Tag Archives | Dead Rock Stars

ODB, STDs, and Government Cheese

By on November 14, 2011 in News 7

ODBDid “the Government” kill the Ol’ Dirty Bastard?  From RockStarMartyr.net:

Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s slurring, incoherent “singin’ rappin’” rhymes hit the mic so hard, you have to wipe oozing spittle off your face after listening to his deranged tracks. He spoke the tough truth from the mean streets, delving into the dark crevices of ghetto crackhouses and bitch’s booties, coming out the other side covered in doodoo brown and flashing a steel grille grin all the while. Some believe that the big “G” government” took notice and were highly pissed about it.

Raised in the housing projects of Brooklyn, ODB broke out with the “world domination” scheme masterminded by his cousins, RZA and GZA, whose hip hop exploits are succinctly described by Dirty’s biographer, Jaime Lowe:

“The foundation of Wu-Tang is in its lore, its urban mythology, its appropriation of kung fu, chess, Buddhism, Islam, bible studies, cartoons, comics, Staten Island; anything they came across was woven into an intricate web of culture and identification and a constructed community that bordered on cult.… Read the rest

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Robert Johnson Opened the Gates of Hell for Elvis Presley

By on August 17, 2011 in News 7
© Brandt Hardin

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin

Robert Johnson supposedly made a deal with the Devil to obtain his blues licks and Elvis Presley was the televised Son of God. How appropriate that they share a death day at RockStarMartyr.net:

Even after the abolition of slavery, life in the Mississippi cotton fields was brief, brutal, and as boring as an aging preacher’s Sunday sermon. No wonder fieldworkers sought the fleeting comforts of cheap moonshine and loose women at the Saturday night juke joints.

Robert Johnson could mix it up with the best of them, but he was never one for hard work. His bizarre, spider-like fingers weren’t intended for cotton-pickin’ and penny-pinchin’. They were made for crawling across guitar necks, whiskey bottles, and the legs of middle-aged sugar mamas. If Johnson was going to suffer hell to make a dollar, it would be as a wayfaring musician. His road was full of adventure and ecstasy, but ended in hell just the same.… Read the rest

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Bob Marley Died Dreaming of Babylon on Fire

By on May 13, 2011 in News 0
© Brandt Hardin

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin

Fire up a spliff and bow to this man at RockStarMartyr.net:

Bob Marley shined a ray of hope upon the starved and battered denizens of the Third World with his soothing reggae rhythms. The singer rose up from the brutal Jamaican ghetto to emerge on the international music scene as a charismatic voice of conscience, holding up the bitter legacy of European colonialism to the shame of well-fed “baldheads.” He sang an apocalyptic song of freedom, tapping Rasta prophecies that promised the return of Africans to their homeland, “Zion,” and the total destruction of decadent Western society — Babylon. As the tumultuous 1970s drew to a close, Marley and his fellow Rastafari were certain the end was nigh.

Bob Marley’s world ended in a Miami hospital bed thirty years ago this week on May 11, 1981, while the First World’s marketing gurus captured and framed his image in ganja green, blood red, and merchandising gold.… Read the rest

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How Kurt Cobain And Layne Staley Attained Intravenous Enlightenment

By on April 6, 2011 in News 6

Two of the most influential musicians of the 90s simply faded away on opioid dreams.  From RockStarMartyr.net:

KurtIt is an interesting coincidence that the respective coroners’ reports for Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley place both of their deaths on April 5, and that they were born within six months of each other just before the Summer of Love—although these two Seattle icons made dramatically different exits.  Kurt went out with a bang in 1994, while Layne slowly faded away, finally disappearing completely in 2002.

They were suffering saints in my formative, pube-sprouting years, and I enshrined their brooding images in my superstar iconography. Inspired by their rock n’ roll fantasies, I steeled my will against the Christ to whom eunuchs bow, tasted 31 flavors of fucked up, and my grandmother even gave me an old maroon cardigan to match my long blond hair. The result was the long-awaited loss of my virginity to an avid Hole fan and constant harassment from rednecks at school.

… Read the rest

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Did Christianity Kill Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams?

By on April 1, 2011 in News 12

250px-Marvin_Gaye_in_1973White magic failed to save the one, and black magic was of no avail to the other. From RockStarMartyr.net:

In private moments otherwise shrouded in darkness, Christians feel the presence of God looming over their shoulders. The Omniscient Eye bears witness to every messy indiscretion behind closed doors and probes dirty thoughts like a supernatural panty-raider.

In view of their popular images, Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams seem as different as sly grins and slit wrists, but the camera overlooks their common heritage. They were both children of a church-dwelling God, and His relentless imposition of conscience drove them to the very edge of sanity  — where they promptly jumped into the Abyss.

Both met their Maker on April 1st. No foolin’.

