Grant Hart, the founding drummer who served as co-songwriter/singer for pioneering hardcore-punk trio Hüsker Dü, a band that laced tuneful melody with blistering power to help define the ’80s indie scene, died overnight at the age of 56, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. He had been diagnosed with cancer.
Peter Dachert, better known as Peter Principle, the bassist for the San Francisco-born, Brussels-based experimental post-punk act Tuxedomoon, died earlier this week while the group was working on new music and preparing to tour Europe, the band announced on its site.
Mick Bund, who served as bassist for indie-pop favorites Felt in the late ’80s, played with Sarah Cracknell in her pre-Saint Etienne group Prime Time and went on to front Mexico 70 in the ’90s, died suddenly last week, according to a statement from Felt mastermind Lawrence.
Chris Cornell, whose unmistakable multi-octave singing voice branded Seattle’s Soundgarden as one of the true grunge-era standouts, died last night in Detroit following a concert there by the reunited band, the Associated Press reported. Police are investigating Cornell’s death as a possible suicide. He was 52.
Lionel Augustus Martin, the Jamaican-born saxophone player better known as Saxa, who played with ska legends Prince Buster and Desmond Dekker before helping lead the second wave with The Beat, died on Wednesday at the age of 87, his former band announced.
The day after announcing the death of his longtime bandmate, The Chameleons’ frontman Mark Burgess wrote a long, heartfelt and quite honest reflection on John Lever, calling the late drummer “one of the warmest, funniest, most generous, huge-hearted men I’ve ever known.”
John Lever, the longmtime drummer for Manchester post-punk favorites The Chameleons and spin-off groups The Sun and the Moon and ChameleonsVox, died this morning following “a short period of illness,” his longtime musical collaborator Mark Burgess announced on Facebook.
Sad news today for fans of Bill Paxton, the actor known for iconic mid-’80s supporting roles in “Weird Science” and “Aliens” who went on to star in blockbusters like “Twister” and “Apollo 13.” The 61-year-old died Saturday due to complications from surgery, his family announced today.
On Feb. 20, 2009, Slicing Up Eyeballs launched onto the web not with a bang but a whimper, debuting with a simple 91-word declaration and a headline cribbed from an R.E.M. song that Google Analytics now tells me was not viewed by a single person that day.
Steve Strange, the Blitz Kid, frontman of synthpop group Visage — best known for its Top 10 hit “Fade to Grey” — and key figure in the New Romantic movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s died today of heart failure at a hospital in Egypt, the reunited Visage announced via Facebook. He was 55.
Ian Allen, a key member of Bay Area culture-jammers Negativland from 1981 to 1987, died on Saturday from what the band is calling “unexpected complications and infections” following a heart-valve replacement surgery at Stanford Hospital in California, according to an announcement this morning on the group’s Facebook page.
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