RIP Ron Asheton

According to the AP, Ron Asheton, guitarist for The Stooges, was found dead in his home today. Way back when The Stooges were just starting out my cousin's wife dated Ron Asheton (and had a brief dalliance with Iggy too), and inheriting their two original albums from her was a big moment in my introduction to punk rock and all that has come since then.

Otto Schutt, RIP

Some months back I posted about an event for Otto Schutt, a beloved figure in the local scene and founder of the Power to the Peaceful festival, who had been diagnosed with colon cancer. This week I noticed a big uptick in hits to that posting, so I figured something must have happened. Sure enough, according to the posts on ottoschutt.com, Otto was laid to rest on June 1st. If you knew Otto or would like to know more about him please visit the site and share your thoughts with his many friends and family.

Karlheinz Stockhausen Has Died

One of the great pioneers of electronic music, Karlheinz Stockhausen, has died in his home at the age of 79. The only news piece I've seen about it so far is in German, but for those of you who can parse the language of Nietzsche, Goethe, and Stockhausen, here's a link.

Further Fun with the Grim Reaper

There's nothing like coming home from a chill campout to hear your mother's voice on your answering maching saying that your step-father "is still hanging in there." After some frantic phone calls home, to her cell phone, and then finally to my sister, I found out that, while I had been drinking beer and lounging in hot tubs, my step-father had had a "massive" heart attack. It was one of those mere minutes situations, where if he hadn't been working with someone who was also an EMT, if the rescue squad hadn't been virtually across the street, if it hadn't been early Saturday morning when there was low traffic, and if the cardiac catheterization unit hadn't been standing by to shove a stent up his femoral artery and open up a blood route to the lower chamber of his heart, he would have been dead. At age 52 . As it was, he just suffered more pain than three shots of morphine could mitigate.

When I was finally able to talk with my Mom on Sunday evening she said that my step-father had made his choices, and now was suffering the consequences. Those choices, specifically, were smoking up to two packs of cigarettes a day for almost forty years, not quitting smoking two years ago when a doctor told him he had a leaky valve, and generally working himself to an early grave and not doing anything to improve his health. Like me, his diet was distinctly redneck, and I guess his fondness for bourbon and Coca-Cola probably didn't help much either. Fortunately, he's now been through the most effective aversion therapy ever for quitting smoking, to the point where even the thought of smoking a cigarette reminds him of the pain and makes him nauseated. Of course, now there's still the heart surgery to get through.

Of course this put me in mind of the many choices I've had to make, and the ones I've seen made by others. As my birthdays have progressed I've had more opportunity to see the consequences of some of those choices, and many have been as grim as those suffered by my stepfather. Funny thing is that a great majority of them seem to involve drugs, from nicotine to alcohol to speed. I've been contemplating many of my own choices lately, and trying to see them more as choices than as the playing out of fate. Too often in the club scene it seems that people are not being guided by the idea that they are making choices in what they do to themselves, how they spend their time, or even who they spend it with; rather, everything seems dictated by the flow of the currents around us. This weekend, in whatever you do, take a moment to think about your own choices, and whatever choice you make, please realize that it is a choice, and has the potential to impact not just yourself, but all your friends and those who love you as well.

On the Consolation of Music

The scene has been quiet recently, owing to my needing to travel back to the East Coast for the funeral of my grandfather, Guy P. Mantz, Jr., who died in his sleep after hip surgery on February 27. In the midst of an emotionally trying experience I was reminded of how there are moments when music can speak to us in a way that goes beyond a cool beat or a witty lyric, when it connects on a level that unites us soul-to-soul.

After I arrived in Charlottesville and went to pick up my car at the Hertz counter I was asked which I preferred, a Malibu or a Mustang. Thinking that I should have at least something enjoyable in all of this, I went with the Mustang, which also had satellite radio installed. I tried out the Area 33 channel with its terrible bombastic trance and tribal house, but it was the Chill station that felt most appropriate as I drove to the graveside rites on Saturday. After the service, in which my grandmother broke down and cried from the depth of her soul while laying her head on my shoulder, and then passed out as we tried to walk her back to the car, we went to the Church where I exchanged mostly false pleasantries with relatives I haven't seen in 20 years and never really liked that much in the first place. The whole experience made me feel like I should get at least a +1 on my Existential Angst rating. When I got back into the Mustang to return to my grandparent's house and turned the key, bringing the radio to life, I heard Tracy Thorn's voice singing the chorus from "Protection:"

I stand in front of you
I'll take the force of the blow
Protection

I can't say the the lyrics were especially relevant, but in Tracy Thorn's voice I could hear the knowledge of having felt something like what I was feeling at that moment. If I could have driven off to a bar, lit myself a cigarette, had a couple drinks, and just listened to Everything But the Girl for an hour or so, I think I could have found a solace that would have been far more satisfying than readings from scriptures and prayers to a God I don't believe in. When death makes all human activity seem like mere vanity, when you see people you love stripped down to the emotional bone, when loss hollows out all joy, at least there is music to connect us with others who have felt the same way.

Matt Jakes, RIP

I'm very sad to report that Matt Jakes, DJ with the Ambient Mafia, my boyfriend's former roommate, and a tried-and-true member of the San Francisco party scene decided last Thursday, February 22, that this sad and fucked-up world was more than his soul could bear. Matt had been under a lot of strain since the death of his father several months ago, and despite negotiating the sale of his father's multi-national business and the subsequent setting of himself up for life, Matt came to the unfortunate conclusion that there was nothing left for him to do with himself.

Jeremy and I went out to Skylawn Cemetary on Saturday for the viewing before the burial, and the best thing I can say is that there were many people there to send Matt off. I would have been happier to see a big party going on, with friends spinning the crazy ghetto-tech that Matt used to love to play to fuck with people, but instead there were a lot of kids in black, smoking cigarettes and looking very shook up.

Matt and I didn't hang out that much, but I always enjoyed his company when he did. My favorite story about him was a very fucked-up conversation in which he said that he thought of Jeremy as being kind of a little sister, which amused both Jeremy and me to no end. Matt also got me a gig once, playing at a pot club, a crazy night that was very fun and endlessly amusing.

So long Matt, I wish things had gone differently for you.