Kevin Ayers died yesterday. If you search out http://www.kevin-ayers.com/ the page you arrive at says “this domain has expired”. A grim accidental joke. There is a rather good obituary in the Guardian. It seems that by his bed a note was found that said “you can’t shine if you don’t burn”. Ohhhh…. shivers. So … Kevin … why why why are you sleeping ??
When a lad, Soft Machine was my favourite band. The whole journey from psychedelia to jazz fusion to burn out was only a few years, but thats when my neurons were connecting like crazy. Pretentious? Yes. Still fascinating? Yes. So… Kevin Ayers is dead, we know not why. Hugh Hopper died of Leukaemia in 2009. Daevid Allen is somewhere lost on Planet Gong. Robert Wyatt is a National Treasure. But but but … where is Mike Ratledge??? How can someone with such cool sunglasses have been lost to modern culture? There have been rumours that he writes tunes for commercials. Can this really be true?
Here is Wyatt performing “Gharbadzegi”. We get so out of touch, words take the place of meaning.
Here is some classic Ratledge just before he vanished : Gesolreut. I think I could play that on an endless loop and be a happy boy.
(Don’t know why this won’t embed properly, but the link works.)
Anyhoo. Bye bye Kevin and thanks for everything,
The e-Astronomer 
Somehow, this seems appropriate: http://xkcd.com/1177/
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Of course, many obituaries are written before the corresponding death and, when it occurs, are brought up to date with a couple of sentences. This makes sense, of course, but can also lead to them being printed by mistake, as happened in the case of Dave Swarbrick. (This is several years old; in the meantime, Swarb has received a lung transplant and is still fiddling, though not singing anymore. I did see him back in the days when he appeared on stage in a wheelchair and with a nurse following him with a bottle of oxygen.)
Apparently the BBC had “Operation Sealion” (don’t ask me why they chose that name) which was the plan of action to be taken when the Queen Mother died. However, Diana died first, totally unexpectedly, and I think this led to some revisions of the plan.