The RIP Thread

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Detective Who Was Handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald as He Was Shot Dies at 99
Jamie Ross
Updated 08.30.19 5:18AM ET
Published 08.30.19 4:50AM ET


Reuters / Jon Herskovitz

The detective who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald as he was shot dead by Jack Ruby has died at the age of 99. James Leavelle died Thursday at a hospital in Denver. The former Dallas homicide detective was handcuffed to Oswald as he was led through a police station basement on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, a nightclub owner, stepped out of the crowd and fired a fatal shot at Oswald. The moment was captured in one of the most famous photographs of all time which showed Leavelle in his white stetson reacting with shock. Leavelle later recounted that he told Oswald moments before the shooting: “If anybody shoots at you, I hope they are as good a shot as you.” Oswald replied: “You’re being melodramatic.”

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Eddie Money, ‘Two Tickets to Paradise’ Singer, Dies at 70
Shirley Halperin
September 13, 2019 7:04AM PDT



Eddie Money, the prolific singer and songwriter whose songs “Baby Hold On,” “Two Tickets to Paradise,” “Shakin'” and “Take Me Home Tonight” soundtracked popular music in the 1980s, died Friday (Sept. 13). He was 70.

A statement provided by his family reads: “The Money Family regrets to announce that Eddie passed away peacefully early this morning. It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our loving husband and father. We cannot imagine our world without him. We are grateful that he will live on forever through his music.”

Money recently revealed that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer.

A reality television series about Money and his family, “Real Money,” had aired on AXS TV starting in April 2018. It chronicled his life at home, on the road and with his family, as well as his health struggles.

Money made his home in the Bay Area in the 1970s where he performed at the city’s clubs regularly. A star of MTV’s formative years, he saw major chart success with such songs as “Baby Hold On” and “Two Tickets to Paradise” and, in 1986, “Take Me Home Tonight,” a duet with Ronnie Spector, his biggest radio hit. He was signed to Columbia Records and released 11 albums throughout his career, starting with his self-titled debut in 1977 which saw three songs chart, “Baby Hold On,” “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.”

Born Edward Joseph Mahoney in Brooklyn, New York, Money, who grew up on Long Island, originally started out in law enforcement, his father’s profession, spending two years as a New York City police officer before deciding to try music. In Berkeley, Calif. following his move out west, he palled around with local musicians of the San Francisco club scene which led him to legendary promoter Bill Graham, whom Money met in 1976. Graham would become Money’s manager helping him achieve multi-platinum album sales in the 1980s.

Money’s arsenal of hits includes 1978’s”Baby Hold On” (peak position on the U.S. chart: No. 11) and “Two Tickets to Paradise” (No. 22), followed by “Maybe I’m a Fool” the following year (No. 22), “Think I’m in Love” (No. 16) and “Shakin'” (No. 63) in 1982,* “Take Me Home Tonight” in 1986, which reached No. 4 (his highest charting song) and “Walk on Water” (No. 9) in 1988.

During that decade-plus, Money also descended into drug and alcohol abuse, nearly dying of an overdose that left him unable to walk for a year.

Eventually working his way back to performing live, Money was featured on a 2016 episode of “Oprah: Where Are They Now?” That led to the series “Real Money,” which debuted on AXS TV in 2018 and was on its second season.

Occasionally, Money was also the subject of controversy. Most recently, and not of his doing, music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz took issue with a crack Money made during a talk at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, calling it anti-Semitic. As Money explained to Rolling Stone: “I said, ‘My wife always looks like a million bucks and she spends so much money on clothes and I hate it. It’s the Jew in me.’ And when I said that, because my mother is Jewish, Bob didn’t realize that and mentioned it [in his popular newsletter]. He thought I was Irish Catholic, Polish or German or something and all of a sudden he said I was anti-Semitic. … It was a misunderstanding and I thought it was a funny joke because I got Jewish blood in me.”

More than anything, Money’s music was considered blue-collar at its core, which led him to be featured on “The King of Queens” in 2002, where he performed a selection of his hits for friend and star Kevin James.

