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I wonder if the LSD was a factor in his early demise?
RIP

He'd suffered with MS for a good many years, though it was easy to assume various things since he almost never gave interviews after he gave up the Magic Band and music.

He came out of the blues and he never really abandoned the sensibilities of the blues even at his most extreme. I still enjoy Safe as Milk and, when it came out unbastardised, The Mirror Man Sessions. I remember some critics saying Lick My Decals Off, Baby was what Trout Mask Replica would have been with a little more judicious editing, and I could understand that. I wonder, though, what it would have been without the extremes to which Van Vliet is said to have subjected his musicians during the making of Trout Mask.

A singular character. A singular music theoretician. And there's probably more than one way to define "singular" in his case. May he rest in peace, and may he find favour with the bluesmen he loved, who preceded him, when they greet him.