In Memoriam: Will Owsley

I just received a shocking bit of news from a friend. Alabama-based musician Will Owsley, power-pop singer-songwriter, engineer and producer, as well as session and touring guitarist for artists such as Amy Grant, Shania Twain, and Faith Hill, died yesterday of an apparent suicide. Very few people, especially people who read this blog, are likely to have ever heard of Owsley outside of my occasional mention of him here, but he was a fantastic musician, deserving of far more recognition than he received.

Following the one-and-only album with his first band, The Semantics (released only in Japan even though it was a Nashville-based group), he released his self-titled debut album in 1999, which is one of my favorites. If you haven't checked this album out I urge you to do so, especially if you like anything remotely of a power-pop bent, from The Beatles all the way through to recent practitioners of the genre like The Click Five.

Here's an excellent article I found on the web, written by someone who was clearly a devoted fan. I must admit I wasn't very fond of his last album, 2004's "The Hard Way" ... but now I'll forever wonder what he might have recorded next....

Stephen Gately: 1976 - 2009

Rarely do I ever audibly gasp and/or feel my heart jump when I find out about the death of a celebrity, even one that I really like. But this one came as a particular shock -- our sweet little Stephen Gately, gone before his 34th birthday? I never follow the gossip on actors, singers, etc., so I don't know how much he indulged in alcohol (do we ever really know?), but he was the last of the group that I would ever have expected to see get cut down so abruptly in the prime of his life.

I've always dearly loved Stephen Gately ever since I first happened upon Boyzone. Not only was he the most adorable one of the group, but there was that gorgeous voice of his -- nothing less than a silky smooth slice of heaven. You can only imagine how thrilled I was when I found out that he was releasing his very own solo album ... I snapped it up as soon as I could (which took a bit longer back then, since I wasn't nearly as CD-cyber-shopping-savvy as I am now) and loved it. Maybe Ronan had the more successful solo album -- a fact I've always been a bit resentful of -- but to me, "New Beginning" was leaps and bounds above.

Strictly by measure of his contribution to music, Gately's death may not merit the same notoriety as other recent celebrity passings -- Boyzone were quite big in Ireland and the UK but hardly noticed beyond their shores, and his lone solo album sold decently but not nearly as well as the debut that launched bandmate Keating's ongoing solo career -- but it was something he did, unrelated to music, that made him remarkable ... something that nowadays is nothing special, but ten years ago was more of a statement than even Gately himself was probably aware.

It was ten years ago that Stephen Gately made history by becoming the first teen-pop singer to come out as gay while at the height of his career; boybands in general were more popular than ever, and so were Boyzone in particular. But perhaps most remarkable of all was how it disproved the homophobic way of thinking that until then permeated the music industry; Gately's teenage female fans screamed their devotion to him as loudly as they ever had, instead of abandoning him and the band as the record executives feared would happen. (His coming-out happened after the group's final studio album was released, but it wasn't a contributing factor to their breakup.) So to many people, myself included, Gately was as much a symbol as a singer.

No, he wasn't the first celebrity ever to come out, but he was the first one that targeted the key demographic of teenagers, arguably the biggest spenders of entertainment dollars. But the impact went beyond the business side of things. It's hard to tell for certain how directly Gately's coming-out inspired other young-ish celebrities to follow suit (Mark Feehily and Lance Bass, amongst others), but it's a pretty safe bet that it did. And then there were the countless young male boyband fans ... they'd always been in the audience, but until Stephen Gately came along, the objects of their affections had always been imaginary or hypothetical. Young gay male pop music fans finally had a voice -- and in this case it was a voice as sweet as honey.

One has to remember that the Internet, while firmly in place, wasn't quite as much a part of social interaction in 1999 as it is now, so gay and lesbian youth felt more isolated back then, even though their voices were quickly becoming heard. It's tragically ironic that Gately's death would occur on the eve of National Coming Out Day. At the risk of getting all socio-political on this blog, I'm a firm believer in the fact that no one should have to feel like any less of a person for being who they are (especially when all it amounts to is loving people of the same gender), nor should people who think otherwise get away with perpetuating such self-loathing. Stephen Gately played a pivotal role in helping to change that, even if he was reluctant to or unaware of doing so.

Lots of love, Steo ... I'll miss you.

Remember The Time

I didn't plan on letting ten days go by before saying something about Michael Jackson on this blog, but there are a couple of reasons it ended up that way. Mostly it was the deluge of news reports and fan tributes that absolutely flooded cyberspace, so what I could have said would have already been said by many others, plus it would have been delivered with more heartfelt sincerity and profundity, by people who felt a deeper connection with the artist and his music. You see, as much as I love music in general, and pop music in particular, I was never a huge MJ fan, probably mostly because the biggest peak in his career happened years before I really began to appreciate music. (Back in the early '80s I was much more a fan of "Star Wars" and Legos than I was of vinyl records and cassettes.)

But one doesn't have to be a fan of Michael Jackson to recognize what a powerful influence he had on the world of music, especially in two key ways. First of all, he broke the color barrier on radio and the then-fledgling MTV. Black artists may have ruled disco, but were seldom taken seriously by the mainstream until he came along -- and just like that, the color of the artist didn't seem to matter anymore. Secondly, Michael Jackson was the first artist whose look was as much a part of his gestalt as his sound, and pop music has, for better or worse, focused on the artist's image as much as his or her music ever since. It may have been the fact that his rise to fame coincided with the music video revolution, and it may have had something to do with the magnitude of a star that MJ was -- and being the keen self-marketer that he was, it's a safe bet that MJ was aware of it all and used it to his advantage.

And let's not forget his music, of course. There's a very short list of artists who have had such a phenomenal impact on music that it has made the artist and their sound instantly identifiable, and essentially influenced all who have followed. All you have to do is look at how many subsequent artists cite him as an influence. As much as the '50s were ruled by Elvis Presley, and the '60s belonged to The Beatles, Michael Jackson personified the '80s. Think about it: when you hear the name Michael Jackson, a distinct style of music flashes before your ears, and when you hear one of his songs, you just know that it's Michael Jackson. And, just like The Beatles and Elvis, you simply can't turn the radio dial very far until you hear a song that has something in it, big or small, that Michael Jackson did first.

It might sound like hyperbole, but it's the truth ... none of us can even vaguely imagine what pop music would be like today if MJ had never come along. And, sadly, times have changed such that there will never be an artist again of such all-encompassing superstardom. The music business, and pop culture in general, are vastly different beasts now than they were then; thanks to the Internet and globalization (and perhaps to our resulting shorter attention spans), there are ten times as many artists of twice as many genres coming at us from ten different directions.

I've never been a big fan of The Beatles, but my music library simply would not be complete, nor would I be able to call myself a fan of popular music, without some of their recordings (their two double-disc greatest hits albums, in this case). The same goes for Michael Jackson ... I think I had his "Thriller" album on cassette many years ago, and though I don't own it or any of his other studio albums now, I consider "The Essential Michael Jackson" a ... well, essential ... part of my collection. Maybe I didn't love you, MJ, but I'll miss you all the same.

George Carlin: 1937 - 2008

I of course knew he wasn't going to be around forever, but it still came as a shock to find out that it happened so soon. My favorite comedian, the great George Carlin, has died of heart failure.




















Here's a Carlin bit called "A Modern Man", one of my all-time favorites, from his last album, "Life Is Worth Losing". If this doesn't show what a master wordsmith he was, nothing will.

I'll miss the hell out of ya, George. Now you'll be able to watch "the freak show" from one of the best seats in the house.