She could have been so much more. RIP, Amy Winehouse, 1983 - 2011

[blue2blue]

 

Rob Grill, Dan Peek, and Amy Winehouse all in the same two week period. Better stop fussing about gear and get to recording whatever you want to leave.

Good advice.

 

What was the Carlos Castenada/Don Juan thing? Death is always right behind you, right over your shoulder?

 

For me, I just picture a grand piano hanging by a frayed block and tackle cable dangling above me... wherever I go.

 

Work like there's no tomorrow -- and take pleasure in the work.

 

 

RIP, Mr Grill and Mr Peek.

 

Both the Grassroots and America gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure.

 

I saw the Grassroots when I was still in high school, opening up for then-breaking Creedance Clearwater (at Disneyland, no less). I thought I was too cool for such a pop band -- but I was wrong. They put on a rockin' set and I had to admit they had some great little songs.

 

I'm listening to "A Horse with No Name" and next up is "Lonely People." Coming up is a mini-set by the Grassroots.

[Richard King]

I saw the Grassroots when I was still in high school, opening up for then-breaking Creedance Clearwater (at Disneyland, no less). I thought I was too cool for such a pop band -- but I was wrong. They put on a rockin' set and I had to admit they had some great little songs. I'm listening to "A Horse with No Name" and next up is "Lonely People." Coming up is a mini-set by the Grassroots.

 

I saw them also back in my High School days at the Minnesota State Fair Teenage area in 1966 or 67. I very much enjoyed their performances, but then, I've always enjoyed their music. I didn't know about the death of one of them.

[blue2blue]

I saw them also back in my High School days at the Minnesota State Fair Teenage area in 1966 or 67. I very much enjoyed their performances, but then, I've always enjoyed their music. I didn't know about the death of one of them.

I think it was hearing "Live for Today" that really nailed it for me, but I decided "Midnight Confession" was really cool, too. I didn't know about the passing of Rob Grill until today, either.

[Paul McCartney]

One less junkie off the street.

yup, and the usual bureaucrat nerds of Craig's forum who wouldn't know what good music when it came into their office in red underware make the funeral eulogy

[urca]

yup, and the usual bureaucrat nerds of Craig's forum who wouldn't know what good music when it came into their office in red underware make the funeral eulogy

She had an ok voice, there's a ton of people out there who could sing as good as, if not better, but just didn't catch the breaks she did. She had a gift and chose to piss it all away by doing {censored} that she knew wasn't good for her. No sympathy from me. She wasn't a victim and didn't suffer from a disease, 'twas all self-inflicted......

[blue2blue]

Yeah, well, of course, I'm simply one of the bureaucratic nerds, but for some crazy reason, I was among the tens of millions of people who did think she was something special. But, of course, I don't count because I'm not a bigshot exec at the world's biggest musical facility and don't get to brag about that -- oh wait, of course, that was "Paul's" previous incarnation.

 

I would love to see urca, who apparently doesn't just share the role of sole arbiter of talent and musical taste, but apparently knows more than the physicians and medical scientists who do consider addiction to be a disease, argue with those scientists and the doctors who struggle to treat addiction or the general practitioners and family doctors who try to get people to give up everything from martinis and Marlboroughs to morphine.

 

What do they know, right, gentlemen?

 

Just because addiction changes body and brain function over the course of its progress as it consumes an individual, making it increasingly difficult for addicts to act on their often soul deep desire to throw off that addiction and lead a 'normal' life, those crazy docs, they had the idiotic notion that it qualifies as a disease.

 

What do they know?

 

And what do I know? I'm just some sap who lived inside a bottle for 20 years and then, one day, woke up and probably said, gee, it never even occurred to me I could just snap my fingers and not drink for the next 17 years. Silly me, it just never occurred to me not to crawl through life half drunk or hung over.

