Chynna Phillips.

Wolk's two highest-profile gigs, however, were his long-standing stints with Hall And Oates, which began in 1981 (he got the job after playing on Kurtis Blow's breakthrough rap smash, The Breaks) and his on-camera role as bassist in the Saturday Night Live house band, in which he was paired with fellow Hall And Oates band member, guitarist GE Smith.

But Wolk wasn't simply a bass player. He co-produced several Hall And Oates albums, and recently, on Daryl Hall's continuing Internet Show, Live From Daryl's House, he played guitar and served as musical director.

T-Bone was an exceptionally gifted bass player. As my soul-playing friends would say, he always knew where The One was. RIP, Tom.

The leader of one of the most notorious American bands ever has passed away.

Doug Fieger, the lead singer of the rock band The Knack, has died after a battle with cancer, his brother, the prominent Southfield attorney Geoffrey Fieger, confirmed today.

He was 57.

Fieger sang lead vocals on the 1979 hit "My Sharona," which held the No. 1 spot for six weeks.

[...]

Fieger was living in Woodland Hills, Calif. and was being treated at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

"Everybody knows they're going sooner or later," Fieger told Detroit News columnist Neal Rubin in a January interview. "I don't know any better than anyone else when I'm going.

"I've had 10 great lives. And I expect to have some more. I don't feel cheated in any way, shape or form."

Geoffrey Fieger said the family will issue a statement later today.

Detroit native Jaan Uhelszki, a former editor at Creem Magazine in Detroit who is now a music writer based on the West Coast, knew Doug Fieger when he had the band Sky, which predated The Knack.

"He had a radiant talent," she said. "He was determined and pugnacious with big dreams, most of which he achieved."

A little background on why The Knack was such a controversial band:

The "power pop" of "My Sharona", coupled with the band's "retro" 1960s look, earned the band comparisons to the early Beatles. Many music critics of the era disliked disco, which dominated the music industry at the time, and were, at best, coolly receptive to other developing genres like punk rock, new wave and heavy metal music. The Knack's power pop and hard rock influences earned them some critical credibility; one example was a highly technical and long guitar solo during "My Sharona" which seemed equal to any that a metal band would use. After subsequent albums, there was a critical backlash against the band and they broke up amidst internal squabbles.... Part of the backlash was that the object of some of the Knack's songs were girls "of the younger type", meaning teenaged girls, when the band was at least ten years older.

R.I.P., Doug.

Dead at 83.



Goodnight, funnyman.

RIP Captain Lou Albano

Here's the Captain in full glory on the Uncle Floyd Show, along with NRBQ, doing his Big Hit Single:

Unfortunately, no one ever got around to telling the Captain about the fine points--or any points--of lip synching.

Anyone who lived through the British Invasion can tell you there was a lot more going on than just the Beatles and Stones. Behind them, there were all manner of acts - belters like Petula Clark, blues revivalists like The Yardbirds, and folk-tinged popsters like Peter & Gordon. Half of that duo has passed away.

Gordon Waller, who formed half of Peter and Gordon, a successful pop duo that followed the Beatles to America as part of the British Invasion of the 1960s and that scored a No. 1 hit with “A World Without Love,” died on Friday in Norwich, Conn. He was 64 and lived in Ledyard, Conn.

[...]

Mr. Waller and Peter Asher played acoustic guitars and brought vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Everly Brothers to their own synthesis of folk, blues and rock ’n’ roll. An important ingredient in their success was a steady supply of songs written by Paul McCartney that the Beatles themselves did not record.

By October 1963, Mr. McCartney was dating Mr. Asher’s sister, the actress Jane Asher, and Peter and Gordon had signed a record contract with EMI. They turned to Mr. McCartney to provide a song for them. Knowing he was writing “A World Without Love,” they asked him to finish it for them so they could record it.

The tune became a Top 10 hit in Britain, where it displaced the Beatles’ own “Can’t Buy Me Love” on the charts. It was then issued on the Capitol label in the United States, where it became one of the most successful singles of 1964.

