After leaving KNRK, Cooley briefly worked in Phoenix at KEDJ/KEXX, but she had since returned to the Portland area. She died at the home of her father and stepmother while in the hot tub. Partly in response to the wild and perhaps distasteful speculation into the nature of her death—which at this time has not been determined beyond an unfortunate accident—Cooley's family has prepared the following statement:

We lost Jaime in a tragic accidental drowning on Feb 4th. It is our wishes to have a private service for the family, followed by a public memorial Friday, Feb 10th at Lola’s Room (1332 West Burnside Street, Portland, OR) from 5-8. We are also requesting that donations in her name be made to the Pacific Pug Rescue:

http://www.pacificpugrescue.org/
P.O. Box 820032
Portland, OR 97282-1032
503-704-3587
pugs@pacificpugrescue.org

This was one of her favorites:

Bad news! Pitchfork pulled the plug today on its baby brother site Altered Zones after just 16 months. The site compiled submissions of from 14 different blogs, and was known for publishing the fringe stuff you don't always see on Pitchfork: hypnagogic pop, noise, avant garde, etc. While the site got a lot of shit for essentially just taking the efforts of influential bloggers and putting a Pitchfork stamp on them, the writing was often exceptional, and the content stands as a singular document of the last 16 months of experimental music.

So what will happen to all the bloggers affected? Most of them will continue to operate their own websites and labels, but it's really anyone's guess whether or not they'll survive their sudden loss of audience. There is at least one thing we can look forward to though: the eventual launch of AZ editors Ric Leichtung and Emilie Friedlander's new music and culture website Ad Hoc.

Click on the jump to view AZ's final sign-off.

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Conrad Schnitzler died of stomach cancer on August 4th. Before his passing, he mailed strands of his hair to be buried at various locations throughout the planet via the Global Living Project.

Japanese musician/actor/philanthropist Akira "Joe" Yamanaka passed away Sunday at the age of 64 due to lung cancer. Joe is well-known for his "tough guy" roles in several Japanese and American action flicks, but he will perhaps be best remembered for his tenure as the lead singer of muscly acid-rock sensation The Flower Travellin' Band and (strangely enough) the post-Marley incarnation of The Wailers.

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According to the BBC, 27-year-old singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead in her North London home. Police are so far saying that her death is unexplained, though her heavy drinking past has been well publicized. She was booed off the stage at a concert last month in Serbia because of her drunken performance, but had also recently completed an alcohol rehabilitation course. More later.

Consider this your weekend reading assignment: The New Yorker's "The unlikely survival of Gil Scott-Heron" article from 2010.

When I first began visiting Scott-Heron, he would leave the room at intervals and go into his bathroom. The next time I went to his apartment, he went into his kitchen and a stream of smoke drifted out. One day, I turned around, and he had his crack pipe to his lips, and after that he didn’t bother to leave the room anymore. Sometimes he would fall asleep in the middle of an interview, and I would excuse myself.

The Alex Wilkinson article is no longer behind the magazine's pay wall and it's a devastating piece on the final years of Scott-Heron, his reluctance to be involved in hiphop, and the demons that still haunted him.

It's absolutely devastating to report, but Gil Scott-Heron has passed away. The highly influential (just ask Kanye West) poet and singer lived a difficult life with plenty of missteps along the way, but he made an absolutely remarkable comeback in 2010 with I'm New Here, which was without a doubt my favorite recording of last year. He was 62 years old.

LISTEN:

Gil Scott-Heron - "I'm New Here"

Gil Scott-Heron - "Lady Day and John Coltrane"

I can't be the only one who gets this song stuck in my head for a week every year, yeah?

Over on Questionland, there's a question about Portland things that are "gone but not forgotten." I said La Luna, but my first thought was Elliott Smith.

:(

This has been your daily dose of TOTAL BUMMER. Hallett out.

British punk-rock vocalist Poly Styrene passed away Monday after a struggle with cancer. She was 53. Styrene (aka Marianne Joan Elliott-Said) was best known for her feral, clarion pipes and provocative, astute lyrics with the band X-Ray Spex.

Chunklet's Henry Owings conducted an interview with Styrene in 1996, which he republished on his site today. Here's an excerpt:

Do you believe that punk is still a viable movement?
Yes, but it needs to evolve from self imposed negative nihilism to positive thinking. It could also do with a spiritual injection.

RIP, Poly Styrene, a true original.

Gerard Smith, bassist for indie greats TV on the Radio, has lost his battle with lung cancer. The band has issued a statement on Smith's passing at their website, and canceled five dates of their upcoming tour.

We are very sad to announce the death of our beloved friend and bandmate, Gerard Smith, following a courageous fight against lung cancer. Gerard passed away the morning of April 20th, 2011. We will miss him terribly.