Marvin Gay Jr. grew up under the thumb of the “Hebrew Pentecostal” House of God denomination. His father, Marvin Gay Sr., was an ambitious preacher in the Washington DC congregation, and swung an iron fist on any defiant soul living under his roof.… Read the rest

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Eazy E: A Straight G Killed By HIV

By on March 26, 2011 in News 17
Dutch memorial by LJvanT

Dutch mural by LJvanT. Photo: Ljvant (CC)

Joseph Allen remembers the troubling legacy of this misogynist mack-daddy, and reviews the disturbing HIV statistics as they presently stand.  From RockStarMartyr.net:

To hear him tell it on his records, Eazy E was a ghetto-blasting geyser spewing bullets and semen in every direction. If Eazy wanted to screw in a lightbulb, he could just wrap his dick around it and let the world turn around his balls. And if some studio-gangsta criticized this method, E would pop a cap in that ass.

Eazy E succumbed to AIDS on March 26, 1995 at the age of 31, but his legacy lives on through brutal, bitch-slapping gangsta rap and various microscopic organisms. He was a set-claiming hero for alienated black youth, a jheri-curled Casanova for rap-lovin’ starfuckers, a total embarrassment to African American moral authorities, and for the suburban white community—the musical equivalent of a PCP-laced joint smoked in a highschool bathroom stall.… Read the rest

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March 5: The Deathday of Patsy Cline

By on March 5, 2011 in News 4

Some called her a feminist, other’s called her a slut. Joseph Allen calls her a saint at RockStarMartyr.net:

215px-Patsy_Cline-WSM_Studios_2

In a world of condescending good ole boys, Patsy Cline refused to be anybody’s pretty little anything. Bold, forceful, and hellishly wild, she could go from cute to ugly in the flick of a cow’s tail. She assured the fellas around her, “I know how to whack below the belt.” She had to.

Growing up in the hardscrabble hills of Virginia, then kicking her way into the boys’ club at the Grand Ole Opry, there was no time for “pretty please.” Patsy came into the national spotlight at the dawn of the Women’s Lib movement, but she wouldn’t be caught dead burning bras. Her ambition propelled her far beyond domestic constraints, and besides, busting balls was more her style, anyway. She was throwing knees and elbows until her plane crashed in 1963.

Patsy grew up among the plain folk of the Shenandoah Valley, the real salt of the earth, or what a gentleman might call filthy white trash. Her mother Hilda met her husband-to-be at a Sunday school picnic when she was only thirteen years-old…

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February 19: The Death Day of Bon Scott

By on February 19, 2011 in News 22

Bon ScottJoseph Allen raises a toast to Australia’s finest young man at RockStarMartyr.net:

A man’s testes are many things to many people. They are objects of affection to be delicately caressed, vulnerable targets for an enemy’s swift boot, or bulging fashion statements in designer briefs. These throbbing organs generate a man’s ultimate purpose — they fuel aggression, propel the pleasure principle, and bestow a masculine pronoun. If his aim is true, future generations will revere his potent orbs as the very wellspring of Life itself.

AC/DC’s greatest frontman, Bon Scott, was extremely proud of his balls. He wore high-waisted skinny jeans to accentuate their curvature, and described them to his wife-to-be as “two hard-boiled eggs and a sausage.” He even wrote a song about them, tastefully entitled, “Big Balls.”

That’s just how Australians are, mate. It isn’t hard to find a bourbon-swilling brawler ready to prove his pair in the land down under.… Read the rest

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February 4: The Death Day Of Karen Carpenter

By on February 4, 2011 in News 6

Joseph Allen writes about Karen’s hunger for affection at RockStarMartyr.net:

2-2 KC Superstar still

From Todd Haynes' "Superstar" (1987)

I’ve been listening to The Carpenters for three days straight. Does that make me a pansy? Of course not. These are sentimental love songs from a woman to a man—well, from Karen to me—and that’s miles from the pink-zone. Karen’s motherly voice pours suburban melancholy into my open wounds. I dare any road-hardened man to sit by himself—with a fifth of whiskey and a loaded gun—and listen to “Solitaire” as many times as I have. You’ll never make it out alive.

Karen Carpenter’s biography is as heart-wrenching as her wistful tenor. Her musical virtuosity was matched only by her willingness to be a victim to her controlling family, her conniving husband, and ultimately, to her own maniacal vanity, for which she starved herself to death. Randy Schmidt’s new book, Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, weaves first-hand accounts of Karen’s futile quest to become a grown woman, which ended in her childhood home on February 4, 1983, at age 32.… Read the rest

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February 3: The Death Day Of Buddy Holly

By on February 3, 2011 in News 8

Buddy_HollyJoseph Allen writes about “the Buddy Holly Curse” on RockStarMartyr.net:

Anything cool you ever did, Buddy Holly did first. Those trend-lemming black specs? Buddy wore those when glasses were for nerds. Your hip, four-piece rock band? Buddy set that standard, son. Radical race-mixing? Buddy played with black musicians and married a Latina before such associations yielded multiculti cred—back when it got you bludgeoned by mongrels. Those teenage girls shaking hips by the jukebox? Buddy got the first slice of Miss American Pie, and by all accounts, she was home-grown cherry. And your tragic demise in the passenger seat of a hexed death-machine? Buddy beat you to it, dude. He’ll be worshipped forever, and you’ll be another statistic.

Like a sacrificial life-force, rock n’ roll was in Buddy Holly’s blood. His voice won over crowds from kindergarten on. As a teen in 1955, Buddy marveled at Elvis’ rockabilly performances, eventually opening for the King later that year.… Read the rest

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