There is the silver screen, also, and those referenced below had used that path, among many others. But they also had both silver tongues and fingers. Which can mean that more silver coins, even if just a few, are kept more handily in other people’s pockets.
Even in their death. And giving back can encompass people who are Black. We’ll start there, then spread.
So this post follows a recent theme here of remembrance.
Quincy Jones was a force in American music, across just about every genre, more behind the scenes then a lead guitarist but still prominent. He used to look much like a ’70s disco star, but also had his fingers in so much else: Austin Powers, (more than one movie, and that should be news to my server friend who is a dead ringer for Tia Carrera in Wayne’s World). The Color Purple, (loved first by just a few friends having a certain manner of life, then more broadly with its bountiful message). Bob Dylan, (ditto on that, and I refer to a phone call from Arizona by a potential protege just gained). Likewise-not-an-actor, mostly, Steven Spielberg and many others making more movies, (and ET and kid captivated me like few others, all the way through.) Then to TV, Will Smith’s Fresh Prince when it was Bel-Aire. Maybe moving heavier, The documentary The Distortion of Sound. SNL. Much sax with Bill Clinton. Stevie Wonder, (and loved both playing and singing Superstition, maybe with associate Obama making it a trio?) Even floated was the idea that he would be this country’s first minister of culture, as the US is rare amongst the nations without one. And We Are The World, think what you like of it, raised money and crops for millions of famished people. Spectacular things from a man with the commonly found name of Jones. Then …
Kris Kristofferson. He was a juggernaut in all kinds of endeavors, making him a true Renaissance Man. Those in the arts tend to have talents across its realms, but this man parlayed it further. I loved his actor turn with female leads, such as in A Star Is Born, and thus even another connection via Barbra Streisand and her very red role in The Way We Were, alongside said to be ailing Robert Redford, one of my most sentimental favorite movies. And with other juggernauts that included Jennings in the country-based, go-hit-the-road super-group The Highmen, and at long last drew my attention to them, a firefighter, boxer, decorated U.S. pilot, lover jointly of Janis Joplin and her often same style of tunes, and even a Rhodes scholar. More than a lyricist.
John Amos. This is not Amos and Andy. I used to watch his patriarch pulling-it-all-together Good Times comedic but also serious TV show, often and with unusual interest, and had many thoughts. He on-screen continually celebrated the continuing matriarchal beauty of his beau, even though she now cast — how to say it, a more mature and busty and full-figured and bountiful — figure. Kudos to both of them, and other GOOD men like them, for their shared insightfulness and kindness and adaptiveness. Then there was son Jimmy, a yes caricature who dominated the set comedically, but I’ve known other young black men who embodied its very-broad generalizations by providing a grain of truth.
With that and ditto, NBA legend Mutumbo, the first NBA seven-plus footer who caught my sports fan attention and then did so much for charity and humanitarian causes, especially in his native Africa.
Then a man who has not died, but is still kicking even after celebrating a birthday that is I believe his 100th, yes another Jimmy, as in Carter. This is a former peanut farmer who rose way beyond peanuts, thinking people know.
So locally is not the only loss we have felt, although the list of such people remembered on the Agave Kitchen marquee grows longer with each passing month. And to its owner Paul, my suggestion on that note passed through to you the other night was about a possible ad on these pages, not of a eulogy to my dad on yours, although the topic(s) keep evolving, (and could be confusing.) See some of the posts below. And an addition, now, to this one.
Other people, who stuck more to just tunes, have gone to face the music, and I’m sure they will pass muster. Even St. Peter himself may have plucked with a pick, much as a pied piper, on peppered ground? (And yes, one named below was in a flick, too.)
Flea is dead. Or is he. It depends on which Flea, and which band.
Word had gotten out that the beyond par bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers had passed on. But it actually was the bass player for a related band, by the name of Judge. Where there is one Flea, there will be more than one. The Flea with local connections, who married a River Falls woman before they went goin’ to California, and who just happened to have been a supermodel, lives on. But you had to go rather deep online, at least at first, to be told of the distinction.
Other local deejays, more creative than usual in their song selections and combinations, have not been so incognito, even in death. First, there was DJ Kurt who was a staple at the Wild Badger in New Richmond, and T-shirts in his honor are still sometimes sported by the staff there, saying Rave In Paradise to honor his theme shows, then followed to the grave by DJ J Strong, the weekend fixture at Dick’s Bar and Grill for years running. Strong especially, was known for playing stuff that’s beyond the run of the mill, complete with shoutouts enticing people to dance. It just could have been that his trademark, workout caffeine was way too strong.
Then the other day I ran into someone for the first time in years, at a haunt atypical for me, and she passed this word on. “Ralfie,” as well a musician and longtime area attendee, also had died.
And oh, one of the first publishers with whom I’d had acquaintence, even if just in interviewing (basically I got that far in the process) for a straight outta college job for editing one of his quaint, across-state mini-magazines. Roy Reiman was also known to my mum, sorta. In the berg she became transplanted to upon retirement, he built-up and/or funded like half his earlier-on burgeoning “Green” town, in name and even in bird habitat, as his form of giving back while paying it and playing it forward.
Hopefully that rounds out this short list, get longer, too long, of those who have gone to that great big concert in the sky.