Anyone who has spent an extended period of time driving across the country in a tour van understands its importance to one's humanity whilst on the road. The van acts as a closet, dressing room, bedroom, play pen, even a kitchen designed for making ONLY peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches! it takes on all of the grounding guises of home, while also magically propelling you to a multitude of glorious places our country has to offer (The Grand Canyon! The Grand Tetons! The Grandest of Truck Stop Gift Shops!)

And no matter how many false alarms experienced in remote locations, or how many times it sputters to a start, there is nothing that can truly prepare a band for that moment when it finally goes...

So friends, send your condolences to Jared Mees and the Grown Children, for they lost their beloved Bus Van Sant on this last tour back from SXSW, just 80 miles outside of Boise. Cause of death: engine failure. Luckily, friends Finn Riggins and World's Greatest Ghost were close behind and scooped up the stranded and forlorn, shortly after they packed all of their gear into the back of a unspeakably sterile... U-Haul. Oh, the horror!

Here is a short video commemorating the converted shuttle bus; may its yellow paint forever coat the walls of our hearts and minds.

You can read more about this on the band's blog.

(via Smoke Signals PDX)

There's a hole in my West Coast soul this morning with the untimely passing of rapper Nate Dogg on Tuesday at the age of 41, after a prolonged illness. The Long Beach native and cousin of Snoop Dog made his name in the early 90's as a collaborator and contributor in the Long Beach scene, most famously singing on Warren G's iconic "Regulate." In 1991, he founded rap group 213 with Snoop and was an integral part of the Death Row Records crew after signing in 1993, lending his signature voice to albums like Dr. Dre's The Chronic.

A four-time Grammy nominee, Nate Dogg more recently worked on tracks like Ludacris' "Area Codes" and Eminem's "Shake That." Perhaps not as widely celebrated as his peers, Nate Dogg's smooth, soulful voice and pioneering sound still resonate today. Below is a video displaying Nate Dogg's amazing vocal chops and instantly recognizable laid back style. He will be missed.

• Arik Roper

For a good part of the 2000s, you could go into a record store and pick up Arthur Magazine, the free bi-monthly magazine that served as a catalyst for the blossoming "New Weird America" scene, spotlighting folks like Six Organs of Admittance and Sunburned Hand of the Man before they became under-the-counter culture kingpins. Then there was blues legend T-Model Ford's advice column. And recipes that artists like Greg Cartwright (Oblivians, Reigning Sound) have been cooking in the kitchen. The running commentary by album reviewers C & D was one of the funniest, nerdiest ways I've ever seen record reviews written (they were dead-on with almost everything they said).

But it wasn't just the music that made Arthur so great. At a time when the United States was ruled under the slack-jawed power of George W. Bush, Arthur printed some of the the most insightful and provoking political commentary from the minds of folks like Douglas Rushkoff. Additionally, co-publisher and editor Jay Babcock conducted a heated, interrogating interview with Godsmack singer Sully over his stance on the war and selling Godsmack's music for military recruitment ads. The past few years have been tough for the magazine and Babcock, who was forced to buy out departing co-founder Laris Kreslins' half of the magazine in 2007. He then had to rebuild the financial stability of the magazine to get it printed again (which happened), until he finally decided put the print magazine on hiatus and focus his efforts exclusively online. While online, it continued to generate some terrific articles from the solid stable of contributors (who by this point were doing it gratis, for the love of the Arthur itself.) Arthur curated ArthurFest and other inner-stellar music events, and continued to release their sought-after, impeccable compilations. But it still wasn't enough. This morning, I learned that Babcock has exhausted his efforts on Arthur, who released the brief following statement to his readers and fans:

After years of service, Arthur departed the material plane today.

He died as he lived—free, high and a-dreaming of love, ‘neath vultures’ terrible gaze.

Thank you, and love to all.

I asked Babcock some questions regarding the recent state of the magazine, which was established in 2002, and what ultimately brought it the magazine to its knees.

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A sad anniversary: On this day in 1983, a 32-year-old Karen Carpenter died of cardiac arrest due to "imbalances caused by anorexia nervosa." Here she is in action in 1971.

Sad news from the pitbull grindcore community. Basil, the pitbull singer/barker from Caninus has passed away. Basil was diagnosed with a brain tumor and put to sleep earlier this month, she was nine years old. Let us remember Basil the way she'd want us to, by listening to Caninus' "No Dogs, No Masters."

In a statement today, Warp records announced that Trish Keenan, singer for the dreamy electronic act Broadcast, has passed away. Yesterday, it was revealed that she had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Obviously, this is a really sad way to start the weekend.

"This is an untimely tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly - a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being. Rest in Peace."

Don Van Vliet—aka Captain Beefheart, who passed away Dec. 17—was an original musical visionary. (Stop yawning.) His career abounded with amazing albums, almost all of which differed in style from one another, but all of which contained that essential Beefheartian weirdness (even those blatant sellout LPs—Unconditionally Guaranteed and Bluejeans & Moonbeams—possessed little nuggets of strangeness).

