Pete Quaife Dead at 66

Pete Quaife would be the first to admit he wasn't the greatest bass player in the world. When I interviewed him 20 years ago on the occasion of the Kinks' induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame he joked that he became famous for playing the same two notes over and over on You Really Got Me, but he was a vital part of a band that survived the '60s with its legacy virtually untainted (so help me, I love those Preservation albums from the '70s). He just seemed a perfect fit between the sibling rivalry of Ray and Dave Davies, deftly handling the rapid shift from teen rage to middle age wistfulness, only to bow out when the pressures of the musical money-go-round overwhelmed the pleasure of playing those two notes and providing the rhythmic anchor chain to Mick Avory's drums on Ray's visions of England's vanished golden age.

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Pete passed away in Denmark on Thursday after a decade of struggling with kidney disease. You can read a CBC obit here, or just do what I'm going to do and put on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and quietly mourn the loss of a well respected man.

The song my buddy Rob Kleiner wrote/produced with Cee Lo Green for the Twilight soundtrack is being released as a single.

I realize I'm biased, but What Part of Forever is simply gorgeous.

DX is gonna be so sad.

Pete Quaife played the hell out of the bass on Something Else and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, though.

Cor, you'll appreciate this.

My upcoming writing lineup for Hilobrow:

Iceberg Slim
Buck Owens
Nicholas Roeg
Diana Rigg
Junior Kimbrough

I especially like the jump from Buck Owens to Nic Roeg.

Danger Mouse's summer playlist: [link]

Devo frontman: "I smoked angel dust with Michael Jackson and Andy Warhol"

“The only time in my life I smoked angel dust was by accident and it was on a double date with Andy Warhol and Michael Jackson,” laughs Mothersbaugh. “We all went to Studio 54 and people were passing drugs all over the place.

“Michael Jackson had just finished doing the movie The Wiz and still looked like Michael Jackson back then – he had an Afro and he was still black. He passed me a joint and I thought, well OK, we don’t have marijuana in Ohio so I’ll try it.”

Minutes later Mothersbaugh found himself on the dancefloor as pillars of light were swirling around “like weedcutters” knocking people over and cutting them up. He turned to his date in horror, only to hear her say: “You didn’t smoke any of that angel dust did you?”

A friend of mine smoked a joint with Johny Thunders (about half a year before Thunders died). The joint turned out to be laced with PCP.

I guess the moral is: never smoke a joint with someone famous.

Last night's "History Detectives" on PBS had a theremin segment.

Yeah, it was pretty good too!