"Broken Box" with Queens Of The Stone Age. Shneider and Johannes both performed on the album Lullabies To Paralyze and the following tour. The duo also appear on The Desert Sessions 7&8).

Eleven's "Reach Out," the closest to a radio hit the band achieved. You may recognize it from Beavis & Butt-Head.

Shneider's genre-defying "Who's In Control," for Catwoman.

A memorial fund in Shneider's name has been set up to help cover her medical costs. Shneider was 52.

Rock musician Natasha Shneider dies of cancer [Reuters]
Natasha Shneider Memorial Fund [Official Site]
We love you, Natasha! Rest In Peace [MySpace]
Eleven - Reach Out [YouTube]
Queens Of The Stone Age - Broken Box (Eurockéennes 2005) [YouTube]

I knew the routine by heart. He'd start with the guitars, and he'd have the guitars play, and then he'd maybe have them change something, and he'd have the guitars play [again]. And when he was satisfied that maybe he had something going, he would bring the pianos in.

So now it was the guitars and the pianos playing. That didn't work, so it was back to the guitars and the pianos sat out. Then he got something else going with the guitars and then he added the pianos. When he got past that point, it was bring in the basses. And so they played. And if that didn't work, back to the guitars. So this was a continuous ... and so it was adding always to that. And the horns. And finally, the last thing to be added was the drums.

Phil knew what he was looking for and could communicate this. I think the biggest part I played was to serve as his sounding board. He trusted me, that was the thing. Phil wanted everything mono but he'd keep turning the volume up in the control room. So, what I did was record the same thing on two of the [Ampex machine's] three tracks just to reinforce the sound, and then I would erase one of those and replace it with the voice.

Larry Levine: "Wall Of Sound" Engineer [All About Jazz]
Working With Phil Spector [CNN]
Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High [YouTube]
[Photo copyright Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES.COM]

Arnold sold over 85 million records over his seven decades of appearances on the country charts, and by chart historian Joel Whitburn's count, is the biggest star in the chart's history, well ahead of George Jones and Johnny Cash. Arnold's smooth stylngs were perfectly timed with the genre's move out of a rural aesthetic and into the "Nashville Sound," loaded with lush strings and sensitive ballads that contrasted with the nasal hard-livin' tales of Hank Williams and the like. Arnold was a popular performer during Johnny Carson's Tonight reign, and once filled in as host. When the tide changed in Nashville, Arnold made for himself an extended career in Las Vegas, filling casino theaters through the '90s. Arnold was known as one Nashville's most wealthy residents, yet he was also one of the town's most likable and down to earth celebrities, accessible and seen enjoying lunch daily in local restaurants until his most recent illness.

It's easy to admire his career's success and longevity, even if the style of country he performed has become less appreciated since its heyday. Arnold didn't really consider himself a country artist, and his thirty-plus hits on the pop chart are a testament to his crossover appeal. Even if Arnold wasn't much of a country artist in retrospect, he was certainly a easy-to-like smooth operator, as seen on this undated television performance of his signature hit "Make The World Go Away" :

Country Music Hall of Fame Member Eddy Arnold Dies at Age 89 [CMT.com]

''Breakers'' perform rather than engage in social dancing. Their routines are a series of spins and athletic maneuvers. Whirling on their hands, backs, shoulders and heads, they progress from one move to the next - the windmill, the float, the hand glide.

All of this is done on the floor and requires great balance, flexibility and an innate knowledge of elementary physics. If a dancer's hand, his fulcrum, is not in the right position to support his whirling body, he collapses on the hardwood, a tumbling knot of arms and legs.

Often, these acrobatics are augmented by pantomime, which to the uninitiated can make break dancing appear to be a version of musical charades.

Mr. Freeze explained: ''I begin my performance with the walking-atomic-dog routine. My partner comes up and pretends to put a chain on me and walks me forward. From there I go into the car routine. I'm on the floor in a ''W'' and he pulls me forward like someone had hold of a bumper. Then I would come up into the snake and finish it off with a Frosty Freeze dance.'' 'Man With the Most Freezes'

Between movements, he pauses, a mannequin with an expression frozen on his face. Hence his nickname. ''I'm the man with the most freezes in the whole city,'' he said.

Frost was 44 and survived by a brother and two sisters.

