Amy Winehouse found dead

[DanaC]

Back to Black was a stunning album. Her performance was timeless. That one album stands up there, for me, with the greats.

Whether one truly great album makes her a great is up for debate of course.

[Griff]

I've listened to and don't remember any of her music so I'm going to put her in the not Hendrix pile. Do other musicians look to her to fundamentally change what they're doing? It seems unlikely, but I'll go take another listen. It seems like she was more famous for being a mess than anything else.

[Trilby]

No, she def. wasn't Hendrix.

It's just sad, that's all.

A young woman with some talent and a neon sign on her forehead saying HELP ME BUT NOT REALLY and she dies.

Then a lot of people snarkily say how she did her own self in whilst lighting up another Kool or Marlboro Light or whatever.

[Griff]

I just sampled a bunch of her stuff and it is nice and would be a good direction for modern music to go instead of the Keisha/Perry nonsense. It sounds more like a look back than ahead though.

[glatt]

Every time I've heard her, I've been impressed with her talent, but I never got into her music. I probably wouldn't be able to identify it if I passed by it on the radio dial.

[zippyt]

Prolly to soon , Buuuttt

Zombie Winehouse

[classicman]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

A lot of people die at 27 of booze and drugs, it doesn't put them in the same caliber as Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison.

I doubt Winehouse would have achieved any note if it were 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago.

Originally Posted by Griff

I've listened to and don't remember any of her music so I'm going to put her in the not Hendrix pile.
It seems like she was more famous for being a mess than anything else.

Originally Posted by glatt

I probably wouldn't be able to identify it if I passed by it on the radio dial.

Sorry she died, yes. Fan of her music, no.

[DanaC]

Here is a lovely performance when she was just 20 years old. At this point her stuff was a straight up fusion of jazz and hiphop. This was probably one of the most jazzy songs.




And probably my favourite performance of Back to Black, at the BBC sessions.

For me, when she was on top form she was a brilliant live performer.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

A lot of people die at 27 of booze and drugs, it doesn't put them in the same caliber as Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison.

I doubt Winehouse would have achieved any note if it were 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago.

I'm a massive Joplin fan, have been for as long as I can remember. J's Dad bought me her biography for my 21st Birthday.

'Rehab' passed me by somewhat, but when i heard Winehouse sing Back to Black the singer that came to mind for me was Janis Joplin. She didn't sound like her. But there was something about the performance and the attitude, and the rawness of it. And the fact that this incredible sound was coming from this tiny shambolic figure.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Brianna

Rehab is ICU for addiction. It's not a cure; it's a stop-gap, last gasp. You have to want to be sober MORE than you want to be high.

I forget which famous person's daughter it was, some politician... she went straight to a bar within an hour of leaving 4 months of alcohol rehab, and got so drunk she passed out in the snow outside the bar and froze to death. For some people, permanent incarceration would be the only way to stop them from hurting themselves.

[TheMercenary]

When the world is obsessed and focused on some dumb bitch drug addicted fool like Winehouse we have huge problems. Good reddens to another distraction on the psyche of the simpletons of the world.

[Aliantha]

I can't speak for anyone else, but my interest is in the influence people like her have over our young people.

Yes I liked her music, yes I think it's sad she died so young, but this incident gives society a chance to address this serious issue once again, and that's a good thing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by DanaC

.... And the fact that this incredible sound was coming from this tiny shambolic figure.

I had to look that one up.

[Trilby]

It was Terry McGovern - Geo. McGovern's daughter.

She was a hard, hard case. I read the book George wrote about her - TERRY - and it was really heartbreaking. they tried everything.

[Trilby]

Left Out In The Cold Terry Mcgovern's Death Says Something Chilling About How We Treat Alcoholics
BY SHERRYL CONNELLY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, May 23, 1996
Terry McGovern did not want to die. That has to be said.
She was a lovely wo-man, the mother of two young girls, who froze to death in a parking lot in Madison, Wis., on the night of Dec. 12, 1994. She died drunk. Terry McGovern was the 45-year-old daughter of George McGovern, the former senator from South Dakota who ran for President in 1972. She was an alcoholic.
So it could be said she died from alcoholism. And that, irrespective of the 7 inches of snow and freezing temperatures that took her life, is true. But if her death certificate read death by alcoholism it should list a subsidiary cause. And that would have to be society's attitude.
Listen to Tim Grant, a senior vice president of Hazelden, a primary recovery institution in this country. "It used to be we warned people not to kill an alcoholic with kindness. Now we risk killing alcoholics with cruelty."
And then there is George McGovern, a 73-year-old father who, with his wife, Eleanor, did most everything a loving parent could do for a grown child seemingly bent on drinking herself into extinction. Hear the regret: "I wish we had been told that if you follow this course that you would never see your child alive again."
Advised by professional counselors that they should distance themselves from their daughter's problem, that they should no longer provide a cushion for an alcoholic to fall back on, these two devoted parents of five left for an extended overseas trip in the last summer of their daughter's life. On their return, they were perhaps less available to Terry than they had been before.
"When you hear that kind of advice, you are so ready to welcome it. You are so tired and wearied and discouraged," says McGovern. "The thought of being emancipated...well, you figure, `What the hell, we sweated out this girl for 25 years. We're getting older, and we've got a chance for a summer in Europe. Sooner or later, she's going to have to take control.'
"Now, I regret every day of that."
McGovern states plainly in his just-out book, "Terry: My Daughter's Life-and-Death Struggle With Alcoholism," that he believes he did wrong by Terry.
But if he did wrong, it was by trying to do right.
Terry was the third of McGovern's children. He tried hard not to have a favorite, but just maybe she was it. She was certainly mischievous but, in keeping with the McGovern tradition, a strong humanitarian. Throughout the book, McGovern's grief for the child he lost is so understandably strong it almost eclipses the woman Terry became.
She was undeniably troubled. As a teenager, she was forced into sex by a disturbed boyfriend, became pregnant and had an abortion. The episode, the alienation from teenage life that it wrought, may have been part of what derailed her. But the truth is that it seems that Terry was already reacting to chemical substances marijuana and amphetamines in a way that her peers weren't.
That wasn't readily discernible, certainly not to her parents, who were genuinely loving and caring. It came out later, in the hundreds of therapy sessions that Terry, as a depressed young adult with abuse problems, engaged in. In her 30s, she managed eight years of sobriety. During that period, she gave birth to two daughters, Marian and Colleen, who were 9 and 7 when she died.
Terry loved her children. She wanted to be a mom like other moms, only better, because she wanted her children to know the kind of mothering her mother had given her. In rehab, fighting for her life toward the end, Terry devoted herself to realizing her kids' wishes for Halloween costumes: Marian was a nun, Colleen was Snow White.
In the last four years of her life, Terry was admitted to a detox center 68 times. She was reaching for recovery. But like a bad skin graft, it wouldn't take. "She did not want to die. But she was increasingly falling into blackouts and total collapse," says McGovern with the perspective of regret-laden distance. "The disease had settled in on Terry."
Alcoholism is cunning and baffling, to borrow from the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. Untreated, it can defeat the alcoholic. And it can defeat the families of alcoholics. So it's fairly said that the individual and the family confronted with alcoholism are already dealing with more than they can handle.
The experts say that alcoholism is something that happens to people, they don't choose it. It can develop around life's problems or independent of them. Alcoholism is a monster. The question is, is it a monster that can be tamed? The answer is: Not every time. Yet it is always worth trying.