MYSPACE
Myspace is a social networking service with a strong music emphasis. Myspace was founded by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson and was launched in July 2003. It is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. Myspace had a significant influence on pop culture and music, and created a gaming platform that launched the successes of Zynga and RockYou, among others. From 2005 until 2008, Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world, and in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. Since 2008, the number of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite of several redesigns. (More from Wikipedia)
Eventually I came upon a little information about Dead Hippie, but the tribute page that I remember from several years ago has disappeared; the MySpace page that I did find has some videos and photos but not much else. Lead singer Simon Smallwood was the frontman for Dead Hippie. When they were profiled in Spin magazine about the time their album came out in 1983, a photo on the MySpace page shows the other bandmembers as Mike Hagen, Paul Mars (aka Paul Black) and Bob Mann. Jackie Fritz and Debra Exit also show up in photos with the band. A later photo from 1985 shows Simon Smallwood, Bob Mann, Robert Williams, and Mike Dewey. I guess that is the same man as Big Mike D, who also has a MySpace page where he mentions his Dead Hippie pedigree. Bob Friedman also has posts on the Internet saying that he had played with the band.
(July 2012)
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I must say that the description given in the email from my buddies at Bomp! was pretty irresistible; it includes: “The Skywalkers from Utrecht, a duo still in their teens, were discovered by Grey Past Records on MySpace and directly got the opportunity to release [Year One]; and it’s easily by far one of the best retro records ever made in the Netherlands.”
(January 2013)
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Natasha Shneider passed away on July 2, 2008 after being stricken with cancer. The news was first broken on the MySpace site of the band Sweethead; Troy van Leeuwen, who had been a second guitarist with Queens of the Stone Age, is a member of that band and had been a close friend of Shneider. As shown on Wikipedia, the post read: “Natasha Schneider [sic], musician extraordinaire, former actress, singer of the ground-breaking band Eleven, and one-time Queens of the Stone Age keyboard player, died today at 11:11 am of cancer. She was a brilliant, beautiful, and ballsy woman who will be missed deeply by all those who knew her. Send your loving thoughts her way in the universe.”
(April 2015/2)
