Weebl

Wonder if the whole concept of the "near death album" that we've seen with Blackstar and You Want It Darker will become a more common thing in the future as a whole generation of popular musicians near the end of their lives? If so, I can't wait to hear what Rick Astley's attempt will sound like... No dissing Rick Not dissing Rick at all actually - just can't imagine him ever making that type of album. Anyway, he looks like a picture of health and I would not be at all surprised if he sees 90, if he can look that good at 50.

Wonder if the whole concept of the "near death album" that we've seen with Blackstar and You Want It Darker will become a more common thing in the future as a whole generation of popular musicians near the end of their lives? If so, I can't wait to hear what Rick Astley's attempt will sound like...

Robert Fripp ain't going anywhere yet, except touring the world with King Crimson as he is currently doing... If you're looking for older musicians, the members of German krautrock group Can are pretty old: Irmin Schmidt for 1937, Holger Czukay for 1938 and Jaki Liebezeit for 1939, although none of them would be household names by any stretch of the imagination. Also Grace Slick should be on for 1939. And Robert Wyatt for 1945. And Jon Anderson for 1944. And countless others. (And, Andy Summers of The Police for 1942).

I think we all knew that. Bernie Sanders is like an American Jeremy Corbyn. I doubt he would have been able to gather more support than Hillary.

I was going to include him on my own 2017 list for sure - but he's departed even faster than I'd expected. His new album will now be critically re-evaluated as if another Blackstar...

Trump will shake things up a bit in the world. He was democratically elected, after all - why are all these lefty liberals getting their panties in a twist over it? They should stop being so fucking childish and accept the result.

A local case. The area around the graveyard is ridiculously unsafe to just let an eight year old out to play unsupervised - old gravestones, a hill with little barriers, a building site, the train line, a busy road and a motorway within 2 minutes walk. Sounds like it's the mother that's at fault then!

Wetton has broken his Twitter silence again - he said that he has just spent another week in hospital battling sepsis. Can anyone on here shed any light on sepsis? How lethal is it, particularly when combined with cancer? I'd imagine the outlook is pretty poor with both of those conditions, but I'm not a doctor.

A sad story, but without doubt an ironic one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-37895437 A small boy meets his death by gravestone...

Well at least on Tuesday things will change - for the past year or so it's been nothing but Trump this, Trump that - Trump and Brexit have been the two things that the media just won't shut up about for the past year and it's getting kind of tedious now. At least after the election all the campaigning and associated political nonsense will be over with - and a whole bunch of new political nonsense will take its place... I personally think more likely than not Hillary will win, but he has more than an outside chance.

Aye, the most audience demand he's known in a few years, eh? He was actually touring the world as recently as last year, but he was first diagnosed with cancer about a year and a half ago. Maybe someone can pick him for the AVALDP (giving a hint here). What's the AVALDP?

Getting slightly off topic here, but I always felt that the "alternative rock" movement of the '90s was a crafty way of pushing white men to the fringes of popular culture and making women, blacks and gays the mainstream. Rock music is the main musical genre that has been dominated by white men, and while in the '70s rock and pop were the cultural mainstream, by the '00s poppy pop by women and gays, along with hip-hop and R 'n' B by black performers, was the cultural mainstream. By creating the label "alternative rock" firstly as an alternative to the "dinosaur" rock bands from the '70s and earlier, which then metamorphises into just "alternative", most rock music made by new bands after about 1990 became "alternative" or "indie", and this had been thoroughly cemented by the year 2000. You could of course argue that black people invented rock music as bands like the Stones and the Beatles took inspiration from Chuck Berry and the likes, but from the '60s onwards rock was a predominantly white, male genre of music. To illustrate my point: excluding heavy metal, what new rock band that released its first album after about the year 2000 is NOT alternative rock, indie, or garage rock/post-punk revival?

She certainly got that right - in pop music today there is little room for straight, white men. Women, blacks and gays dominate the music that appears in the charts.

Wetton has stopped tweeting again - he has been completely silent since Sunday. And the last tweet was about being in hospital. Not sure if that means he's back in hospital or what, no information. If he survives the year, the man is an absolute must for 2017.

Clive Derby-Lewis, pro-apartheid South African politician who assisted in the assassination of anti-apartheid activist Chris Hani, dead at 80: http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/clive-derby-lewis-dies-2086594

I've made this observation before: the committee when choosing the final list tends to favour more "important" people - if not household names, then certainly those with some level of significance that can be demonstrated in some sort of way - over more obscure, yet still notable, figures.

She's likely to live for another 40 years. Quite possible. I'm not an expert on HIV/AIDS but what I do understand is that it is not the death sentence that it used to be. There were lots of high-profile deaths from HIV in the 1980s but things have changed a lot since then.

