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The Death of Levon Helm is the Beginning of the End of the Dylan Era

Levon Helm died yesterday in New York City of throat cancer. He was 71. Levon was a tremendous talent and an outstanding drummer. Few people understand the engine that drives any sort of live performance music is the rhythm — and in modern music, that means a live drummer. Without a proper human metronome keeping the entire band on track and in sync, the entire song falls apart. If you have a terrible drummer, the job of keeping the energy of the music moving forward falls to the bass player. If both drummer and bass player are inept, you do not have a band. Levon Helm was, The Band:

Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band’s best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan’s backup group into one of rock’s most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.

Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said Lucy Sabini of Vanguard Records. On Tuesday, a message on his website said he was in the final stages of cancer.

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The Breitbart Blowback

Radical blogger, and social infidel firestorm bomber, Andrew Breitbart, is dead at 43.  Watching the flow of internets reactions to his sudden death slowly roll into the virtual public square are telling in the portrait they create of a cunning and cruel man in life.  I won’t be shedding any tears for losing Breitbart.  I believe the divisive politics of hate will be less vicious without him knowingly and purposefully spewing predetermined lies at cultural touchstones for his sport and personal profiteering.

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Who Would Taunt a Dying Child? These People!

Proverbially speaking, it is never considered proper to kick a fellow when he is down — doing so in reality is even worse. Whether it comes in the form of ridiculing a person who is sleeping on the street or yelling cruel insults at a person in a wheelchair, it is simply not the proper way for one person to behave toward another.

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Whitney Houston: Reflecting on a Life Cut Short

When I was a child, I was a fan of Whitney Houston. Then again, it seemed like most everyone I knew was a fan of Whitney Houston. She achingly expressed pain and heartbreak and was superb at putting into words how to best communicate love to someone. By the time she was portraying a singer in need of a bodyguard in 1992’s The Bodyguard I think much of the world was deeply enamored with her.

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Michele Bachman Thinks Loss of Life and Destruction is a Joke

I really don’t have a good understanding of how presidential campaigns work now. Maybe it’s one of those things that marks me as an older person, but I remember when I was growing up that presidential campaigns were all about proving to the the people of the United States that you were the most qualified person to be the next one to sit in the Oval Office and assume the role of the President of the United States. It was not a job to be taken lightly, nor is it a job to be taken lightly now — and yet some of the people running for the office now think that the life of the people they hope to elect them is worthless.

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No Sympathy for Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse is dead.  Is anyone surprised?  Or did we all sense the inevitability of it all across the arc of her short, and tortured, wasted, life?  Does it matter that she’s now a member of the 27 Club?  Or that she becomes yet another exemplar of the Mozart Syndrome?

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Farewell to Skippy O'Connell

We here at GO INSIDE Magazine are sad to announce the passing of Skippy O’Connell yesterday in California.  Skippy was our unofficial mascot for the magazine.  He kept us smiling on every holiday and his energy was beloved.

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Protesting Westboro Baptist Church Protesters at a Protest

When I was growing up, my parents would regularly remind me how lucky my brother and I were to live in a country where protest was as acceptable (and remains so) as it was — in Communist Romania, people marching the streets with signs jeering President Ceaucescu would have been arrested. People who marched down the street jeering then President Clinton would face no such problem as was evidenced by all the people calling for his resignation during the Lewinsky scandal that seemed to rock the United States for awhile.

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Have You Seen the New Cigarette Pack Warning Labels?

The new, visual, warning labels on cigarette packs are both alarming and necessary.  The graphic images demonstrate the results of smoking on the body, and if we ever hope to become a wholly healthy nation, we need to fight our tobacco addiction.

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How to Die from Cancer

We all know our days are numbered.  We try to live as best and as right as we can until the instant arrives when we are no longer relatively alive.  Is it better to die without foreknowledge?  Or is it best to have time to put your affairs in order, say your good-byes, and wait for death to take your hand?

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