I'm Not Making the Usual Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix List
I'm reminiscing on those artists whose deaths made news, but who most people don't think about anymore. Fifty years from now, they may be completely forgotten, but I miss them, and from now on when a band comes to town who I want to see, I'm not going to wait until next time, because they might not make it that long.

Start Violin Music and Dreamy Cloud Effects... Now
Shannon Hoon
Blind Melon was more than just the band with the Dancing Bee Girl video. If you haven't heard all of Nico, go get it. It's raw and sexy and emotional and ten times better than most of the crap I hear on the radio. If you've seen Hoon's Behind the Music you know that he wasn't just a rock star, he was a jock and an artist and a guy who loved his mom. That nasty drug habit just got in the way.

Michael Hutchence
While I was in Australia I actually had someone ask if I'd heard of INXS, since they were just a local band. I replied with, 'Have you ever heard of Madonna? She's only an American singer, but you may have gotten her albums over here.'

Yes, I knew and love love loved INXS. Kick was one of the first records I bought when I reached that age where an after-school trip to Tower Records was something to bug mom about for a week, and then get excited about for days ahead of time. X was part of the soundtrack to my junior high days, and I remember listening to it over and over (on cassette, none the less). When Michael Hutchence died I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach, whereas when Cobain died it was like, 'Yeah, gee, never saw that coming. Whoop dee doo.' I'm still mad at myself for passing up the chance to see INXS at a club in Boston, just months before his bizarre hanging death, and I think By My Side will always be one of my favorite tormented love songs.

Brad Nowell
Yes, the Sublime guy. Their self-titled album is the perfect CD for any party, barbeque, or road trip. Years after its 1996 debut, people still want to sing and dance to Wrong Way, or just sit and groove to Santaria and What I Got. Like Hoon and Hutchence, Nowell left behind offspring, which makes his overdose even more tragic, but it's the unfulfilled potential for more SoCal sounds that really bugs me. I mean, soon O-Town will have released more tunes than some of these guys. How unfair is that?

Layne Staley
This one may not have been a surprise either, but it's still a shame. Again, my teenage years sounded like the soundtrack to Singles, and sadly, one-by-one the grunge oeuvre seems to be, er, dying out. Soundgarden is in pieces, Pearl Jam has been MIA (did you even know they had a new album out last year?), and now with Alice in Chains down for the count, there's just Stone Temple Pilots to fall back on, in its various forms. Speaking of...

Not Dead, But Hanging On by a Thread
Scott Weiland
He's still technically alive, but STP just isn't the same since his post-rehab rebirth and his solo 12 Bar Blues. The glam look just didn't work for me, and I long for his unkempt Plush days.

Jane's Addiction
Also in the Not Dead column, so far. I've seen these guys three times in the past year, not because I'm a rabid fan, but because, well, just look at them. Perry Farrell is a shell of a man, and I have to think one of these guys (although not my beloved, Dave) is going to be in the Rolling Stone obituary column sooner than later.