death & music: part 1. or "the linkiest post yet?"

many of my longtime readers who haven't yet succumbed to bird flu or tay-sachs will by now have recognized that i like to celebrate certain important birthdays up in this classy piece. (ok, to be fair, i've only covered palm and danny thus far, neglecting several VIP's. the point is, im trying. or starting to try.)

anyhoo, in a nod to my pops, to whom cemeteries and obituaries are only so many various breads and butters, id also like to use this bluesilica to pay homage to recent deaths. circle of life and all that, naw mean?

first up on the block: billy preston, who died on june 6, at 59. (official billy website: here.)

i'll level with you. i dont know much about billy preston, other than that he was black and played keyboards very well. in fact, to prove how little i really know about him, i'll admit something ridiculous: until recently, i thought he was blind. i wish i was (were?) kidding. i guess i had long ago seen the footage of him playing keyboards with the beatles during their last-public-appearance/famous-rooftop-gig, and he looked kind of too-smiley and spacey, and i was prolly "too-smiley and spacey" at the time, so for some reason my brain lumped him in with those two iconic blind black piano legends: ray charles, and colin powell.

but here's what i do know about billy preston:

1. he was the only guest musician who ever played on a beatles album and was credited by name on the album (the get back single). i mean, eric clapton played lead guitar on while my guitar gently weeps and even his name is nowhere to be found on the white album.

needless to say, if you're the only guest musician los beatles ever gave such major props to, you're a pretty effing classy bastard, n'est-ce pas? you should def. be honored on blue basilica. (when you drop dead. about a month after you drop.)

(c-note: wikipedia tells me that there was one other dude--"nicky hopkins"--who once got a similar credit, and also that, instead of saying beatles "album," i should more precisely say "single." whatevs. the point is, he was special, you get it.)

not colin powell

2. all this web literature (web lit: blit?) trumpets preston's work on get back, but bro-ham also played keyboards on don't let me down, and this is the key reason why he's getting a notice here.

dont let me down is easily one of my top ten favorite songs of all time. i really think it's insulting to the song itself to try to describe it for those of you poor bastards who have never heard it (please crawl out from under your rock on the north pole, we miss you), but i'll do it a little nonetheless.

suffice it to say, dont let me down has a primal-yet-elegant, memory-burning chorus (a chorus which starts the song, a la she loves you), and a dulcet verse which evokes a gently-waxing-and-waning tide, the two of which combine for a unique rock-and-roll sound that no other band could conjure, even if its members were collectively rubbing the grundle of jesus christ with rosary beads while attempting to do so. not to mention the ono-centric powerful minimalist lyrics of john lennon.

ok, now that i have indeed sucked the life out of the song, i'll end by saying that billy's keyboard work on dont let me down sounds like a glittering mosaic, each note a different tile being gently plunked down in its proper place, and it's perfect, and just because that song exists, and because preston was such an integral part of it, he was perfect. and i honor him here.

ps--i just learned that preston also co-wrote you are so beautiful, which is another amazing song.

r.i.p. billy. you borrowed god's fingers to play your keyboard, now he's taken them back. i hope he's letting you lease some kind of replacement up there, man.

additional props to slack lalane, who tacitly reminded me i should have blogged about preston in the first place.

stay tuned for death & music: part 2, which will ironically be part 1 of a different, new series.

arial.

no new posts until next week. :/

im off to namibia to scavenger some celebrity placenta, or as we call it in the industry, celebrenta. there's big money there.

meh.

a quick note on hollywood women.

today in the post, i read that uma thurman, at 36, is intent on making sure that hollywood "studio bosses" are aware that actresses gain acting skill as they age, even though they might lose something "aesthetically."

this concept of leading ladies having a tough time getting roles as they age has been bandied around for a while now. rosanna arquette even made a documentary about it. but all of a sudden, this complaint strikes me as rather shallow.

sure, it's easy to see that this is indeed a real issue in hollywood, and i agree it's too bad. but the idea of actresses like uma thurman and rosanna arquette bitching about this is ignoring a more important fact, and is therefore just plain silly.

thing is, most of these leading ladies got their opportunities in the first place in no small part cuz they're incredibly good-looking. for every hot rosanna arquette, there are at least 10,000+ struggling actresses who will never get a shot b/c they're not sexy enough.

but where are all the complaints about THIS? activists moan about the withering opportunities of aging actresses, but they ignore the plight of ugly actresses.

it's like, 'hey, uma. i didn't hear you complaining about the looks-based system when you beat that snaggle-toothed, overweight girl out for the pulp fiction role. you felt pretty classy about it then, n'est-ce pas?'

millionaire actresses who complain about getting less roles cuz they're aging are like fat princes in somalia complaining that their new cooks' creme brulees just aren't like the old ones.

get over yourself, uma. you're already ahead of the game.

ratchet down.

courier

dynamic duo.

for those who do not troll the comments sections, hugerash created this picture as a comment on my klutz/spirits post. it's pretty hilaridon.

get real, fools.

DISCLAIMER: this post contains not one original argument, but it's still worth saying.

a quick note for anyone opposed to gay marriage.

first of all, forget about the fact that the senate's vote on the marriage amendment yesterday
was nothing more than a blatantly-timed election year political ploy (ie, a waste of government time, when there are obv. more pressing, actually important issues to take care of) centered around restricting americans' freedoms (ie, a political ploy whose potential effect is way more than symbolic -- whose result would be a devastating blow to the lives of millions of innocent, harmless citizens, making it all the more callous). i mean, i could go on and on about how unconscionable the senate's behavior is, but i have a more fundamental point to make.

as far as i can tell, beyond the so-BS-and-hypocritical-it-makes-my-hair-stand-up argument that g*d and the bible are opposed to homosexuals, the opponents of gay marriage tell us that we need to protect the "sanctity" of marriage as a union only btwn a man and woman because that is the best environment for children to grow up in.

talk about closing the barn door after the horses have already escaped. and the wrong barn door at that! where were these protectors of sanctity when britney spears drunkenly married jason alexander, then annulled it what, 24 hours later? where were the sanctity protectors when britney got pregnant again, still in a marriage we all know is terrible?

there are thousands of orphans in this country dying to be adopted. there are prolly millions of people who are the miserable offspring of loveless marriages -- btwn men and women. and these gay marriage opponents say they're protecting children. well, gay parents have to jump through more hoops and checks and balances than hetero parents could ever dream of. they have to prove the solidity of their unions, and their love for children, in trials by fire most of us could never perservere through. to me, THEY seem like the one category of couples guaranteed to give children a loving home.

yet these gay marriage opposing nuts would rather a child have no parents than have gay parents. get real, fools. mike chertoff thinks you have misplaced priorities.

anyone who opposes gay marriage will, in time, be looked at similarly to how we look at people who used to think blacks didn't deserve all the rights of whites. it's that simple.

i thought the bible says g*d created us all in His image. what are you telling me -- he mistakenly made gays?

georgia

george washington carver, i carry - and protect - your mantle.

this is a follow-up to my second post ever, in which i called out the ridiculosity of peanut-phobia. specifically, i alluded to a news story in which a teenage girl, allergic to peanuts, was said to have died from kissing her boyfriend, who had eaten peanut butter earlier that day.

in fact, that assessment turns out to have been only so much unfounded hysteria. she died from a severe asthma attack.

we love the sensational. i as much as anyone. but more times than not, occam's razor really does apply. (god, what would i do without wikipedia?!)

btw, look how erroneous first reports were. kind of frightening how quickly unsubstantiated news becomes "news".

the internet giveth, and the web taketh away.

ps -- this section of the wikipedia carver entry is pretty funny.

lucida grande