Andante of Collective Sigh has lost her battle with cancer. I always enjoyed visiting her blog and will miss her take on the world.

Per TMZ:

We've just learned Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles ... and we're told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance ... and it's looking bad.

Family is reportedly en route to the hospital.

Update: Michael Jackson has died.

Mr. Fantasy Island has gone on to the Great Corinthian Leather Couch In The Sky.

Fantasy Island star Ricardo Montalban died today at 6:30 a.m. Radaronline.com has learned. He passed away at his home, lovingly referred to as "Casa Montalban" by his family, in Los Angeles.

Emmy winner Montalban, 88, who retained his Mexican citizenship throughout his nearly 60 years of stardom, passed peacefully away from "natural causes" with his daughter and nurses with him, Gilbert Smith, Montalban's son in law, told Radaronline.com. His wife of 63 years, Georgiana Young, preceded him in death last year.

And Patrick McGoohan, star of TV's 'The Prisoner,' has also passed away.

Patrick McGoohan, an Emmy Award-winning actor who starred as a British spy in the 1960s TV series "Secret Agent" and "The Prisoner" and was known for playing various villainous roles in films and on television, has died. He was 80.

McGoohan died peacefully Tuesday in St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica after a short illness, said Cleve Landsberg, McGoohan's son-in-law. The family did not provide further details.

Today brings sad news for anyone who was a part of the Long Island rock scene in the 80s. Barry Ambrosio, who managed the Sparks clubs in Huntington and Deer Park, died today.

Barry worked for Deep Purple, Rainbow and Bon Jovi in the 80s, and he was instrumental in bringing a lot of talent to the world - he was the one who brought Joe Lynn Turner and Bobby Rondinelli to the attention of Richie Blackmore by hooking them up in Rainbow. He was also a friend of unsigned bands on LI, working with a number of unsigned acts. Among the bands he befriended and helped out in numerous ways was my band at the time, Up All Night.

I can't begin to count the nights that he'd put in a full shift at Sparks, running the stage and mixing for 3 or 4 bands And instead of heading home at the end of the night like sane people, we'd just hang out until the sun came up, drinking beer and talking guitars and bands and old records, anything having to do with rock. Barry was one of those rare people that went around the world with some of the biggest stars in the industry, but could still get excited if an unsigned local band had a good night at his club. He even tried his hand at managing a band called Fallout, who I became friends with and even ended up in a band called 20FTWide with their singer Rich Orofino.

Barry was known by the bands who worked with him for being a bit crabby at times, but his heart was always in the right place. At the end of the day there were few other people I'd want running my stage or making sure that the details of a show were being tended to. Even though I hadn't seen Barry in a number of years (he moved to Florida some time ago), he was one of those people whose name came up often when talk swung around to the LI rock scene in the 80s.

We're thinking about you today, Barry. Thank you for all you did for rock and roll.

I'm done.

2008 may well go down as the most forgettable year of my life.

Put aside the fact that I've tried my utmost to navigate my clients through a deepening worldwide recession (with most heeding my advice and some not). Put aside the fact that our economy teetered on the brink of collapse, that, because of unprecedented greed and stupidity, investment banking as we knew it is now gone (that Bear Stearns is gone, that Lehman is gone, that Merrill was acquired, that Goldman and Morgan Stanley are now banks). Put aside the fact that as a result of the worldwide recession markets around the globe -- including ours -- have cratered. Put aside the fact that Bernie Madoff has given Wall St. yet another black eye by running a Ponzi scheme that may reach back as far as 30 years.

No, none of that was enough. The icing wasn't on the cake just yet.

Wednesday evening I found out that a friend's sister was shot three times -- and killed -- by a teenager in a botched home burglary turned homicide. She'd walked into her home while it was being looted and one of the two teens shot her dead. She was found by one of her children.

What even is there to say?

Godspeed, Susan.

The Hottest American Pinup Girl Ever has died.

Bettie Page, the brunet pinup queen with a shoulder-length pageboy hairdo and kitschy bangs whose saucy photos helped usher in the sexual revolution of the 1960s, has died. She was 85.

