Lets all drink to the death of a clown...
Sad news -- Kim Fowley passed away. Now he was old, and had been fighting cancer for about three years but he was still doing his show on the Underground Garage and making appearances and such as well as running a producers workshop down in LA until the end. The guy who brought us "They're Coming to Take US Away" and managed the Runaways and supposedly invented the holding up lighters at concerts crap while working with the Plastic Ono Band was an interesting guy. I don't think he really meant any harm, and he did produce some very interesting stuff.
Of course, at his drug addled worst, he was a raging, self-centered asshole, I suppose. He also appears to have been a nice guy who when sober admitted to having been a less than stellar human being. He made peace with people he'd hurt -- and in fairness, had hurt him back -- got married a couple of months ago to his much beloved girlfriend, and was funny as hell as well as a perceptive commentator on Steven Van Zandt's station on Sirrius XM. He didn't take himself too seriously, and didn't take rock and roll too seriously, while at the same time taking the position that it did change lives and culture in ways that no one expected.
It changed mine. And, he made me laugh...and think. Laughing and wincing and shaking my head simultaneously.