 

And I guess I've missed an excellent opportunity to brag about my own superiority, since I was able to decide to quit -- after burning through girlfriends, jobs and maybe even a few friends for twenty years -- and actually actually make it stick. (Of course, I still have dreams, 17 years later, where I'm falling off the wagon, drunk again, and waking up in a cold sweat, thinking for a few confused moments that's real. I guess that's just my way of having a little harmless fun in my sleep, right, guys? A return to good times. Uh huh.)

 

Yeah... thank heaven you guys are experts on everything and everyone else is wrong and you're right.

 

I love you smart, strong guys who think the fact that medical professionals have classified addiction as a disease is just their way of giving a good excuse to folks who have decided to ruin their lives and could just stop like that.

 

Classifying a condition that fundamentally changes thought and behavioral patterns and causes deep changes to the body -- so deep that suddenly withdrawing the drug of choice can plunge the addict into fevers, nausea, convulsions and, not uncommonly, death -- as a disease? What were those wacky docs and scientists thinking, eh?

 

 

But, let me tell you experts something that you don't seem to be able to understand from threads like this or those at music and social media sites across the web -- the people hoping that the latest in a long string of artists whose inability to make that desire to throw off addiction a reality will rest in peace now that their struggle is over -- guys like me or many of the others in this thread or millions around the world -- are not making excuses for people who, like themselves foolishly embarked on the same path as many in society but then found themselves swirling into the sucking whirlpool of addiction -- but who weren't as lucky, who couldn't just walk away.

 

There are choices along the way. Lots of them. But for many reasons, some of them rooted in earlier life and pain, some of those reasons growing out of the increased self-loathing that comes from waking up and realizing you are now someone you never dreamed you would be or withering under -- but often secretly agreeing with -- the derision of judgmental, self-professed experts on everything convinced of their own moral superiority, and some of those reasons rooted in the very changes to mental and body function that, as the addiction progresses, make it increasingly difficult to act on those choices and make the decision stick -- some addicts are never able to make their many decisions to leave the glamorous, sophisticated life of dread, illness, and self-loathing behind.

 

Yeah, I'm glad you guys are so strong and superior.

 

In fact, there ought to be a special little island off a long way from the rest of the confused weaklings who make up the rest of society who struggle with life, maybe not always because of addiction, but who suffer from all the other thousand little things that superior, all-knowing guys like you don't ever have to go through.

 

You guys deserve a place of your own where you won't have to be bothered by the tortured, weak, human likes of the rest of humanity.

 

Of course, you've created that space in your own minds -- but I think I would really prefer to see that made reality.

 

Do yourselves -- and the rest of us-- a favor -- just go the hell away from the rest of us weaklings. You'll be happier -- and so will we struggling, imperfect, all too human masses who don't share your special kind of perfection.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

She had a gift and chose to piss it all away by doing {censored} that she knew wasn't good for her. No sympathy from me. She wasn't a victim and didn't suffer from a disease, 'twas all self-inflicted......

 

 

A bit of understanding and compassion might be in order. Re-read Blue2Blue's post (above) carefully.

[blue2blue]

Thanks, Ken.

 

But, let's face it. I was venting. Frustrated and angry from reading one too many posts like that -- a tiny minority of the comments I've read, of course, but let's just say those kinds of attitudes get under my skin, even on a good day.

 

But I should probably have compassion for them.

 

I strongly suspect they have their own pain. And maybe even their own addictions or fears or self-doubt that they either secretly hide in their own shame (think of those fundamentalist preachers, judgmental religious hierarchies, and anti-gay activists who, with surprising frequency are revealed to have secret lives of addiction, using drugs, drowning their self-doubt in alcohol, or visiting prostitutes of various sexes) or feelings of shame or uncontrolled desires or weakness that they have so deeply suppressed that they are veritable time bombs of secret doubt and self-alienation.

 

Maybe, some day, they'll wake up and cut through that seemingly smug superiority -- or maybe they'll eventually die alone in that special place, that lonely place, they've created for themselves.

 

I honestly hope they'll wake up and embrace their fellow humans -- and themselves -- in all their imperfect humanity.