Page, whose later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state mental institution, died Thursday night at Kindred Hospital in Los Angeles, where she had been on life support since suffering a heart attack Dec. 2, according to her agent, Mark Roesler.

A cult figure, Page was most famous for the estimated 20,000 4-by-5-inch black-and-white glossy photographs taken by amateur shutterbugs from 1949 to 1957. The photos showed her in high heels and bikinis or negligees, bondage apparel -- or nothing at all.

Decades later, those images inspired biographies, comic books, fan clubs, websites, commercial products -- Bettie Page playing cards, dress-up magnet sets, action figures, Zippo lighters, shot glasses -- and, in 2005, a film about her life and times, "The Notorious Bettie Page."

Sad day.

Retail Sales, Year-Over-Year Percentage Change:

ADDING: I know there have been many false starts in proclaiming the death of the consumer, and as much as it pains me to say "this time it's different," this time it's different. Wealth via real estate appreciation has reversed in a big and unprecedented way. Strike one. Ditto via the stock market. Strike two. And credit is extraordinarily hard to come by. Three strikes and the consumer's out. Say goodbye to 70% of U.S. GDP. I would refer you back to this February post in which I questioned exactly how much longer the consumer could hold up, asking:

In the fourth quarter of 2001 the U.S. consumer, after a long uphill climb, finally hit 70% of GDP, peaking (thus far) at 70.51% in 2003 and again at the end of last year. How much more can the U.S. consumer do? How much more can we pump into the U.S. economy, and what would be the likely outcome of a consumer pullback? Looking at the chart, is it even conceivable that we're on the cusp of another leg up, or is it more reasonable to conclude that we're going to downshift for a while?

Now we're starting to get the answers to those questions.

One of my favorite drummers - hell, my favorite drummer - has passed away.

Mitch Mitchell, the British drummer in the seminal 1960s band the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has been found dead in his US hotel room, authorities say.

Mitchell, 61, was found dead in the Benson Hotel in Portland, Oregon, in the early hours of Wednesday.

A medical examiner told Associated Press news agency the death appeared to be natural causes but that there would be an autopsy.

Jimi Hendrix died in 1970 and the band's bassist Noel Redding in 2003.

Mitchell had been touring with the Experience Hendrix Tour.



there could not have been a better drummer for Jimi Hendrix than Mitch Mitchell. He gave Jimi's music a propulsion and feel that very few rock drummers could have even thought of, much less executed. While Buddy Miles eventually took over for the brute-force rhythmic requirements of Band Of Gypsys, Hendrix always went back to Mitch. There was obviously a connection there that Hendrix felt was vital to his music. Mitchell took to being Jimi's right-hand man, and it was an experience (pardon the pun) that he no doubt cherished throughout his career. Here's a bit of an interview with Mitch that sums it up:

"There are a lot of things that we never said," Mitchell says. "I think what it comes down to is a kind of mutual respect for each other. Musically, I'd give him a hard time, he'd give me a hard time, though it was a very compatible situation from my side. It was very interesting to work with someone who would give you that ultimate freedom that seemed to have whatever time existed in your head. There were no boundaries, there were no limits at all. Jimi was irreplaceable, both as a friend and a musician. I miss him as much today."

And today, we miss Mitch Mitchell. Play on, drummer...

'Mama Africa' has passed on.

Miriam Makeba, a South African singer whose voice stirred hopes of freedom among millions in her own country though her music was formally banned by the apartheid authorities she struggled against, died overnight after performing at a concert in Italy on Sunday. She was 76.

[...]

For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations. “I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press. “I never committed any crime.”

Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa in an attempt to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.

From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt unrest among the black majority.

Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

She was married several times and her husbands included the American black activist Stokely Carmichael, with whom she lived in Guinea, and the jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.

In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte in the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.

I remember her big US hit, 'Pata Pata,' from when I was a kid. I had no idea what she was singing about, but I knew it was a hell of a party tune.

MF Adds: Here's "Pata Pata" Live-- 2007. She still had it.