re: Endless Sleep - The Obituary Thread

quote:

---

Eric Weissberg, a gifted multi-instrumentalist whose melodic banjo work on the 1973 hit single “Dueling Banjos” helped bring bluegrass music into the cultural mainstream, died on Sunday in a nursing home near Detroit. He was 80.

Juliet Weissberg, his wife of 34 years, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Though the theme songs to the film “Bonnie & Clyde” (1967) and the CBS sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” both recorded by Flatt and Scruggs, preceded “Dueling Banjos” in exposing wide audiences to bluegrass, neither made it to the pop Top 40. “Dueling Banjos,” which appeared on the soundtrack to the 1972 movie “Deliverance,” fared far better, rising to No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart.

The soundtrack to “Deliverance” was also certified gold, for sales of more than 500,000 copies.

But Mr. Weissberg — who also played fiddle, mandolin and guitar — produced much more than a one-hit wonder. More than a decade before “Dueling Banjos,” he had distinguished himself as a member of two popular folk groups, the Greenbriar Boys and the Tarriers, and as an in-demand session musician in New York.

---

quote:

---

Songwriter Alex Harvey, whose hits included Tanya Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” and Kenny Rogers & The First Edition’s “Reuben James,” died Saturday (April 4) according to a Facebook post by his wife. The place and cause of death were not revealed. Harvey, who was also an actor and singer, was 73.

---

quote:

---

Carl Dobkins Jr. (January 13, 1941 – April 8, 2020) was an American singer and songwriter, best known for his 1959 hit, "My Heart Is an Open Book", which went to No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The record sold over one million copies, resulting in the award of a gold disc.

---

quote:

---

Bleecker Bob Plotnik died November 29th at age 75. If you lived in Greenwich Village in the late 1970s or cared about music at all from that era, you will know Bob’s name or the name of his record store. He — and it– were seminal in bringing New Wave, punk, power pop, whatever you want to call it to America.

Without him it’s unlikely there would be the Ramones, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, New York Dolls, so many acts now so well established in the music firmament but 40 years ago just whispers from Melody Maker the NME.

There was a moment– there is always a moment– when it all happens. For me that was crystallized in 1978 when I came back to New York from Boston. CBGB’s and the Mudd Club were where you heard the music, but Bleecker Bob’s was where you held, felt it, saw it, listened to, bought it. The first shop I mostly missed, but the second one was on MacDougal and 8th, next to Reminscence. It was a long narrow store, where Bob held forth behind the counter, yelling at customers, making no friends, holding his mastiff by the leash.

Eventually the store moved to West 3rd St. and got wider, broader. But the idea was the same in all locales: dusty records, well aged plastic sleeves where you could dig into the most recent history of alternative music– the non Fleetwood Mac world, the rebel yell, dissonant sounds. By the time I got to MacDougal, Stiff Records had taken over, and the early early Virgin Records, and Rough Trade and so on. This is well before CDs or the idea of them. The records were singles, they came from England, they had not 45 rpm gaping hole that required a plastic insert, but a small hole like an album that played at 33 1/3. They were almost all imports, some colored vinyl.

I was in college. All you had was the New Musical Express to tell you what was coming, when it might come to New York. The guys behind the counter– Chris, John, Chris, and of course Bob– had some idea. “Come back, Monday. Or Thursday night.” I don’t know why but the Pretenders’ first single from the UK, “Stop Your Sobbing,” and Gary Numan, and the Jam, and “We Don’t Need Your Fascist Groove Thing” stick in my head. I remember tall Chris explicating his hate of electronic music: “I don’t like records where the band can walk away and the music is still playing.”

My Bleecker Bob’s life was probably five years at most. As CD’s came in, the mystery of records was over. Tower Records opened on Broadway and you could feel the pull. By the late 80s, the era of punk/NewWave music was pretty much over. Rap had moved in. But imagine that for those five or six years, from 1978 to 83 or 84 it had been an everyday thing, the learning, the adventure. Those records– when I first started listening, buying in ’77 no one would play them on the radio. We had one year in New York– magical 1979– when Meg Griffith and co. played them on WPIX FM. But established FM like WNEW wanted no part of the Clash circa “I Fought the Law” or even The Police singing “So Lonely.” They were playing “Rumours” over and over. I hated Fleetwood Mac.

Well, it was all because of Bob Plotnick, who made no friends, and wasn’t charming. Every conversation was more like a challenge. But he shaped change in the rock culture by force of will. Before Tower, Sam Goody and Crazy Eddie were his only competitors. And we disdained those purveyors of square, soft rock as easy listening.

---

quote:

---

It’s mind-blowing. Sirius XM has a channel called 1st Wave. There was no 1st Wave or Second Wave without Bleecker Bob’s. Thirty years later, thousands of pretend power pop punk whatever fake acts have come and gone. They stream or download, they’re on Sound Cloud. They’re mostly not good, or awful. They should build a shrine to Bleecker Bob Plotnick. Without him they never would have existed.

---

quote:

---

Florian Schneider of German electronic band Kraftwerk has died, Billboard confirms. He was 73.

Schneider formed the influential group and multimedia project with Ralf Hutter in 1970. Kraftwerk -- with its use of electronic instruments that included homemade and custom-built devices -- has been widely credited with pioneering electronic music and influencing various genres across the musical spectrum, including hip-hop, synthpop and rock with their soundscapes, experimentation and technical innovations.

---

quote:

---

Florian Schneider-Esleben founded Kraftwerk with Ralf Hütter in 1970. They met in 1968 while studying at the Academy of Arts in Remscheid, then at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf. They played improvisational music together in the ensemble Organisation. Before meeting Hütter, Schneider had played with Eberhard Kranemann in the group Pissoff from 1967 to 1968.[1] From 1968 to 1969, Schneider played flute, with Ralf Hütter on Hammond organ, Eberhard Kranemann on bass and Paul Lovens on drums.

Originally Schneider's main instrument was the flute, which he would treat using electronic effects, including tape echo, ring modulation, use of pitch-to-voltage converter, fuzz and wah-wah, allowing him to use his flute as a bass instrument. He also played violin (similarly treated), electric guitar (including slide guitar), and made use of synthesizers (both as a melodic instrument and as a sound processor). Later he also created his own electronic flute instrument. After the release of their 1974 album, Autobahn, his use of acoustic instruments diminished.

---

quote:

---

Kraftwerk (German: ['k?aftv???k], lit. "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, they were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre.[5] The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock movement in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders.[5]

---