Thou Shall Have No Other Rock Gods Before Him | | | | "I'm only 19, but my mind is old": Prodigy, 1974 – 2017
(Ross Gilmore/Redferns/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Thou Shall Have No Other Rock Gods Before Him”
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| | rantnrave:// Black hole sun won't you come and wash away the rain of another year of staggering losses? Founding fathers of rock and roll. Way-too-young stars of K-pop and SOUNDCLOUD rap. Magnetic frontmen of hard rock. And music fans. Way too many music fans. Twenty-two pop fans killed by a bomb in MANCHESTER. Fifty-eighty country fans gunned down by a terrorist in LAS VEGAS. There are no words, except to say this final newsletter of 2017 is dedicated to the memory of every one of those fans, and to a wish for a better, safer, more peaceful 2018... In addition to those souls and the 22 artists profiled in the stories below, we bade farewell this year to John Abercrombie, David Axelrod, Daisy Berkowitz, Arthur Blythe, Charles Bradley, Paul Buckmaster, Ralph Carney, John Coates Jr., Fred Cole, Barbara Cook, Larry Coryell, James Cotton, Holger Czukay, Warrel Dane, CeDell Davis, Jonathan Demme, Fresh Kid Ice, J. Geils, Troy Gentry, Johnny Hallyday, Col. Bruce Hampton, Jon Hendricks, Pierre Henry, Allan Holdsworth, Jonghyun, Eddie Kamae, Tommy Keene, Maxx Kidd, Jo Walker-Meador, Phil Miller, Junie Morrison, Chuck Mosley, Paul O'Neill, William Onyeabor, Reggie "Combat Jack" Ossé, Pam the Funkstress, Frankie Paul, Ray Phiri, Della Reese, Maggie Roche, Roswell Rudd, Sam Shepard, Joni Sledge, Keely Smith, Rosalie Sorrels, Mel Tillis, Butch Trucks, Mike Vainio, Dave Valentin, Leon Ware, John Wetton, George Young, Jessi Zazu and Z'ev... The New York Times' Steven Kurutz on "The Avalanche of Rock 'n' Roll Death"... We remember a wider list of notable passings around the world in our MediaSET "Fell on Black Days: In Memoriam 2017." | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| He gave the music its sound and its attitude, even as he battled racism – and his own misdeeds – all the way. | | |
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 | Vulture |
| Because his career was so long, it felt like the sound of him was always around, and because his songs were written with such specificity, they felt extraordinarily personal. | | |
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 | The Seattle Times |
| That voice. It was low and smooth, rising from under a drape of curls, or a bare-throated, roof-scraping howl. It could effortlessly ride a churning, thundering wave of sound that rose and fell, but never broke. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The Linkin Park singer and rap-metal icon made rage and despair feel transcendent and comfortingly universal. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| The "town cycle" of Jimmy Webb songs - "Wichita Lineman," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Galveston" - will ensure the country star will be remembered as one of pop’s great everymen. | | |
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 | The Daily Beast |
| Prodigy roared in as half of the Infamous Mobb Deep and became a critical part of hip-hop in his era—a symbol of New York street realness and the modern black man-child who’d been hardened by the warlike conditions of the era of crack. He was the fearless street soldier who could smell your cowardice. He was also a mic killer. | | |
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 | The Bitter Southerner |
| Muscle Shoals songwriter John Paul White, Atlanta rapper Killer Mike and our editor, Chuck Reece, remember a legend of Southern music. | | |
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 | NPR |
| How did a black man with a fourth-grade education in the Jim Crow South, the child of Haitian Creole plantation workers and the grandson of a slave, sell more than 65 million records? | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| The guitarist was the soul of the seminal rock band, its leader on and off the stage. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| His time here was tragically brief but what he did with it will carry on. | | |
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| Rolling Stone |
| In his formative jazz-playing years a possibly tripping audience member approached Liebezeit and said, "You must play monotonously." Thus directed, Liebezeit ventured into radical simplicity, with such dedication he once chased Can bassist Holger Czukay around the studio with an ax, insisting that he play fewer notes. | | |
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 | The Conversation |
| Funk drummer Clyde Stubblefield created arguably the most sampled drum track in the history of popular music -- but he rarely got the credit, or the payment, he deserved. | | |
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 | Uncut |
| What do we know about Walter Becker, beyond the snark and the fragments of ancient gossip? An exacting perfectionist. A coruscating wit. A hack composer called Gus Mahler. A masterful guitarist who would usually cede responsibilities to a battalion of other guitarists. | | |
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 | Los Angeles Times |
| When thinking about Al Jarreau, one word comes insistently to mind: Smooth. | | |
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 | Afropunk |
| Geri Allen was the humblest badass you were ever going to meet, a reserved soul who never failed to catch a fire on the piano, each time you saw her rock the ivories. Her passing on June 27 from liver cancer was a shock to several generations of contemporaries - fans and players alike. | | |
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 | The Globe and Mail |
| Over the course of a robustly artistic life he would lyrically caress a country, whether rhyming "Jacques Cartier" with "right this way," or singing about a late-breaking story on the CBC. | | |
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 | City Pages |
| Everyone in the Twin Cities has a Grant Hart story, but this is the worst. | | |
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 | Billboard |
| Don Williams was called "The Gentle Giant," but the first part of his nickname may have been more appropriate than the second. | | |
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| The New Yorker |
| The Chicago-born pianist and composer will be remembered for his profound musical gifts as well as his organizational genius. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| The Motown songwriter and producer collaborated with Stevie Wonder on “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” and “My Cherie Amour,” and was a co-writer of hits for the Marvin Gaye-Kim Weston duet and the Isley Brothers. | | |
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 | Creative Loafing: Tampa Bay |
| I was too young to ever see The Beatles live, I never got the chance to see The Kinks in their heyday and The Small Faces had broken up as I was just learning to walk on my own as an infant. What I did have though was The Smithereens. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| That hair! That voice! Cassidy was loved by millions but soon grew sick of the manufactured world of fame. His career mapped out a path for the teen idols who followed. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers |
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