• They're already dressed for their funeral.

"Steve [Bonnell] and Brian [Turner] have kind of phased themselves out over the last year or so, and it'd be weird going on with them," says Jonah Bergman, the band's bassist. "So our Home for the Horrordays show is going to be our last one."

Even though Schoolyard has been playing recently without Bonnell and Turner, the two will be rejoining the band for the December show, happening at El Corazon on December 19th. It will also be the last show for Kane Hodder, who have played many a show with Schoolyard over the years. (And they too will be performing with their original line-up, including bassist Nick Cates and guitarist Jeremy White.)

Despite the break up, Bergman and Co. probably aren't done with music. Schoolyard's music has always been about dead things coming back to life, after all. In fact, he stressed that all Schoolyard fans will want to be sure they arrive to the show on time to see the opening "special guests."

But before they look too far ahead, with or without new projects, they're concentrating on giving Schoolyard the funeral service it deserves. "This band has been the only thing that we’ve thought about, and done every day for the last 10 years and now it’s gonna be done."

RIP, Schoolyard Heroes.

Home for the Horrordays is Saturday, December 19th, at El Corazon with Schoolyard Heroes, These Arms Are Snakes, Kane Hodder, Sirens Sister, and special guests. Doors are at 7 pm, it's all ages, and tickets are available here for $15.

Elphaba was a great band, and Jared has been a proud supporter of the local all-ages music scene for many years. It was partly because of them that local label Rome Plow ever existed (and went on to release albums by the Assailant, Helms Alee, Blues and more). In an Underage column in 2006, Paysse said: "I had no intention of starting a label, but after hearing the songs Elphaba had recorded, I just couldn't stand by and let a record that brilliant go unreleased and unappreciated. So I offered to put it out."

Rome Plow has since stopped releasing records, but Paysse is bringing back the label to release a limited vinyl run of Elphaba's last record, a record that the band never got to release themselves. "Jared was particularly proud of the record and sad it was never released," says Matt.

Friends are also organizing benefit shows to help his family cover the costs of the funeral or to donate money to one of Jared's favorite charities. The first one is December 5th at the Black Lodge with Navigator vs. Navigator, Stres, and Happy Birthday Secret Weapon. The others have yet to be confirmed, but I'll definitely post details once they're worked out.

This is an incredibly sad story, and sincere condolences go out to his friends, family, and bandmates.

RIP, Jared.

Many of you have probably heard that Benny Hills, one of my dearest friends and comet door person lost his life tragically in a house fire early wed morning. His death has been a shock to many of us in the Seattle music community, he was such a joyous soul. He also played drums in the power pop bands The Knast & The Shy Ones. Everyone who came into contact with benny was touched by his kindness. He was such a loving and beautiful man, and he made everyone coming to shows @ the comet feel special and welcome. His smile illuminated the planet! I can still hear him saying "maammmma" to me. In addition to this horrible passing, Benny's roomate, Raymond- our beloved comet bartender is now homeless and virtually penniless. He also needs our support and help after having to endure this first hand.

We are holding a celebration of Benny's life @ the comet this sunday 11/22 starting at 2pm -so many bands are volunteering to play and I am a bit overwhelmed-but I am trying to cancel the night show so we can do music from 2pm -1am -

The show is a benefit for the Hills' family and for lovely precious Raymond.

so far these bands have confirmed, but there are still many that will show up I am sure, just wanted to get the word out now.............love to all of you
Really hope you can all make it
Trying to set up a fund also for people who can't make it

CHAMPAGNE CHAMPAGNE
THE ABSOLUTE MONARCHS
SHINY BEAST
TINY LIGHT
WILDILDLIFE
HOTELS
THE GREATEST HITS
BROKEN NOBLES
DJ Darryl

$10 (GIVE MORE IF YOU CAN)

Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality. ~Emily Dickinson

"Like touching all of the other guys tongues in Capitol Hill. Ha ha, Ben and I both freaked out and wiped our tongues off right after!"

Benny's memory will forever be cherished by all who knew him. Rest in peace, friend. You meant the world to all of us. Benny was featured in "Awkward Question" in September. Memorial concerts will be held this weekend at Central and Comet.

Also, from the truly touching comments on that post, a note from Ben's dad:

There will be a Mass @ St Cecilia's Catholic Church in Stanwood WA, Tuesday, November 17th @ 4PM, followed by a wake @ Sons of Norway Hall in Stanwood.

I appreciate all Ben's friends, and the support and love I'm seeing. I'm going to do my best to come down to the Comet Tavern and have a beer in Ben's memory this Saturday early afternoon. We love you all and thank you!
Greg Hills (Ben's dad)
Posted by Greg Hills on November 12, 2009 at 4:41 PM

RIP, Ben.

This is terribly sad news. RIP, Ben.

