by Julian Ring, special to ClevelandClassical.com
Editors’s note: this think piece was written for the Oberlin course “Practicing the Art of Musical Criticism,” team-taught by Daniel Hathaway, Donald Rosenberg, and Mike Telin.
Prince Rogers Nelson, one of the most influential artists of the 1980s and ‘90s, died April 21 at his studio in Minneapolis. When the news broke, friends and fans were in disbelief. The pop icon was only 57, seemingly healthy, and prolific as ever. In the hours and days after his passing was confirmed, an intense wave of grief rocked the music world. Suddenly an idiosyncratic, genderbending black superstar was gone. There had never been, and would probably never be, another like him.
Paul Lorin Kantner, founder of the band Jefferson Airplane, died January 28 in San Francisco. A handful of major publications, including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Billboard, ran obituaries about him. Friends and colleagues, among them the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Kantner’s bandmate Grace Slick, mourned him. His musical ideas were zany; his guitar playing was masterful and oft-imitated. Jefferson Airplane defined the San Francisco sound and the psychedelic rock era. [Read more…]