The Ongoing History of New Music, episode 1003: 2023 in Memoriam
A year ago, I began what will unfortunately be a regular series of these programs from now on. It’s an annual look back on the musicians we lost in the previous year.
Rock star deaths have been on our mind probably since late 2015 when Scott Weiland of The Stone Temple Pilots died, followed a few weeks later by Lemmy of Motorhead. Then the floodgates opened in 2016: Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Glenn Frey of The Eagles, both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake from Emerson Lake and Palmer, and George Michael, just to name a few.
And since then, it seems we hear about a rock star death every couple of weeks. Tom Petty, Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Gregg Allman, Walter Becker of Steely Dan, Chuck Mosley of Faith No More, Andy Fletcher of Depeche Mode, Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones. It’s been a lot to take in.
Some of these deaths have been of natural causes, disease, and old age. Others have involved drugs, alcohol, years of hard living, misadventure, and suicide/
Here’s the hard truth: Rock has been around for about seventy years and many of the people who have provided us with some of the greatest songs of all time are reaching the end of their natural lives.
No one is getting any younger. And over the next decade, we’re going to lose some of the personalities who have always been there for us over the last 30, 40, 50, or even 60 years.
With that grim reality in mind, we need to continue with an annual retrospective of those whom we’ve lost in the last 12 months. They may be gone, but we need to recognize and celebrate their contributions to the world of music. This is 2023 in memoriam.
Songs heard on this show:
- Smash Mouth, Walking on the Sun (Steve Harwell)
- Urge Overkill, Girl You’ll be a Woman Soon (Blackie Onassis)
- The Associates, Take Me to the Girl (Alan Rankine)
- Luscious Jackson, Naked Eye (Vivian Trimble)
- Television, Marquee Moon (Tom Verlaine)
- Pulp, Do You Remember the First Time? (Steve Mackey)
- Screaming Trees, Nearly Lost You (Van Connor)
- The Smiths, This Charming Man (Andy Rourke)
- Sinead O’Connor, I Am Stretched on Your Grave
There are many more names mentioned in the show. There’s a playlist from Eric Wilhite, too.
The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on the following stations:
- 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7pm
- Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9pm
- Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6pm.
- 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11pm
- FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8pm
- Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 11pm
- Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8am and 8pm
- The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 8am and 9pm
- The Fox/Vancouver – Sunday at 11pm
- Surge 105/Halifax – Sunday at 7pm
- WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9pm
- We’re still looking for more affiliates in Calgary, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon, Windsor, Montreal, Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Fredericton, and St John’s and anywhere else with a transmitter. If you’re in any of those markets and you want the show, lemme know and I’ll see what I can do.
