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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Not Destined To Make Old Bones

I was watching the VH1 rockDoc about The Who and heard it put that way about Keith Moon. Of course there are a lot of people who've listed musicians who've "lived fast and died hard" or however it's put. And of course there are more than those I've included in mine. But these are the creative souls whose art impacted my sense of my culture the most. They had a raw passion for living Life. I don't mean to glorify their behavior, just to note, to list, in no particular order, those brilliant fires that went out "early":

Keith Moon
Jim Morrison
Jimi Hendrix
Janis Joplin
Sid Vicious
Kurt Cobain
Shannon Hoon
John Bonham
Nick Drake
Bradley Nowell
Layne Staley
Gram Parsons

It's musicians like these and the fans thereof that make me want to do what I do.

Peace.

4 comments:

cozmicharlie said...

Daniel,
I think it is "live fast and die young" but either way I would add Jerry Garcia to that list. He was certainly a "brilliant fire" in both music and art that left us too early.

Daniel Edlen said...

Yeah, that's another way to put it.

I thought about Jerry, as he definitely fits into the "passionate musician with a drug problem" category. I'm trying to remember why I didn't include him... I think just because he'd gotten past 50.

Thank you muchly for the comment!

Jeff said...

I really like that Shannon Hoon is on your list. I think he is forgotten about way too much. It's unfortunate that Blind Melon has to be a band that was stuck with the "One Hit Wonder" label, because they had so much more depth than those bands. Their debut was one of the best albums of the 90s. "Change" in my oppinion is one of the greatest songs lyrically in rock history. Good list!

Daniel Edlen said...

Thanks, Jeff!

I was introduced to Blind Melon's body of work by my wife when we were first dating. Brilliant stuff.