Update: From the comments:

Friends of ben are meeting up at the comet right now to remember how truly awesome of a guy ben hills was.
Posted by R.I.P. Ben on November 11, 2009 at 3:10 PM

Fuchs put on an amazing percussion display during the Juan Maclean's last date at Nectar in June. His contributions to the Juan Maclean were invaluable, and the albums he recorded with Turing Machine—especially Zwei—are crucial, too. He will be dearly missed.

Chunklet magazine's Henry Owings has written a powerful remembrance here.

The blog JG2 has a great write up about all of his musical accomplishments here.

UPDATE: According to the latest update on the JG2 blog, Chuck Biscuits is not dead. His wife has contacted the author of the post, saying Chuck is alive. Apparently the writer got bad information from a source claiming to be someone they weren't. Strange.

Flowered Up's Liam Maher just died.

Maher was the lead singer of London's early '90s answer to the acid-house baggy sound of Manchester's Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses, and rarely got much credit from the press despite a mad live reputation and being behind one of the era's most ambitious never-ending anthems.

"Weekender," nearly thirteen minutes long and released on Heavenly Records (Beth Orton, Saint Etienne, Manic Street Preachers) is what you get when the scene's earth-breaking hedonism flouts the abyss with an ever-changing epic of quintessential attitude, monstrous drugs, echoed guitars, a sort of daft earnestness, and electric currents of positivity, essentially becoming both an emblem and a tribute to the sound of the times.

Heavenly writes:

It ran through styles faster than kids escaping from a corner shop break in, sprinting from guitar-heavy mooching shuffle to stoned ambient middle to final insanity race to the end, all the while Liam railing against weekend clubbers, promoting a fatalistic 24-7 party lifestyle.

The song spawned a short film by seminal music-video director Wiz.

As well as The Twang's entire career.

Maybe now they'll be missed.

Brian Redman's memorial was held last night at Doyle's in Tacoma.

More photos after the jump...

One of Hip Hop's earliest radio allies, pioneering deejay John "Mr. Magic" Rivas died, which has been confirmed by numerous sources in and around the Rap industry. In addition to being one of the culture's gatekeepers through his position at radio station at 105.9 WHBI FM, Mr. Magic is considered to be a co-founder of The Juice Crew, the legendary 1980s outfit of Marley Marl, MC Shan Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap, Roxanne Shante, Fly Ty Williams, Biz Markle, Craig G, TJ Swan, Masta Ace and Tragedy Khadafi.

From 1983 to eternity, The Juice Crew:

Redman was a monster on the bass—Trial's reunion performances at the Vera Project this year, and then again at Burning Fight in Chicago, were two of the best live shows I have seen all year.

RIP, Brian. You will be missed.

I had the good fortune to witness Raida, who was Busta Rhymes' tour DJ and winner of the 1995 DMC World DJ Championship, perform about a half dozen times with the X-Ecutioners. They never failed to dazzle with their precise, intricate, witty, and funky routines. The amount of rehearsal time, arranging skills, and hand-eye coordination required to execute their Technics & wax compositions boggles the mind. To hell with anyone who thinks turntablists aren't musicians.

RIP, Roc Raida.

I know it's silly, Peter, Paul & Mary can be mocked as much for their children's music ("Puff The Magic Dragon") as for their pop, white-bread versions of Dylan classics ("Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "Blowin' In The Wind"). For me, though, Peter, Paul & Mary meant much more.

I was a child of baby boomers; culturally more than literally. My father was born at the end of the great depression, and my mother was a war baby. That's World War II. Even though they were born just before the massive boom of childbirth at the end of the war, most of their friends and co-workers through their lives and careers were of the generation that brought folk music to the world stage.

When growing up I used to go into our basement where my mother kept all her old records, reel-to-reel tapes and her hi-fi stereo and tape deck. I would hook them up myself (her original hi-fi was one of the traveling record players who's speakers folded in on top of the player so it could be carried to a party like a dinosaur version of the boom-box, which itself is extinct now....) stretching the speakers way out to each side of the room so i could experiment with the balance nob and listen to how her old "In Living Stereo" records were divided up between the left and right speakers.

My mother would have killed me had she known I was doing this. For her, this was akin to the rifling through parent’s drawers that all kids do when they come home from school and their parents aren't home. She didn't like for her old music to be messed with. Every album and every tape were numbered and filed using something like the Dewey system; each with it's correct place in the collection. Alphabetized and categorized. (Did I tell you she started her career as a librarian, then moved on to be a clerk for the government?)

