R.I.P.

Most likely every audiophile has at least one artist whose music brings up special memories. To me one of those artists is George Michael.

Former USSR didn't officially celebrate Christmas and for a while I had no idea this holiday was so big for the rest of the world.

"Last Christmas" by George Michael and "Wham" was a song that brought us not only one of the first glimpses of the foreign pop culture (despite being "ideologically wrong", someone up top must have liked beautiful lirics, music and voice enough to allow it bypass regular censoring).

For the whole country it became some sort of a recognition of the outside culture, clearly pointing at the end of a cold war. Every year since we would hear this song on the radio closer to January and knew winter celebrations somewhere have already started (Russian Christmas is January 7th).

Much later, already here in US I found out about a whole bunch of other Christmas songs, I have never heard before and for many years was genuinely surprised why "Last Christmas" isn't played on the radio here more often.

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, aka George Michael... dies on Christmas day, December 25th of 2016..... .

Top Tracks - George Michael:




Sure we don't want idols to ever die, but paying respect is the least we can do, keeping their music alive.

To be continued.....

 

Chris Cornell, RIP.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/arts/music/chris-cornell-dead-soundgarden.html