A reputedly monomaniacal dictator with his band mates (he supposedly kept the Magic Band captive and barely eating in a house for eight months as they rehearsed the songs that appeared on Trout Mask Replica, which is totally believable after you listen to that record), Beefheart had a strong Dadaist bent in his lyrical and sonic approach. While his early recordings trafficked in thickly muscled R&B (The Legendary A&M Sessions EP) and desert-mirage garage rock (Safe As Milk), Beefheart and his Magic Band soon ventured into much stranger territory. No matter in which mode Beefheart directed his bizarrely talented musicians (psychedelia, blues, avant-garde songcraft, proto-post-punk angularity), Van Vliet put his own stamp of grotesque beauty over it. His lyrical skills remarkably matched his compositional outrageousness, which in turn proved to be an ideal playground on which his freakishly expressive vocals could gambol.

Captain Beefheart had so many moments of one-of-a-kind greatness over his 12 albums, it's hard to pinpoint just one representative song. Some of my favorites include "Dropout Boogie," "Abba Zaba," Kandy Korn" (especially the Mirror Man version), "Sugar n' Spikes," "Woe-is-uh-Me-Bop," "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby," "White Jam," "Clear Spot," "Sun Zoom Spark," "Bat Chain Puller," "Owed t'Alex," "Tropical Hot Dog Night," "The Floppy Boot Stomp," "Ink Mathematics," and, hell, all of Doc at the Radar Station. (There, that should get you started on your mixtape.)

Nearly all of Van Vliet's work exists in a timeless sphere, an endlessly fascinating, frayed-at-the-edges world forged from the demented whimsy of his own unfathomable rules.

Below is the first 13 minutes of a John Peel-narrated documentary. Watch the whole thing and marvel at the man's mad uniqueness (Van Vliet's, not Peel's).

Sad news, Don Van Vliet of Captain Beefheart passed away today at the age of 69.

That's Van Vliet on the cover of the band's ironic Trout Mask Replica, in a photograph that my father took. Growing up, long before I heard Van Vliet's madman growl and the band's avant arrangements, I was always struck by the image. While he stayed a musical recluse since the '80s, Van Vliet's influence can be heard in Tom Waits and countless other performers who grew up with Trout Mask Replica on their turntables.

This being a music blog, it seems necessary to bring up the fact that John Lennon was assassinated 30 years ago. But I honestly don't have much to say about it. What can you say about Lennon that hasn't already been said? Yes, he's one of my favorite musicians, his music measurably changed my life, it sucks that he was killed, yes blah blah BLAH. I thought about posting my favorite Lennon track (Beatles? solo?) and couldn't pick one ("She Said She Said"? "Isolation"?). Tthere's too much to choose from. And I don't see much point in posting something like that anyway—you know his songs, you know the ones you like, you're probably gonna spend part of today listening to 'em.

SOOO, gonna do something a little different. Here, instead of one of the magical finished moments from his long catalog, is the isolated bass track from "Helter Skelter," one of the few Beatles songs on which Lennon played bass.

This comes from the Dangerous Minds blog, which has been posting a few of these deconstructions—isolated tracks taken from the master tapes we know and love—and they're a revelation. (The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" post is also astonishing.) Anyway, here's John Lennon playing bass on "Helter Skelter." It's raw. It's a fucking mess. It sounds like shit. It might be the most rock 'n' roll thing you'll hear all day. I think that's how Lennon would like us to remember him. Goodbye, John. We miss you.

HT to DD for bringing this to my attention.

"All I have is an empty hole in my life, like an amputated limb"

That's the quote of Vern Crawford, father of Kipp Crawford. A respected local musician around town, the younger Crawford was killed on November 4, 2009 while riding home from work on his bicycle. It's believed he was assaulted, robbed, then left alone on the pavement of N. Willamette and N. Haven Ave around 2:30am. Following the robbery he was hit by a pair of cars, both of which were driven by impaired drivers well over the legal drinking limit. After hitting Crawford, both cars fled the scene.

Yesterday one of the drivers, Felisa Larae Washington, plead guilty to a DUI and was sentenced to 15 days in a Washington jail, probation for three years, a $1000 fine, and alcohol treatment if necessary. That. Is. All.

If you can stomach it, read the entire Oregonian story here. It will break your fucking heart, especially this quote from his mother Jean.

"Some actions may not be provable, but there is no denying her part in the tragic results of her drunken behavior," Crawford said. "... What am I to think of human beings now? What should I think about laws? About justice? About personal responsibility and citizenship in our society?"

Honestly, don't read the article. It will ruin your day, it will make you cry, and it will make you lose faith in any semblance of a justice system. Instead, chose to remember Crawford from his music in Celilo or Thanks Kipp. In remembrance of his passing, local musician Em Brownlowe (Swallows, The Happening) recorded this song for him.

LISTEN:

Em Brownlowe - "Thanks, Kipp"