 

But it's their choice. I just hope they have the strength -- and maybe the help of their higher power -- to make it.

[Vito Corleone]

Of COURSE it is a disease. A disease that, like many others, was brought on by actions of "choice" and by actions that don't necessarily result in disease in most people.

Like many people, I've drank alcohol since I became an adult and did drugs when I was younger. Neither developed into a disease for me because I, fortunately, don't possess the genetic makeup to have it progress to such a degree.

Some people smoke all their lives and never develop lung cancer. Others choose to never smoke at all. Does that mean we should have no sympathy for those who DO develop cancer? Of course not.

[blue2blue]

 

Of COURSE it is a disease. A disease that, like many others, was brought on by actions of "choice" and by actions that don't necessarily result in disease in most people. Like many people, I've drank alcohol since I became an adult and did drugs when I was younger. Neither developed into a disease for me because I, fortunately, don't possess the genetic makeup to have it progress to such a degree. Some people smoke all their lives and never develop lung cancer. Others choose to never smoke at all. Does that mean we should have no sympathy for those who DO develop cancer? Of course not.

Absolutely.

 

I would be the last to deny my own culpability for my addiction to alcohol. And, of course, like many of my generation, let's just say it didn't stop there. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones who could take or leave one class of intoxicants that was the undoing of many -- although I'm happy to say that I was out of that scene before the scourge of crack took hold.

 

But when I was in the hospital for two months following the motorcycle wreck I referenced in my long post above (and, again, I'm not intending for everyone to read all that, but it's there if anyone wants to), in traction with a shattered femur, hip and ankle (not to mention a pretty good case of what we motorcyclists laughingly -- it's an over-brave, but empty laugh -- call road rash), I was filled up with morphine, then demerol, and then dilaudid for most of that two months. Even though I tried to wean myself, with the help of the nurses and my doc, off those drugs, when I was finally released, I got a taste of what that kind of jonesing was all about. I know -- for sure -- that the sleepy time drugs would likely have been my undoing.

 

 

________________

 

 

Speaking of smoking, my father was one of the GI's who was introduced to the pleasures of tobacco during WWII, under the auspices of the Department of Defense and those over-generous tobacco companies who shipped thousands of tons of smokes to soldiers and sailors around the world. Turned out to be a great investment for them and their stockholders.

 

He tried many times to quit -- going for 7 or 8 months one time in the 60s, mostly without smoking (though I caught him a few times sneaking off to catch a nicotine buzz) -- and finally did quit -- but, sadly, not before he'd ended up with mouth, throat and lung cancer. He died just a few months short of his 66th birthday. He was a great guy. I miss him all the time.

[roomjello]

yup, and the usual bureaucrat nerds of Craig's forum who wouldn't know what good music when it came into their office in red underware make the funeral eulogy

 

You called

[urca]

Not a disease. Pancreatic cancer is a disease. A person who chooses to snort/smoke/drink/shoot can stop any time they want and the physical effects of the abuse will, for the most part, subside. A person with cancer cannot choose to stop it and in many cases did nothing to bring it on.

Calling addiction a disease is just a junkie's way of avoiding responsibility for what they do "Sorry your honor, I robbed that 80 year old woman of her pension money because I have a disease, it's not MY fault....."

[Dessalines]

People die all the time at all ages and there are many musicians in the world. The fact that a few, and there are relatively few, (though they are famous and therefore noticeable), died at age 27 is really just a statistical anomaly that we notice because we follow the lives of these people. It has no significance at all. However, if you must.....

[Jeff da Weasel]

A person who chooses to snort/smoke/drink/shoot can stop any time they want

 

You should submit your brilliant findings to the medical journals. I'm sure that all the addicted people just weren't aware they could stop any time they wanted. I wish all answers were this easy.

 

Maybe you haven't seen someone go into convulsions after stopping heroin, or nearly die from seizures after quitting drinking cold turkey. But I've seen both. Maybe they just weren't trying hard enough.

