As the year comes to an end, we pause to remember those who have passed this year. Click on the photos to see our bloggers’ tributes earlier this year.

 

Austin Peralta, pianist/composer

 

 

Whitney Houston, singer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

Ravi Shankar, musician

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




















      

Michael Davis, who was bassist in the influential and heavily politicized, proto-punk Detroit band the MC5 and later played with Destroy All Monsters as well as other bands, died on Friday (Feb 17th, 2012) as a result of liver failure. He was 68.  After dropping out of art school, he joined the MC5 in 1964 and played on all three of the band's original albums -- High Time (1971), Back In The USA (1970), and their controversial debut Kick Out the Jams (1969). So controversial was that album that a large hometown department store (Hudson's) refused to stock the major label release due, they stated, to its "obscenity" (those infamous lyrics "kick out the jams motherfuckers"). Never ones to allow an opportunity to make a political statement pass by, the MC5 took out a full page advertisement in the Fifth Estate writing "Stick Alive with the MC5, and Fuck Hudson's!" Hudson's in turn responded by pulling off their shelves all of Elektra Records' releases (MC5's label whose logo they had prominently included in their ad). This did not sit well with Elektra who then dropped the band from their label.