bleeng

Just checked in for my flight to Portland OR tomorrow morning and hoping there is no last minute cancellation. Fingers crossed.

Is this Tara?

NFL. Vikings. MLB. Orioles. College LSU. NHL Red Wings.

Jack DeJohnette, (August 9, 1942 – October 26, 2025)the jazz drummer celebrated as one of the genre’s true greats – who worked with stars including Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Charles Lloyd – has died aged 83. A press representative for ECM, the record label that released many of his recordings, confirmed the news, while his personal assistant added that he died from congestive heart failure.

Able to bring dynamic, highly musical playing to open-minded free jazz, R&B-leaning instrumental grooves and everything in between, DeJohnette is perhaps best known as the drummer in Davis’s fusion period, contributing to albums such as Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson and On the Corner. He was also celebrated as a regular sideman and bandleader on elegant, progressive fusion releases from ECM in the 1980s.

DeJohnette was born in Chicago in 1942 and played piano from the age of five or six, as he remembered, continuing the instrument alongside the drums which he picked up in his early teens. “Piano and drums are part of the percussion family,” he later said. “There’s no separation: learning one thing feeds the other.”

He started out singing doo-wop in a vocal group and playing rock’n’roll, but was gradually drawn towards jazz, and from the late 1950s had his own trio. He guested with Sun Ra and his Arkestra, fraternised with the city’s avant-garde names such as Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, and sat in for a waylaid Elvin Jones in John Coltrane’s band when they played in Chicago: “A really great, physical and spiritual experience,” DeJohnette said of the latter gig.

Time with pianist Bill Evans led him to the edge of Davis’s band at the end of the 1960s, as Davis was bringing in electric instrumentation and forging beyond the boundaries of post-bop. When drummer Tony Williams left, DeJohnette was called up. “I think playing with Miles, with Dave Holland, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter was a very exciting period,” DeJohnette said of a band that produced Bitches Brew, Big Fun and a series of acclaimed live LPs. “We always couldn’t wait to get on the bandstand to see what kind of mischief we could get into.”

Davis would have his band work up monumental grooves, starting with DeJohnette: “I’d start something and if it was OK he wouldn’t say anything and it would continue, then he’d cue each instrument in and get something going. When it would start percolating, then Miles would then play a solo over that and then let it roll, let it roll until he felt it had been exhausted.”

David Ball
Multi-instrumentalist David Ball, who scored a No. 1 hit with 1981’s “Tainted Love” as part of the English synth-pop duo Soft Cell, has died. He was 66 years old.

In 1978, David Ball formed Soft Cell with his Leeds Polytechnic classmate, vocalist Marc Almond. Their first single, “Memorabilia,” caught fire in English nightclubs, but failed to replicate that success on the charts. The duo’s label, Phonogram Records, gave Soft Cell one final chance at chart success. They chose to record a cover of “Tainted Love,” a relatively unknown Northern soul track originally released by T. Rex’s Gloria Jones.

Topping the chart in 17 countries, “Tainted Love” set a Guinness World Record at the time for the longest consecutive stay on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it camped out for 43 weeks.

“We wanted to make catchy but twisted pop songs,” Ball said in a 2021 interview with Mojo. “But we were just two weird guys from Leeds Poly art school – being in the charts was never the plan.”

David Ball’s death comes just two months after Soft Cell played their only UK show of 2025, headlining the Rewind Festival in Henley-on-Thames on Aug. 16. For his final gig ever, Ball took the stage in a wheelchair.

That was Mariota

You cram 8 million people into an area 1/5 the size of Louisiana and you have traffic everywhere. That's Houston..

Christopher Walenty Dreja (November 11, 1945 – September 25, 2025) was an English musician and photographer, best known as the rhythm guitarist and bassist for rock band the Yardbirds for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992,

Dreja was a co-founder of the Yardbirds, which formed in London in 1963. In addition to Page, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck were early members of the group, although they both eventually left. Other members included vocalist/harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith.

For Your Love, the band’s debut album in the U.S., was released in 1965. The title track became a top-10 hit. Other hit songs by the band include “Heart Full of Soul,” “Shapes of Things” and “Over Under Sideways Down.”

Dreja, who co-authored several of the band’s songs, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Yardbirds in 1992. He was part of the reformation of the group in 1992 and continued to perform with them until 2012, when he suffered a series of strokes that left him unable to perform.

Outside of music, Dreja had a career as a photographer. He is responsible for the photo on the back cover of Led Zeppelin’s debut album. He also worked with Andy Warhol, and photographed such artists as Bob Dylan, the Righteous Brothers, and Ike and Tina Turner.

Dreja was originally the band’s rhythm guitarist and shifted over to bass after Page joined in 1966. He was invited to join Led Zeppelin but declined, opting to pursue a career as a photographer instead. He shot the band photo on the back cover of Led Zeppelin’s first album.