Frosty Freeze and Kid Smooth Break For Fame At Roxy Disco [NYT, sub. req.]
Wayne Frost, Pioneering Break Dancer, Dies at 44 [NYT]
[Tribute video via YouTube]

Though he lent his man-machine power to Kraftwerk during the band's first phase, Dinger and Neu! became infamous in the international underground rock scene of the early 1970s for their trio of albums driven by his "motorik" rhythm—Dinger called his most famous invention the "Apache beat"—and guitarist Michael Rother's mix of ethereal proto-ambiance and visceral near-punk riffs. An infamously fraught working relationship, Neu! split after 1975's two-headed masterpiece Neu! 75—Rother's half downright placid, Dinger's outright bloodthirsty at times. In the aftermath, Dinger moved on to La Dusseldorf and Rother focused on his Harmonia project, two successful, often exceptional outfits that channeled their respective interests in rhythm and texture.

A botched attempt at a reunion in the '80s aside, Dinger and Rother had failed to reconcile by the time Neu!'s catalog was reissued to much fanfare in the 21st-century; in recent installment of The Wire magazine's Invisible Jukebox feature, Rother spoke somewhat wistfully, if realistically, about the limited possibilities for a Neu! reunion; fans holding out hope will now have to suffice with their initial, near-flawless^* trilogy. Dinger was 61. [Billboard]

^*Noting the lingering debate over side two of Neu! 2.

Upon leaving the JBC, Mikey Dread ventured into recording and scored with a number of releases such as Weatherman Skanking in combination with Ray I, Barber Saloon, Love the Dread, as well as albums such as Dread at the Control, Evolutionary Rockers and World War III. Over time he attracted the attention of British punk rockers, The Clash, who invited him to produce some of their music, the most famous of which is their single Bankrobber, and contributed to several songs on their 1980 album, Sandinista. Mikey Dread also toured with The Clash across Britain, wider Europe and the US.

Always a draw on the international reggae touring circuit during the rise of dancehall, Dread spent much of last decade performing and repackaging his out-of-print material on Dread At The Controls, the label he formed following a move to the U.S.; he diagnosed with a tumor in the summer of 2007, shortly before the birth of his son, as this Jamaica Observer article notes. Dread was 54.

Mikey Dread, Gone From The Control [Jamaica Observer via Daily Swarm]

Rock critics continue to debate the power of the brief Band Of Gypsys period vis a vis the albums Hendrix recorded with the Experience, but of course the official recorded evidence fueling the debate is scant almost 40 years after the band stopped gigging, just a classic live album and a string of post-BOG records like Cry Of Love forever left in various stages of completeness by Hendrix's death in the fall of 1970. The next two decades found Miles running through a string of solo and live albums in collaboration with post-Hendrix players like Carlos Santana, before he scored a slightly ignoble and completely unexpected pop cultural breakthrough in 1986 thanks to his voice being used for a certain group of clay raisins with a love of old Motown tunes. More recent years found Miles hitting the studio as a sideman on all-star albums alongside rock legends like Cream's Jack Bruce and hooking up with his former bandmate Cox for a slightly redundant record of revamped Band Of Gypsys tunes. Miles was 60; Billboard reports that the cause of death has yet to be released to the press. [Billboard]

Larry Norman's brother and frequent musical partner, Charles, distributed a press release yesterday that ran through the highlights of Larry's career (of which there were many): among them were his 1969 album Upon This Rock, considered the first Christian rock record, and 1972's Only Visiting This Planet, the title of which will likely be the lede for a number of obituaries in print and online.

Norman's Wikipedia page is nearly apocryphal in nature, a testament to the nature of his stardom. Yes, he definitely opened for the Doors, the Who and Hendrix, and was an influence on the Pixies' Frank Black. And he might have been consulted by Paul McCartney... who can say? That it's even plausible, in the midst of his Beatles heyday, for McCartney to have known the name of some California singer-songwriter deeply into Jesus is evidence of how legendary Norman is in Christian circles. However—and follow me here for a soapboxy second—if someone had been this influential to a more popular genre of music (say, Lou Reed), they'd be lionized with an extensively reissued catalog, allowed to put out whatever their whims brought forth, coasting on whatever brilliant moment flickered once in the past. Instead, Norman's obituary contained a thanks for "prayer and finance" in the past and a mention of likely future financial difficulties for his survivors. To be frank, that news is bullshit of the highest order.