Known also for his comedic manner, both in his music videos and in interviews, he said last year that, despite his string of hit songs, he “missed the boat when it [came] to the big money.” In his typically self-deprecating manner, Money capped the conversation with this view: “The kids aren’t in jail, they’re not in rehab, nobody’s wrecked the car this week and there’s still milk in the refrigerator. I’m having a good month.”

Money is survived by his wife Laurie and five children, daughter Jesse Money, and sons Zachary, Joseph, Desmond and Julian.

Said Mark Cuban, founder of AXS TV: “We are deeply saddened that we have lost the incomparable Eddie Money. Eddie was a true American original and a rock legend through and through. His enduring hits have been the soundtrack for generations of fans, and his one-of-a-kind sense of humor endeared him instantly to everyone he met. We have sincerely enjoyed working with him and his entire talented family on his reality show ‘Real Money’, and we extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Laurie; their children Zach, Jesse, Joe, Dez and Julian; and his many friends during this difficult time. He will be missed immensely by all of those who knew and loved him. But, if we know Eddie, he’s rocking right now in heaven, doing what he always loved.”

Donations on behalf of Eddie Money can made to the Eddie Money Cancer Research Fund at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

The Cars’ Ric Ocasek Dead at 75
BY: EVAN MINSKER* SEP 16 2019

The frontman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted new wave band also produced albums for Weezer, Bad Brains, and more



Ric Ocasek, best known as the founder and frontman of the iconic new wave and power pop band the Cars, has died. The New York Police Department confirmed to Pitchfork they responded to a call reporting an unconscious man. The man, identified as Ocasek, was found in bed and pronounced dead at the scene. He was 75.

Ocasek was born in Baltimore. He and friend Benjamin Orr played in a number of bands before eventually officially forming the Cars in 1976. They released their self-titled debut album in 1978, which featured the hit singles “Good Times Roll,” “My Best Friend’s Girl,” and “Just What I Needed.” The group broke up in the late 1980s. Starting with 1982’s Beatitude and ending with 2005’s Nexterday, Ocasek released a series of solo albums as well. He was also a producer of albums by artists including Weezer, Bad Brains, Guided By Voices, No Doubt, the Cribs, Bad Religion, and others.

The musician and producer was also a pop culture fixture beyond music. He made a memorable appearance in John Waters’ Hairspray as a painter. He was an artist in real life, too, and his work was shown in galleries. He also wrote books, including the 1992 poetry collection Negative Theater. He was a regular guest on “The Colbert Report,” once calling out Todd Rundgren on the show (at a time when Rundgren was fronting the Cars under the name “the New Cars”). Ocasek made headlines in 2016 when he pulled his approval of a sample on Car Seat Headrest’s Teens of Denial, forcing Matador Records to destroy physical copies of the album.

In 2011, Ocasek and the reunited Cars released a new album called Move Like This. The Cars were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

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[MadamMeow]

It's been a bad week.

But that's really cool Ric did stuff in the background for Weezer and Bad Religion. I never knew that.

[Frothy Afterbirth]

AVN Hall of Famer Jessica Jaymes Dies
September 18, 2019 10:26 AM
By Peter Warren


CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Performer and studio co-owner Jessica Jaymes was discovered dead Tuesday afternoon in her Los Angeles home, AVN has learned. She was 40.

Jaymes was found at around 4 p.m. Tuesday by her business partner in Spizoo, the studio she co-founded in 2008. Though the cause and exact time of her death are not yet known, the business partner told AVN, "She had a lot of health issues, she kept having seizures in the past six months—she was around the medication for the seizures. It looks like she probably had a seizure yesterday or the day before. It's horrible."

He went to check on her, he said, because "she was MIA ... she wasn't online for like four, five, six days, and I was on vacation and I came back a week ago, and I texted her, she was not answering me back." Finally, he explained, he asked his assistant to try calling Jaymes, speculating that "maybe she blocked me, because sometimes she blocks me, she gets mad with me, she gets mad with the world—and the phone was not ringing."

When he arrived at the house, he found Jaymes on the couch, where he said she appeared to have been lying "for like at least 12 hours. ... I called the police, they came, they checked to be sure that nobody tried to rob her or tried to kill her—they said that there was no foul play. The coroner came to pick up the body and now they're doing an autopsy to see if it was a heart attack or she had a seizure ... I don't know, she's just gone.

