Death Takes No Holiday

I'm back after a few weeks away from Blogville. Geez, what's happened? McDonna gets divorced, gas prices plummet, and of course, death gets greedy.

Pictured above, Alton Ellis, called "the godfather of rocksteady", died at the age of 70. His best known track is "Dance Crasher", but my favorite by him is "I'm Still In Love With You". Just go check his stuff out, you should've already done so. Catch-up time for you.

Although silenced for a number of years now, one of the greatest voices in the world, Levi Stubbs, has also gone. Even though I have been thoroughly sick of Motown for quite some time, I'll be the first to admit that you would be hard pressed to find a more soulful, emotional voice than Levi's.

Edie Adams was both sultry & lucky - to be Ernie Kovacs' wife. And now that she's dead too, they can rekindle their flame, although I think it was out cold long before Ernie kicked off decades ago. Edie used to have a Muriel Cigar TV ad in which she purred, Marilyn-style, "why don't you pick one up & smoke it sometime?" Uh-huh, baby.

Jack Narz died too, and he hosted lotsa game shows in the 50s & early 60s. The one that instantly comes to mind for me is "Seven Keys", where you acquired keys for winning rounds of questions, and the key could open the door to a new car.

So that's death for you.

Now what's this I hear about Neil Young FINALLY releasing his Archives VOL 1 in January. The first 10-disc set is retailling at $450??!!?? I thought he was a man of the people? Did he CONVENIENTLY forget that no one has a job? I am not happy with him. I guess everyone's a pig at some point, even "everymen".

A word about my recent trip to Hawaii: it was fabby-poo, I spent less money than I expected, and I didn't want to leave (another Mai-Tai, mahalo!). I had the ol' iPod peppered with all kindsa Hawaiian & island-type music, but what shuffled to the top most of the time?

The Fall. Perfect.