If you found yourself curious about Norman's music, good luck finding some to listen to. The iTunes Store features a remix album and a few scattered appearances. Amazon has a number of out-of-print titles for sale used at somewhat exorbitant prices. Thankfully, the Arena Rock Recording Company is releasing a collection of Norman's music later this year, as well as an album of new material with Black and Isaac Brock, but how the Christian music business has treated Norman isn't much of a surprise for anyone who's ever tried to hear any of the seminal work of Christian rock's pioneers. (The press release mentions that Norman's music was banned from most Christian retailers due to his bold stance against racism.)

Daniel Amos, the Seventy Sevens, Lifesavers Underground: try to find music by any of the bands that paved the way for there even to be an alternative to mainstream Christian music, and you're going to have a hard time finding it anywhere, or hear the artists who made it perform outside of one-off shows in depressingly small venues. If you're Shaun Ryder, you can grab a bunch of ringers and you've got the Happy Mondays and an easy paycheck for a reunion show; if you were Larry Norman, you had to struggle financially for decades while bootleggers and resellers reaped whatever profit might be found in your recordings. There's more money being used to market faith through music than ever, and the major labels are pulling in the profits through their Christian divisions. It's time to give something back.

Rest in peace, Larry Norman. Your music inspired, challenged and amazed, both in its artistry and content. Let's hope someone inside the industry that owes everything to you gets a clue and/or a conscience and gives your successors slightly better treatment.

Larry Norman [Official site]

A Canadian native, Peterson first sat at the stool as a child, where a fast-track apprenticeship led to wowing dancers around the provinces as he hit puberty, before a trip to the U.S. in the late '40s fixed his star among American jazz audiences. And among American jazz musicians: a not-even-partial list of those Peterson played with included boldfaced names in the guidebooks like Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Getz, while admiring accolades flowed from dozens for whom Peterson never manned the 88. Famed as the the leader of his own trios and quartets as the century passed its midway point, as well as a deft soloist with a bandstand-assured style but an ear for changing pianistic trends, a 1993 stroke that came more than 50 years into his career slowed his roll but did not stop him, until his health problems this year forced him to halt his relaxed post-stroke performance and recording schedule entirely. Peterson was 82 and survived by his wife and daughter.

Jazz Pianist Oscar Peterson Died At 82 [Billboard]

Though he's most famous, or infamous depending on where you get your history from, for a working relationship with his wife Tina that lasted for nearly two decades, producing rock and R&B classics that no serious fan should need inventoried, Turner's career stretched back before the birth of rock and roll, and he was known for his ferocious guitar playing as both a sideman and leader—as well as for concurrent gigs as a songwriter, producer, and eagle-eared talent groomer for the blues market—well before his career took off in earnest in the '60s. But while People uses the gentler euphamism "tempestuous" to describe Ike's relationship with Tina, and while it's tempting to let his historical achievements speak louder than his post-breakup rep, as the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame at least partly decided when he was inducted in 1991, we also shouldn't shy away from the fact that Turner was a mean prick who eventually did own up to regularly abusing his own wife, which makes him another in a long line of musicians where it's oh so easy to hate the player even as you admire their contibutions to pop history.

Ike Turner Dead At 76 [People]

L.A. County Fire responded to a 911 call at the Mondrian Hotel, located on trendy Sunset Strip in Hollywood. They arrived to his sixth floor hotel room to find him dead in bed.

And....that's all the details that anyone seems to have so far. (The handful of hip-hop sites currently reporting on the rapper's death seem to be working off of TMZ's story, but hey, at least someone was ready with the Wikipedia edit.) This is especially sad considering that Pimp and Bun B were currently riding an elder statesmen high thanks to their well-recieved 2007 comeback album Underground Kingz, a peak in a storied career (1996's Ridin' Dirty is a stone classic of Texan gangsta) that also had its share of setbacks, not the least of which being the fact that Pimp C recently spent nearly four years locked up on an assault charge. We'll be sure to update when more details become available.

UPDATE: The Fader is reporting that UGK's publicist has confirmed the rapper's death and that "a formal statement will be released later this afternoon."