"I am what I am because of her," the partner continued. "I did this business because of her, for her. I'm talking to her family right now—her mom and her sister might fly in and we're going to decide what to do. ... You know, when I started to see in the past two or three years all these people dying because of this and that, I was like, 'When is going to be her time?' Because I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming. She was so unhealthy, so many problems, health issues with her back, her nerve system, the seizures in the past six months. I was just waiting. It was a question of time. She was so young.

"She is Spizoo," he concluded. "She built this with me. I promised her to retire with this company. We would never have done it without her. It was teamwork all the time, for so many years. We love her."

Aside from co-helming Spizoo since its beginning, Jaymes had an illustrious career as a performer from the moment of her debut in 2002, starting out strictly doing all-girl work, but adding boy/girl in 2005. One year before that, the Alaska native became the first-ever contract star for Hustler Video, and was named Hustler Honey of the Year. Over the course of her career, she amassed over 300 credits, including mainstream appearances in the Showtime series Weeds, on The Howard Stern Show and more. She was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2018.

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actor Aron Eisenberg dies at 50
ROSY CORDERO
Posted on September 22, 2019 2:20PM


David Livingston/Getty Images


Aron Eisenberg, who played Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, has died at age 50, his wife Malissa Longo confirms via Facebook. Eisenberg passed on Saturday, though Longo did not specify the cause of his death.

“It is with extreme regret and sadness to announce that my love and best friend, Aron Eisenberg, passed away earlier today,” Longo captioned a collage of photos of them together.

She added, “He was an intelligent, humble, funny, emphatic soul. He sought to live his life with integrity and truth. He was so driven to put the best he had into whatever work was put before him. He lived his life with such vigor and passion. He was like a breath of fresh air, because I knew I would always hear the truth from him. Even if I didn’t want to hear it and even if the truth was inconvenient.”

StarTrek.com documented Eisenberg’s journey getting a kidney transplant in 2015, he was born with only one defective kidney. He had a second kidney transplant after the one documented in the article wasn’t successful. It is not known if these ongoing medical issues played a part in his death.

The Hollywood-born actor joined the Star Trek universe in 1993 with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine until the series’ conclusion in 1999. He made brief appearances in 1995’s Star Trek: Voyager and 2017’s Star Trek: Renegades.

His last appearance was in the Eric Balfour-directed Walk to Vegas in 2019.

Star Trek star Robert Picard shared a tribute to the actor via social media on Sunday.

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[Bam-Bam]

RIP Sid Haig

[Frothy Afterbirth]

Karate Kid, Cobra Kai actor Rob Garrison dies at 59



Rob Garrison, known to fans as Tommy from The Karate Kid movies and YouTube’s sequel series Cobra Kai — died Friday morning, EW has confirmed. According to TMZ, the 59-year-old actor died at a hospital in his home state of West Virginia, where he had been receiving treatment for “ongoing kidney and liver issues.”

The actor secured a place for himself in pop culture history with his role in the 1984 hit Karate Kid. During the climactic All-Valley Karate Championship battle between underdog Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and menacing bully Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), Tommy (Garrison) encourages his Cobra Kai teammate with one of the film’s most memorable lines — “Get him a body bag! Yeah!” — followed by a sinister giggle. Watch:

After appearing in The Karate Kid and The Karate Kid Part II, Garrison went on to appear in shows including Columbo, Coach, and Homefront. In 2019, he reunited with Zabka for a season 2 episode of Cobra Kai, in which Johnny and his old Cobra Kai buddies (Ron Thomas and Tony O’Dell) spring Tommy from the hospital, where he is being treated for cancer. The group goes on a camping trip to Big Bear Lake, where Tommy passes away peacefully in his sleep. The actors “were thrilled to get the chance to put on the masks of these characters again,” exec producer Josh Heald told EW in April. “It was just another layer to this show — all of a sudden, you’re in the woods with a bunch of grown men and you’re crying.”



Rick Henriques, Garrison’s personal appearances talent agent, tells EW, “Rob was really proud of that episode.”

Garrison is survived by his brother, Patrick

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

Majestic American Soprano Jessye Norman Dies At 74
September 30, 20196:29 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Tom Huizenga


Frans Schellekens/Redferns

Opera fans are mourning one of the world's most revered voices.