I guess now you would say my mother had passé taste. Her music collection comes to a complete halt in the mid '60's just before my brother was born. As The Beatles started storm America, take over the airwaves and record stores, putting the folk-singers out of business, my mother stopped buying records. So her collection at times seemed frozen in amber. But her records and hi-fi system were an amazing thing to me, and through them I learned to love old folk music. I use to think it was so cool how Joan Baez and Odetta and Peter Paul & Mary could turn performances at concerts and festivals into rapturous sing-a-longs. Turning even the most stale environments into backyard "hootenanys".

When I was finally old enough that my parents thought me responsible enough to have my own little tape player, they joined the Columbia Music Club and bought a few tapes for the family to listen to on my new little stereo. The first was Peter Paul & Mary’s greatest hits collection, “10”.

Also: he is also the man doing the spoken word part in Rancid's "Junkie Man":

RIP, Jim Carroll.

Activision is responding to queries regarding the usage of Kurt Cobain's likeness in Guitar Hero 5 with the following statement "Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain's likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero® 5."

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, the two surviving members of Nirvana, have no say whatsoever in the usage of Kurt Cobain's likeness.

From Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, who mostly just don't want Cobain's ghost lip-synching along to Bon Jovi:

This is a statement regarding Nirvana, Guitar Hero and the likeness of the late Kurt Cobain.

We want people to know that we are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game. The name and likeness of Kurt Cobain are the sole property of his estate - we have no control whatsoever in that area.

While we were aware of Kurt's image being used with two Nirvana songs, we didn't know players have the ability to unlock the character. This feature allows the character to be used with any kind of song the player wants. We urge Activision to do the right thing in "re-locking" Kurt's character so that this won't continue in the future.

It's hard to watch an image of Kurt pantomiming other artists' music alongside cartoon characters. Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl

And as always, the ever eloquent Love herself:

# nor was going to and my quote on grphl stands, he financed his mothers home and his own with kurts etstae not his "own" money.about 1 hour ago from web

# activision know this aos very very bad press indeed wait til you see what MY lovely lawyer has cooked up, i never ever signed off on thisabout 1 hour ago from web

# all sorts of shit, and even then i had no intention of doing his btw we get NO money for this, travesty, Frances gets NO money for the rape.about 1 hour ago from web

Fat handed rock lummoxes Oasis have finally been put out of our misery after splitting up yesterday (Friday).

The band, responsible for one good album, one alright album and a lot of cunting misery on top of that have split up five times before due to constant squabbling between the band's chief song writer Noel and genetically 'curious' singer, Liam.

The statement was made on the band's official website. Noel said: "It's with some sadness and great relief to tell you that I quit Oasis tonight.

Best of all is the paragraph that spreads a rumor:

Earlier it was announced the band had cancelled their second gig in the space of a week because of "an altercation within the band". Rumours at the time of publication that the brothers had fallen out after a heated debate about Jacques Derrida and the death of the author with Noel subscribing to a hard line Plato/logocentric position with Liam unable to convince him of the need to consider "fookin' Roland Barthes" remain unconfirmed.

But that was all a clever lie. A ruse. A canard!

For indeed, they met en masse at Cal Anderson Park this morning—people! tons of them!— at 10am to learn the proper choreography. You HAD to be there, and know the choreography, or they wouldn't tell you where the damn thing was actually going to happen—which was in three places, dotted all over town. Occidental Park. Pike Place Market. Kerry Park! And then, suddenly, at 1:10pm...at 2:05...and at again 3:00pm...in those three places respectively...THIS happened...

People! Beating it! All over the damn place!

Astonishing.

Happy dead birthday, Michael Jackson! Happy, happy dead birthday, indeed!

(Thanks Ruby Aquino and friends for the video!)

(If I were one to entertain conspiracy theories, I'd point out that DJ AM, who, as we all know, survived a plane crash in 2008, was found dead on the same day The Final Destination opens in theaters, which is the fourth movie in a series of movies about people who survive a tragic accidents only to get stalked by and ultimately done in by death itself.)

LOS ANGELES - The Los Angeles County coroner has ruled Michael Jackson’s death a homicide, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, a finding that makes it more likely criminal charges will be filed against the doctor who was with the pop star when he died on June 25.

A key passage:

To me, living as a person day to day, it seems that people like the idea that there is still a Cows, or a Heroine Sheiks, or a Shannon Selberg (whatever that is) out there, somewhere, like a grizzly, still living in the wild. I appreciate that too, but again, it does me no good. The wild is gone. And if a grizzly survives purely by eating from garbage dumps or only in a few zoos, is it still a grizzly? I don’t think so. I know, because I tried—you have no idea...

(Cows' cover of John Barry's "Midnight Cowboy" theme is appropriate exit music for Selberg, as it's the most poignant song ever.)

photo by Autumn De Wilde

While the cause of [his] death has not been released due to pending toxicology reports, a source close to Baatin told AllHipHop.com the rapper may have died from a crack addiction or from complications related to crack cocaine use.