Pimp C Found Dead In Hollywood Hotel Room [TMZ]

Blabbermouth is reporting Kevin DuBrow, the suspender-wearing lead singer of Quiet Riot, was found dead at his home in Las Vegas over the weekend. Quiet Riot was the first metal band to have its debut album hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts when Metal Health—featuring a cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize," which was a staple of old-school MTV—knocked the Police's Synchronicity out of the top spot in 1983. The band was still releasing albums and touring, and they played a set at the Rocklahoma festival over the summer. DuBrow was 52.

Remembering Kevin DuBrow [Bring Back Glam]
Confirmed: QUIET RIOT Singer KEVIN DUBROW Dead At 52 [Blabbermouth]

"We can say with absolute certainty that he was not doing anything illegal. . . . We don't want his memory to be tainted in the least," the band members' posting [on the band's Web site] said...

He loved Dr. Seuss books and Tim Burton films and was so fastidious about his health that he was a vegetarian, [Calvert's stepmother] said.

He married about a year ago. His wife is a schoolteacher, his stepmother said.

"He was a very good and kind young man, and right now there aren't any answers," she said.

Which is a hell of a thing to read right before going to bed after getting home from a Thanksgiving with the family. (Call your parents, everyone.) The band and authorities are waiting on the autopsy. Calvert was 25.

Guitarist Found Dead Before Show In D.C. [Washington Post]

As the star of The Porter Wagoner Show for over two decades starting in 1960, Wagoner was both a hitmaker in his own right and a groomer of younger singers, most notably Dolly Parton, whom he brought onto the show in 1967 and recorded over a dozen hit duets during the next seven years. You can get a sense of the image Wagoner projected both live and on record not only by how many times his CMT obituary repeats the words "solemn" and serious," but also how often they mention him "clowning" on stage. This purse-lipped seriousness and hammy showmanship—dry fatalism cut with sly wit—is embodied by the drama and ridiculousness of one of my favorite album covers, from Wagoner's 1967 The Cold Hard Facts Of Life. (You can see a larger version here.) Wagoner was 80.

Country Music Hall Of Fame Member Porter Wagoner Dies [CMT]

Formed in 1992 after Hahn's previous band Cringer had finished, J Church's music was classic pop-punk with a tart, knowing Anglophilic streak. Their triple seven-inch My Favorite Place—J. Church were defiantly of an era when band released triple seven-inches—came with a fold-out sleeve paying homage to Brit acts ranging from Icons of Filth to Bis to Trio (who aren't British but whatever). This probably played some part in the band getting a little mainstream press in the UK, while they were strictly Punk Planet material in the States.

But if J Church had the unmistakable stamp of a thousand Gilman St. shows, and Hahn "was near completion on a book about the history of anarchist punk bands" (his politics were often lurking in the band's packaging and titles), J Church's music had a confessional streak, cut with just enough irony, that had little to do with the skate parks or Ramones-cloning or crusty hardcore that obsessed most of his peers. He ran the eclectic Honey Bear Records, which put out a small but well-curated discography including the tense synth-hardcore of V.S.S.'s Nervous Circuits, a personal favorite that best reflects Hahn's not-just-pop-punk tastes.

Bouncing from Hawaii to San Francisco over the course of his musical life—J Church was named for a San Francisco train line, in the grand tradtion of punk bands named after regional rail routes or intersections—Hahn finally settled in Austin. There he wrote, worked at a local video shop, continued to play in J Church, and tried to manage his illness. Though they left behind a warehouse full of records—a telling quote from the Austin American-Statesman: "As Hahn was quoted in 1995, 'A lot of people write trying to keep track of all the records we put out. I can't even remember.' (The band was only three years old at the time.)"—J Church's witty, heart-on-sleeve music was sadly underappreciated in their time, and continues to be.

R.I.P. Lance Hahn [Austin Music Source]
J Church [MySpace]

Born in 1932, Zawinul came to America in the late '50s as a wide-eyed student with an intense passion for jazz, a 26-year-old pianist who was already quite accomplished as both player and writer thanks to early training in Europe, and began gigging with various jazz bands and singers throughout the early '60s, notably an extended stint with Cannoball Adderly, in whose group he developed not only his omnivorous compositional style but also his affinity for electric keyboard instruments, the sound of which, along with the synthesizer in later decades, and coupled with reworked traditional musics from around the world, would become his trademark. His turn towards electricity would earn him his jazz stripes by the end of the decade, when his watery, slightly eerie, but also placid style became stamped on the Miles Davis band for the Dark Magus' turn away from acoustic jazz, best heard on the epochal "In A Silent Way," a Zawinul composition which married strange electric tonalities with a rich, traditionalist's sense of melody and harmony—re-edited into a kind of cut-up, laid back funk-rock, of course, by Davis and Teo Macero.