Soprano Jessye Norman died Monday morning at Mount Sinai St. Luke's Hospital in New York. Her death was confirmed to NPR by a spokesperson for her family, Gwendolyn Quinn, as well as a representative from the Jessye Norman School of the Arts. The official cause of death was septic shock and multi-organ failure, secondary to complications of a spinal cord injury she had sustained in 2015. She was 74.

Praised for the beauty and opulence of her voice, Norman crafted a distinctive career that spanned decades and styles of music, becoming a leading figure both in the opera house and on the recital stage. When I spoke with her in 2014, she told me she couldn't recall a time when she didn't sing.

"My parents told me that I started singing at the same time as I started speaking," Norman said. The little girl from Augusta, Ga., with the big voice sang in church, school — and, she said, a few unusual venues.

"I'd sing for the opening of a supermarket, as I always say. There was even an opening of a car wash at some point. They weren't, sort of, very elegant settings all the time."

Inspired by the acclaimed contralto Marian Anderson, whose 78 records Norman listened to at a neighbor's home, she went on to develop her own singular sound that rang out in the world's top opera houses, finding legions of fans. Superstar soprano Renée Fleming counts herself among them.

"Honestly, I can't think of a single other soprano or mezzo-soprano with anything remotely approaching her sound," Fleming tells NPR. "It was almost like a wall of sound coming at us, but extremely beautiful and consistent."
her generation, Norman began her career in Europe, specifically Berlin's Deutsche Oper, where she made her debut in 1969 singing Wagner. With a large, attractive voice, she was offered roles she knew she was too young to sing — so she decided to take a self-imposed hiatus.

"I needed to go away from the opera house to allow my voice to mature. I wanted to save myself. I wanted to do this for the long term. I knew that already at 24," she said. In her time off, she honed her skills as a recitalist. She sang German and French songs, and always included spirituals.

Norman, who was born Sept. 15, 1945, in Augusta, Ga., grew up in the Jim Crow South and knew racism. She helped integrate local stores, sitting at white-only lunch counters. "We ordered food, daring the staff not to serve us," she wrote in her 2014 memoir, Stand Up Straight and Sing! Eleven years earlier, she founded the Jessye Norman School for the Arts in her hometown, as she told NPR in 2006.

"It's important to give back," she said, "and I find it really disquieting and disarming for me to see how little we pay attention to arts education for our students these days."

By that point, Norman was already a commanding star, having made her belated Metropolitan Opera debut in New York in 1983. That same year, she released perhaps her most beloved recording — Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs.

"Absolutely beautiful," Renée Fleming says. "I also love her recording of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. I used it, really, as a document that I could think about when I was learning that role."

Norman's repertoire was broad, from baroque music to modernists, pop songs and blues, to her beloved Duke Ellington.

"The scope of her career is unique," Fleming says. "She was performing at such a high level, but very often not singing mainstream repertoire — not the bread-and-butter Italian repertoire. Singing with her own template, as it were, and still being beloved and lauded everywhere she sang."

The singer's fans extended far beyond the opera world: Her passing drew tweets from celebrities like Wendell Pierce, Whoopi Goldberg and Al Roker, who called her "an American treasure." She is survived by her brother James Norman and sister Elaine Sturkey, who released a statement saying that in addition to her musical achievements, "We are equally proud of her humanitarian endeavors addressing matters such as hunger, homelessness, youth development, and arts and culture education."

Norman was awarded the National Medal of the Arts, a Kennedy Center Honor, five Grammys, honorary doctorates and France's Legion of Honor — and she was still singing in public last year. In the fall of 2018, she was honored as a "Library Lion" at the New York Public Library, where she sang a duet with Fleming.

"We brought her a microphone — she stayed in her seat, I was onstage," Fleming says. "We performed [Offenbach's] 'Barcarolle' together and there was not a dry eye in the room, including me. Just to hear that sound, it was still glorious. Just a magical moment I will cherish."

When we spoke in 2014, Norman said that as long as she could, she would continue doing what she loved.

"Certainly it will come a time when it doesn't make sense anymore to try to do it publicly, but I can still sing for myself, and sing for my friends, and sing for my family," she said. "I want to sing for as long as I have breath."

