Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Song of the Day: 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52s


Keith Strickland of the B-52s remembered his fallen bandmate on Sunday, on what would have been the guitarist's 64th birthday. I feel so fortunate to have seen the original line-up in concert back in 1983 when they were promoting "Whammy!" ... here's what Keith wrote:
Today is Ricky's birthday. He has now been deceased as long as he was alive, and that's an unfathomable kind of hourglass for me to contemplate. We met when we were both sixteen, we quickly became the closest of friends, and shared the next sixteen years of our lives together. I took this photo of Ricky in 1980 when we were recording Wild Planet, at Compass Point Studios in Nassau... Forever young.
There was also a nice remembrance of Ricky on the AIDS Memorial, although it omits that sister Cindy Wilson was not informed of her brother's dire situation until it was too late, a decision that has haunted her since. I remember Ricky's sudden death being called cancer back in '85 when I was a freshman in college, a practice that was not uncommon at the time.


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