Mic drop: The 2024 RIP thread for musicians

Former Iron Maiden Frontman Paul Di'Anno Dies at 66

The first two albums don't sound like the Iron Maiden we all know, but also they don't sound like anything other than early Iron Maiden.

 

The Pete Best of heavy metal. RIP.

 

Not an RIP but sad news nonetheless…Mathew Sweet faces longterm rehabilitation after a severe stroke.

https://www.syracuse.com/celebrity-...e-asks-fans-for-help-buzz.html?outputType=amp

 

Enimem's mother, Debbie Mathers Nelson, died Dec. 2 at 69. Definitely not a musician, but the target of many of his lyrics.

Vic Flick, the guitarist who played the iconic James Bond theme riff, died in November.

 

Mike Brewer, 80, of Brewer & Shipley, the One Toke Over The Line guys. Part of a big folk-rock scene in the Ozarks in the early ‘70s.

https://bestclassicbands.com/mike-b...ley-one-toke-over-the-line-obituary-12-17-24/

 

They toured Europe every summer. I worked with Tom Shipley at my last real job. Lord, could he talk.

 

A somewhat-hopeful but still realistic Matthew Sweet update here:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/matthew-sweet-update-after-stroke-1235197004/

When I saw the initial stories describing a "debilitating" stroke, I guessed he'd be significantly physically limited -- some of my extended relatives had debilitating strokes and they were seriously limited in just about every aspect -- wheelchair-bound and speech-impaired.

From this story it appears Sweet is still conversant at least in text, but physical dexterity as far as playing guitar or other instruments may be out of the picture.

When I had a TIA aka "minor stroke" in 2004, I had significant speech and walking impairments for a few weeks, but within a month or so I was judged recovered enough to drive and get back to work.

Most of my relatives/co-workers said my speech sounded OK, but at least to myself I sounded thick-tongued and mumbly. (I still do, to some extent. One litmus test, to me: before the TIA, I could rattle off the lyrics to "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" word for word without a stutter or flub; since then, no.)

My typing speed had been supersonic (100+ wpm) before the TIA, but I stabilized at maybe 50-60 afterwards-- not great, but good enough.

My accuracy in scrolling and using mouse/trackballs to draw pages on pagination screens similarly rebounded to something like a C-plus level: adequate to get by, but what had previously been almost effortless was now a grind.

But my fine motor skills, primarily handwriting and drawing, in my left (writing) hand, were totally shot to hell and have really never recovered. Now some of that may well be the result of just about every aspect of communicative life continually being absorbed by keyboards and cell phones, but I'm sure in the last 20 years I haven't handwritten 1000 words of manual text. Basically now my "writing" is nothing more than chicken scratch.

Needless to say, this all didn't help several years later when my then-newspaper went through several rounds of layoffs and reorganizations.

I was safe for a while because I had a decade or more of seniority, and I was still getting passing grades on evaluations, but shortly enough they reclassified, then eliminated, my department, so I was thrown into the job market in my mid-fifties and still some vestigial effects from the TIA years earlier.


So I guess I empathize with Sweet on the topic of losing your previous abilities which you had considered permanent -- second nature. I wasn't any kind of momentous artist or anything, but I could dash off a sketch or drawing once in a while, so it's a bummer I can't really do that anymore.

Certainly Sweet's comments on the healthcare situation are doubly relevant now. People are going to have to make more effort to cover themselves for events of this kind.