Saturday, December 31, 2011

JIM MOTORHEAD SHERWOOD R.I.P.

One of the seminal figures of 20th Century music, as far as I'm concerned, in one of the seminal bands. Even if I don't listen to them as much as I used to, or their music doesn't lend itself to repeated listens as some other music may, The Mother of Invention, in which Sherwood played a crucial role even before his sax innovations, had an impact on me and many others like no other band of the 1960s and beyond.

They influenced numerous streams of musical genres that followed, and absorbed more musical streams of music that came before them than any other band of what may be in retrospect rock'n'roll's golden age, the 1960s.

Anyway, that's the way I feel right now in the first hour of the last day of 2011. Somehow my hearing of Sherwood's recent passing and registering it here seems like a totally appropriate way to end a very bizarre year full of unexpected events and happenings.

Here's some great footage from a 1968 appearance on the BBC, Sherwood is in the brown suede jacket with the leather fringe first playing baritone sax then tambourine.



{And here's the obit from Rolling Stone.]

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