Obituary: Brian Wilson

 It was the end of an era today when Brian Wilson's family, on Facebook, announced that he had passed away earlier today at the age of 82. For the past few years, Brian had suffered from dementia.

For those people born on another planet or lived in a cave, Brian Wilson was the co-founder and main composer (almost always in collaboration with lyricists like Mike Love and others) of the Beach Boys.  This death really hurts, while not unexpected, because the Beach Boys' music was one of the major soundtracks of baby boomers' youth including mine.   But the music was timeless and enjoyed by subsequent generations and will no doubt be played 100 years from now.

For the last day of school this year in the school where I work, the kids went home to the sounds of some of the greatest hits of the Beach Boys.  That's the kind of music I like to hear because they are among the classics of the best era ever of popular music, the 1960s.

Brian in his youth


I don't have to name the songs he penned but perhaps the best one of many great songs was  "Good Vibrations" from 1966, which took him MONTHS to compose.  Pet Sounds, an album from that era, was also highly regarded.  He attempted to do yet another album called Smile, but he abandoned the project for decades when mental illness overtook his life.  He finally finished it and released it a number of years ago, to much acclaim.

Brian had a lot of setbacks and tragedies along the way.  Mental illness, substance abuse, court battles with other band members, a ruthless and abusive father, then the deaths of brothers Carl and Dennis, and finally the death of his longtime (second) wife, Melinda Ledbetter Wilson.  She died in January of last year.  By this time, Brian had been diagnosed with dementia.  It's like the poor guy could never  catch a break.

Last year I finished reading Brian's memoir or autobiography, not the one that unethical shrink Eugene Landy conned him into doing, but the one that came out in around 2015 or 2016.  It is an easy read.

Brian was typically low-key in live performance, and, in the peak years of the early 1960s, his singing was always a highlight because he often employed falsetto vocals.  

Case in point:



NYT obituary:


Brian Douglas Wilson was born on June 20, 1942, in Inglewood, Calif., to Murry and Audree (Korthof) Wilson. His father was a heavy-machinery salesman who had collected a handful of credits as a frustrated songwriter. His mother, a homemaker, kept the Beach Boys’ books in the early days of the band.

The family moved to Hawthorne, another working-class corner of Los Angeles County, when Brian was a toddler, and had two more boys, Dennis and Carl.

From a young age, Brian was almost completely deaf in his right ear. He gave various explanations for the condition, citing a blow from a neighborhood boy or, in some tellings, his father.


As a teenager, Brian was a fan of Chuck Berry’s rock ’n’ roll but was especially entranced by the close, melting harmonies of the jazz-influenced vocal group the Four Freshmen; he led his brothers in careful recreations of their songs.

__


As "they" say, the rest is history.





Some Tuesday Reads

 Social media turns deadly in Las Vegas.

Report of arrest:




______________________


Governor Gavin Newsom of California calls out Trump's bullshit:




___________________________







Obituary: Sly Stone

 Obituary:  Well-known rock or R&B or funk singer/songwriter Sly Stone, 82, has died.  He and his group Sly and the Family Stone had numerous hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The best known of the hits was "Everyday People."  

He was highly influential back then, but the usual, drug abuse, took a heavy toll on him.




According to his family statement, he had battled a variety of health issues in recent years, including COPD.

Snip:

Sly was born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, in 1943. The family soon moved to California, where Sly began singing in the church choir from the age of 4, alongside his siblings. His nickname Sly came about when a classmate misspelled his name, and once he changed his stage surname from Stewart to Stone, his siblings Freddie and Rose, both of whom joined him in Sly and the Family Stone, did the same.

Sly began performing in bands in high school, then went on to study music theory at Solano Community College. By the mid '60s, he had left school to work as a DJ for San Francisco’s KSOL, which became known as KSOUL because of its focus on the soul genre. He also worked with many emerging acts.

By 1966, Sly had his band, Sly and the Stoners, and Freddie had his, Freddie and the Stone Souls. They decided to join forces. “The band had a concept — white and Black together, male and female both, and women not just singing but playing instruments,” Stone wrote in his 2023 memoir Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin). “That was a big deal back then, and it was a big deal on purpose.”

__

He battled substance abuse for years and I believe at one point he was even living out of his van.  

_________________________

Reads for Sunday

 Obituary:  Actress Pippa Scott, 90,  yet another performer who was seen on almost every television show of the 1960s as well as appearing in many films, died on May 22.  Her daughter reported her death.



She was also involved in television producing when she married Lorimar head Lee Rich.

From Variety:


Born in Los Angeles, she was the daughter of stage actress Laura Straub and playwright and screenwriter Allan Scott, who wrote several musicals for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Her uncle, Adrian Scott, was one of the Hollywood Ten blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

She was educated at Radcliffe and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, and debuted in Jed Harris’ 1956 Broadway production “Child of Fortune.”

__

Her given first name was Philippa.

______________________

Tell the truth about a truly insane individual--actually, much more evil than insane--and if you are a journalist, expect to pay the price.

__________________________









Belmont Stakes at Saratoga 2025 Results

Sovereignty beat Journalism in this year's Belmont Stakes at Saratoga.  It was a very exciting race.  Rodriguez set the pace for the winner to win handily in the homestretch.  It was cleanly run race, unlike the Preakness.




I liked the way the winning jockey was congratulated by the second-place jockey.  It showed real class.

The first three finishers of this year's Kentucky Derby finished in the top three this year.  Baeza was third, and Rodriguez finished fourth in the eight-horse field.

Sovereignty is the first horse in history to have won the Kentucky Derby, intentionally have skipped the Preakness, and won the Belmont.

A lot of people are going to criticize trainer Bill Mott for skipping the Preakness and losing a chance at the Triple Crown, but frankly, with the shorter distance of this year's Belmont, any Triple Crown win would have not meant much.  The real Belmont Stakes, long at a mile-and-a-half, is the Test of Champions.

The time for the mile-and-a-quarter Belmont was 2:00.69, a respectable time for this track and distance.  Of course, nobody in the media, including Fox Sports, was going to post the REAL  stakes, track, and world record at a mile-and-a-half.  The broadcast media don't even DO that anymore with the Triple Crown races.  I guess they feel there is no point to it since those records have stood for 52 years.

Sovereignty will likely win Horse of the Year.

The race is already up from Fox Sports YouTube channel:












Earlier:   Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty and Preakness winner Journalism will face off today at the Belmont Stakes, held this year at Saratoga as Belmont Park is undergoing renovations.

______________________________


Some Reads for Friday

Another school year has ended for me today, so I should have more time for other things this summer.

In the meantime, one is reminded of the Neil Sedaka song of 1962 of a "feud" between somebody who should be in prison and the other one who should be deported.  The only thing the pair have in common is their shared goal of screwing over everybody else so they and their billionaire ilk can have more.

They are the very definition of parasites.
_______________________________








Some Reads for Thursday

 Maybe, just maybe, Eloon and Trump will cancel each other out.  They are now in the midst of a catfight, if it is at all sincere.

_____________________________


These "pro-life" people are absolute lunatics.

_____________________________















Featured Post

Obituary: Brian Wilson

 It was the end of an era today when Brian Wilson's family, on Facebook, announced that he had passed away earlier today at the age of 8...