Ted Robbins contributed to the digital version of this story. Daoud Tyler-Ameen adapted it for the Web.

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[Frothy Afterbirth]

[/b]Kim Shattuck, An Enduring Presence In L.A. Punk, Dead At 56[/b]
October 3, 201911:46 AM ET
Lars Gotrich.


[size=1]Mark Sullivan/WireImage/Getty Images[SIZE]

songwriter of The Muffs, The Pandoras and The Coolies died Wednesday after a two-year battle with ALS, as confirmed to NPR by Omnivore Recordings co-founder Cheryl Pawelski. She was 56.

"We are very sorry to announce the passing of our bandmate and dear friend Kim Shattuck," the Muffs' Ronnie Barnett and Roy McDonald wrote in a statement. "Besides being a brilliant songwriter, rocking guitarist and singer/screamer extraordinaire, Kim was a true force of nature. While battling ALS, Kim produced our last album, overseeing every part of the record from tracking to artwork. She was our best friend and playing her songs was an honor. Goodbye Kimba. We love you more than we could ever say."

"All of us at Omnivore Recordings are devastated by the loss of our friend Kim Shattuck of The Muffs," her most recent record label shares. "We're thinking about all her friends and fans, especially her family and bandmates. Her creative fire will endure and inspire artists of tomorrow. We're so grateful to have been in the audience and to have played a small part in getting more of her music out into the world."

Shattuck was a music-world lifer, through and through. She spent much of the 1980s in The Pandoras, a band initially inspired by '60s psychedelic and garage-rock and later went full-on Hollywood hard-rock. In 1991, after leaving The Pandoras, Shattuck and former bandmate Melanie Vammen formed The Muffs. While the L.A. band's punky spunk was very much of its era — a cover of Kim Wilde's "Kids in America" appeared on the Clueless soundtrack and, it should be noted, inspired pretty much every cover of that song going forward — Shattuck's gritty rasp and love for '60s pop music sounded like nothing else on '90s alternative-rock radio. The Muffs released five albums up until 1999 — The Muffs; Blonder and Blonder; Happy Birthday to Me; and Alert Today, Alive Tomorrow — with studio returns in 2004 (Really Really Happy) and 2014 (Whoop Dee Doo). A new album, No Holiday, is scheduled to be released on Oct. 18.

While Shattuck had one foot in college radio and another in popular music, throughout her career she stuck to her roots by guesting on songs by underground punk bands like NOFX, Bowling for Soup, Fastbacks, The Mr. T Experience and The Dollyrots. She later joined the Pixies as a bassist on a 2013 tour following the departure of Kim Deal, but was dismissed after five months. (Of the exit, she told NME: "I get the feeling they're more introverted people than I am.")

More recently, Shattuck recently teamed up with Melanie Vammen to start The Coolies, which released its debut EP in July, with all profits going to The ALS Association Golden West Chapter. Shattuck never publicly revealed her diagnosis; asked why the band chose this charity, she told the online magazine Vents in July, "Sadly, it runs in my damn family, and that disease is a mystery to just about every scientist! We are definitely interested in finding a cure for ALS! Cure it already!"

Both contemporaries and young musicians paid tribute.

"So bummed Kim Shattuck died," The Distillers' Brody Dalle-Homme writes on Twitter. "She was HUGELY underrated. Badass guitar player and great voice, really cool songs."

"RIP to Kim Shattuck. One of the all time great voices," Damian Abraham of hardcore band F***** Up says, adding, "LISTEN TO THE MUFFS!!!"

"A very big inspiration to me. Such style / huge tunes," Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield writes on Instagram, sharing stills from The Muffs' "Sad Tomorrow" video, a song that perfectly illustrates Shattuck's hooky pop-punk prowess and vintage-store chic.

From the first ten seconds, you always knew it was a Muffs song. Shattuck screamed so sweetly, so savagely — and looked damn cool while doing so. Shattuck was a force of life who splashed vibrant colors onto punk, in songs both tough and vulnerable, with big power chords and bigger feelings about heartbreak, broken worlds and righteous anger.

In an NPR Music project about women's work in the music industry, Shattuck — always independent, forever punk — offered a straightforward piece of advice: "Don't get a manager. Do it yourself. Be true to your vision and be strong."

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