In 1970, Zawinul formed Weather Report with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, still thought by many fans and critics to be among the preeminent bands in the still contested post-electric era in jazz thanks to their insane chops, and Zawinul spent nearly 15 years applying the group's ever-more-ornate jazz-rock structures and his own orchestral synthesizers to a variety of "world music" sounds, from Afro-Latin to Asian, and their crossover-amenable sound achieved a level of pop success (for a jazz group) that was long saught by Miles' noisier and more truculent units. After Weather Report closed in the mid-'80s, he formed the Zawinul Syndicate, continuing to ply his fusioneer's trade into the 21st century, whatever the jazz fashion of the day. Zawinul was 75.

Jazz Legend Joe Zawinul Dies At 75 [Associated Press]

By now the first 17 years of the CBGB story is so ingrained in pop music's unconscious that it probably only needs to be thumbnailed. Folkie Kristal opened the club, formerly a Hell's Angels dive, in 1973 on the Bowery as a way of avoiding nosy neighborhood associations, and a few years thereafter its freedom from noise ordinances allowed it become a home for wayward punk rockers, hosting all the names that have since become inseparable from its legend, and slam-dancing Kristal's beloved Country, Bluegrass, and Blues right out the door for good. The non-feigned seediness, the pretentious unpretentiousness, and the permanently (and infamously, to the point of rock cliche) filthy crapper helped it to become the prototypical punk rock club, and once the original crop of '70s punk and new wave bands had ascended to mainstream stardom or fizzled into nothing, it became the place where teenage hooligans sped up and thugged-out their rock minimalism until it became boneheaded New York hardcore.

For many of us who were born just as punk rock was first kicking off at places like CBGB, our first pilgrimage to the club sometime in the '90s turned out to be a bit of a nostalgia-fueled let down; maybe it was because we were watching some terrible bunch of since-forgotten alt-rock nobodies rather than the Voidoids tearing through Robert Quine's skronk-jazz leads, H.R. from the Bad Brains treating the front rows like a living jungle gym, or shielding our face at a late '80s hardcore matinee where you had to keep an eye on your teeth. All of which we had only read about, of course. The club continued on throughout the '90s and into the 21st century, an institution whose position as an epicenter of new trends had largely eroded after 1990. But by then the club was renowned around the world as the official, trademarked, copyrighted Birthplace Of Punk, the punk club that had turned into a tourist destination, a reputation that was cemented once the industry devoted to chronicling punk rock history took off in the '90s. The club wisely (if contentiously) branched into merchandising, including a CBGB store that managed to outlive the club, the kind of punk rock irony that writes itself.

The modern rock audience taking CB's for granted may have helped contribute to the club closing its doors for good in 2006, after Kristal was unexpectedly (or so he professed) hit by a tab for unpaid rent that ran into the tens of thousands, a huge amount for a punk club, even a famous one, to come up with on the fly, but perhaps a typical amount for a Bowery that had been creepingly gentrified to the point where Kristal's scummy hole, a place he once picked because no one cared what you did or who you did it with, was real estate that could be put to better use than as a place where teenagers loitered and rock bands made a racket. Maybe an Olive Garden. Unable to come up with the money, deadlocked in his legal wranglings with his landlord, and having failed to get the city to declare the club a historic landmark—a fact that's hard to argue, unless you hate rock music and all it stands for—Kristal finally claimed CBGB would be reborn elsewhere, perhaps even outside of New York, but those plans obviously came to an end yesterday. Kristal was 75, more than triple the age of the average kid at CBGB in the 21st century, having outlived many of the members of the bands who played there over the years, and he is survived by his two children and his legacy, shepherding a music that many still believed helped saved rock from expiring entirely in the dog days of the 1970s.

CBGB Founder Hilly Kristal Dies At 75 [CMJ]