Here's more... Richard Wilson Glynis Johns Wesley Pipes (African-American porn actor with lung cancer, possibly terminal) Lara Roxx (Canadian porn actress living with HIV since 2004) Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg Melissa Bell (Singer and mother of Alexandra Burke; kidney problems) Daisy Berkowitz [scott Putesky] (Heavy metal musician with cancer) Judy Blume (writer) James Dresnok (North Korean defector) Malcolm Young (AC/DC musician with dementia) Lupita Tovar (Mexican actress)

I'm sure Habermas' theories/ideas are complicated stuff indeed. Yes, most certainly Tobin is scum, but he's not the only scummy character I've listed there... Parsons is an obvious DL candidate, and is clearly well regarded amongst British media/broadcasting types, highly obitable. Cantlie might be dead, he might be living. Wikipedia, famously reliable, classes him as a "living person" whereas he should really be in "possibly living people".

Anyway, here's my DeathList flexi-list as it currently stands, from which I am going to construct my 2017 list on or around New Year's Day: 35 names living off my 2016 list in my signature as of 30 Oct 2016: Zsa Zsa Gabor Olivia de Haviland Vera Lynn Billy Graham Jacque Fresco Raymond Smullyan Javier Perez de Cuellar Prince Philip Fidel Castro Kirk Douglas Richard Adams Helmut Kohl Herman Wouk Fats Domino Dick Van Dyke Joni Mitchell Gudrun Ure Benedict XVI Pierre Cardin Stan Lee Mikhail Gorbachev Jean-Marie Le Pen Zhou Youguang Chuck Berry Robert Mugabe Hosni Mubarak Henry Kissinger Jimmy Carter George Bush Sr. Bob Dole Desmond Morris I. M. Pei Doris Day John Wetton Bruce Forsyth Extra names from 2016 DL: Liz Smith Peter Sallis Peter Carrington Glen Campbell John Noakes Prunella Scales Other names to add: Timothy Dudley-Smith Leonard Cohen Paul Reveley (Logie Baird assistant) Zoe ???? (Eastenders actress with cancer) Norman Tebbit Denis Mack Smith King Michael of Romania Berry Gordy E O Wilson Eugene Wright (jazz bassist) Cecil Taylor Jean Raspail Richard Lynn Jurgen Habermas Alan Greenspan Ennio Morricone Noam Chomsky Ross Perot Walter Mondale Micheline Bernardini (French bikini woman) Norman Lloyd (actor) Adam West Abdul Halim (King of Malaysia) Clive Derby-Lewis David Rockefeller Hugh Hefner Charles Aznavour Rolf Harris Josef Fritzl Ron Jeremy Gary Glitter Dennis Nilsen Anders Breivik Ian Watkins Roberta McCain Billy Connolly Manuel Noriega Desmond Tutu Burt Bacharach Sidney Poitier Buzz Aldrin Egidius Braun (German football guy) Richard Sherman (Disney songwriter) Robbie Coltrane Brian Blessed Joe Jackson (Michael Jackson father not Joe Jackson the musician) Louis Farrakhan Udo Walendy (Holocaust denier) Sean Connery William Shatner The Queen Charles Manson Peter Tobin Ian Brady Burt Reynolds Nicholas Parsons Jerry Lee Lewis Tony Bennett Bill Wyman Leslie Ash Clint Eastwood Jacques Chirac Roman Polanski Phil Spector Kurt Westergaard John Cantlie Bernie Maddoff David Attenborough Arvo Part Rupert Murdoch Roger Moore Mel Brooks Who am I missing? Are these good/bad choices? Obviously I can't include all of them, but I will just include who I feel is the best at the time...

I'm not saying Wikipedia is perfect, far from it. But I would say one thing for sure - if someone doesn't have a Wikipedia article about them, it's a safe bet that they are not that big a name, given that Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of biographies of people. That being said, I would not be at all surprised if a Wikipedia article is created about him following his death using those online news references as sources when they give his obituaries when he dies. You can use Wikipedia - for all its flaws - as a very rough rule of thumb as to a person's level of importance. I used to edit Wikipedia years ago but got tired with it. Waste of time.

If Emma Morano is still alive at the end of the year (basically two months from now), she will have overtaken Misao Okawa to be the 5th verified living person of all time. Pretty special. But it hasn't yet happened and in my view people aged 110+ can die suddenly at any time without warning!

Certainly interesting stuff, but he can't be that big a name at all - he doesn't even have a Wikipedia article as far as I can see. Aye, but regarding a qualifying obit it's the kind of thing the BBC would run as a minor item and back up in their entertainment news online - certainly worth a punt and deffo Deathrace points because a significant trade journal in that area would cite his death. Assuming, that is, the man's mortal at all. Probably is, because they would like to give credit to one of their own, no matter how minor a role he played in the beginnings of television.

Certainly interesting stuff, but he can't be that big a name at all - he doesn't even have a Wikipedia article as far as I can see.

John Wetton (Asia / King Crimson / UK musician) for sure, as I've already mentioned in several other threads. Very much doubt he'll see 2018 - he's currently battling metastatic cancer, and has a history of heart disease, diabetes and alcoholism and was recently hospitalized for sepsis from which he nearly died. The man is really not in good health at all. There are plenty other good picks, but that's one that stands out for me above the rest. Oh and take Paul Gascoigne off the list.