The Cult of Death, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #263

February 20, 2012 Mike Gold 2 Comments

“He’s hot! He’s sexy! And he’s dead!”

So headlined Rolling Stone, ten years after The Door’s lead singer died. Stone-cold and dust-to-dust, at that time Morrison was bigger than ever. And he was pretty damn big back when he died.

And now Whitney Houston is a member of the Legion of Zombie Overperformers, joining Morrison, Elvis Presley, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson, David Ruffin, Tommy Bolan, Sid Vicious, Jimi Hendrix, Frankie Lymon, Keith Moon and a few thousand others for the great Dead Idol auditions in the sky. Just to round out the list, I’ll add Heath Ledger. And Dorothy Kilgallen.

Outside of their commitment to our popular culture and their excellence at same, what do all these people have in common?

If you guessed “drug overdose” or “drug related death,” you’re guilty of shallow thinking.

First of all, it does not matter if the “drugs” are legal, illegal, legal but illegally obtained, alcohol, opium, home made, store bought, or prescription abused. Dead is dead, so let’s look beyond that.

Most of these performers – to the extent we can be certain – died from, or due to, a combination of drugs that individually may be safe if taken properly. But these substances can potentiate one another. In other words, some combination of, say, Oxycontin or Hydrocodone or certain cough medicines or cold pills along with, say, sleeping pills such as Ambien, Lunesta, and Halcion can kill you… particularly if you wash ‘em down with alcohol – even in small amounts. But you can take this some of stuff along with more benign agents such as grapefruit juice, pickled herring, or acetaminophen (Anacin, St. Joseph Aspirin-Free, Tylenol, and others) and off yourself as well.

It’s like The Beatles. 1 + 1 = 4.

More people die each year of such abusive behavior than of abuse of so-called illegal substances. If you’re having a hard time sleeping and/or you’re in relatively minor pain, you may be better off smoking a joint… as long as you don’t pig out on, say, barbecue and you don’t drive or operate your laser-cutter on James Bond’s groin or blow dope smoke in a cop’s face.

Why people would stand in the middle of Newark New Jersey overnight in freezing weather at the police cordon six blocks away from the church where Houston performed just so they could fail to get a glimpse of anybody attending the funeral the following afternoon is beyond me. As I understand it, resurrection takes three days. But such activity is in keeping with what followed after the deaths of many of those I listed above, as well as the others who suffered premature deaths due to suicide, murder, and that most awesome killer of rock stars, airplane and helicopter crashes. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,” William Congreve said over three centuries ago, and I am not the one to tell those who those who grieve for the dead to get a life.

But, please, learn from their deaths.

Know what you take.

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Freelance Cult Leader Mike Gold performs the Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind rock’n’blues show, which streams four times a week on www.getthepointradio.com and is also available at that same venue On Demand. He also joins Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com.