[Dessalines]

... but she did not want.

Yes, I'm with you on this. She did not want... It were almost as if her career was an adjunct to her habits and on that basis it is very hard for me to see this as a tragedy. It almost seemed to be wished for on her part. Who would say that the fans who went to the concerts of her last aborted tour who got to watch her stumbling around, not singing or forgetting the lyrics were well served by this artist? And you can be sure that in general I do not judge people's habits, especially musicians, if they serve their muse and their fans but Ms. Winehouse seemed to be so self involved and so out of it almost all of the time, that music was only a path to oblivion, not an art form. Should we admire this?

[Ernest Buckley]

I was filled up with morphine, then demerol, and then dilaudid for most of that two months.

 

 

That explains your creativeness. :poke:

 

All kidding aside, I have a hard time calling something a disease when it was the users choice to bring it into their own system. The overuse of something may cause disease or "dis-ease" in the body which I can understand but I generally do not feel much has been lost when individuals do this to themselves.... Joplin, Morrison, Hendrix, etc... I feel badly that they suffered and that they put themselves in the position and I wish they could have cleansed themselves of their "dis-ease". I know we`ve discussed this at length before but it really does make you wonder if their own misery added to their creative success?

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Not a disease. Pancreatic cancer is a disease. A person who chooses to snort/smoke/drink/shoot can stop any time they want and the physical effects of the abuse will, for the most part, subside. A person with cancer cannot choose to stop it and in many cases did nothing to bring it on. Calling addiction a disease is just a junkie's way of avoiding responsibility for what they do "Sorry your honor, I robbed that 80 year old woman of her pension money because I have a disease, it's not MY fault....."

 

 

I hope you're not a doctor or drug counselor or anyone who helps junkies.

 

Well, actually, you couldn't be or there's no way in hell you'd ever get a job.

[BATCAT]

Remember kids, never rely on an understanding of what "disease" actually is, or human biology, or medicine, when a whopping dose of sanctimony will do just fine.

[Jeff da Weasel]

 

Remember kids, never rely on an understanding of what "disease" actually is, or human biology, or medicine, when a whopping dose of sanctimony will do just fine.

 

 

This.

[MrKnobs]

I have nothing against Ms. Winehouse and I'm sorry that she died, whatever the cause. She chose the first doses of her drugs then they started choosing her. She tossed the dice and it turned out she was one of the unlucky ones who had the genes for addiction. That's the chance we all take when we drink, snort a line, view internet porn, or even post on a forum. No judgement from me.

 

I do think, though, that a certain type of creativity is born from misery, or at least speaks with authority due to suffering and internal conflict / madness. If you were able to remove that inherent conflict from the person I think that in many cases that person would have nothing further of interest to say, or at least no longer have the strong desire to say it which would amount to the same thing from our outside viewpoint. Of course not every miserable person manages to do anything of abiding interest, to be sure.

 

I find it interesting that sometimes a person (no one in this thread) will deride white blues artists for being somehow "non-authentic" since they're singing tunes about suffering that somehow (in the view of the person making this claim) is related to race / poverty / etc. Then that same person will argue that someone like Ms. Winehouse would have been just as creative and driven if she had not lived with her personal demons. Seems to me like these are contradictory statements.

 

Terry D.

[roomjello]

I'm not grumpy today or anything, but can we please stop with the shrug guy and the "this", "what she said" quotes and all the other Forum "licks". Seriously.

It's all so television quote like.

[BATCAT]

I'm not grumpy today or anything, but can we please stop with the shrug guy and the "this", "what she said" quotes and all the other Forum "licks". Seriously. It's all so television quote like.

I have an addiction to using "shrug guy" in my posts.

[roomjello]

You mean a biological disorder of coarse

[MrKnobs]

I have an addiction to using "shrug guy" in my posts.

 

Me too. To me it means, "just sayin."

 

Terry D.

[roomjello]