Ray Manzarek with the Doors, second from right.

Ray Manzarek, the keyboard player for the Doors, was the first rock star I ever interviewed. I'd just started writing about music, and one morning my editor called me up and asked if I'd like to interview Manzarek. I don't know if he knew I was a Doors fanatic, but I jumped at the chance. I went out and bought a cassette recorder and a contact mic with a black suction cup that stuck to the mouthpiece of my landline. Manzarek called me late one afternoon and, after I did a sound check to make sure the recorder was working properly, we started talking.

He spoke at length about music, art, poetry, and the possibility that Jim Morrison had faked his own death to get out of the glare of the spotlight. Manzarek said it would be just the kind of stunt he'd pull. Morrison had only been gone for a few years at the time of the interview, so it seemed possible that, unlike Elvis, he might still be around.

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Slayer's Jeff Hanneman

Sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, and dickheads the world over are in mourning today, for we lost one of the greats. Jeff Hanneman, guitarist and chief songwriter of Slayer, passed on and we adored him. We thought he was a righteous dude.

As metal fans, Slayer is such a part of our everyday lives that it's easy to forget how unique and special it is. For a band that sang so much about Lucifer and Nazi doctors, the members presented themselves as they were: Four goofy dudes from L.A. playing hella fast heavy metal. No pretense. They were guys you wanted to hang with. Just look at the back cover of their landmark 1986 album Reign In Blood, arguably the greatest metal record of all time, and tell us you don't want to drink a beer with those guys. Even to posers and non-hessians, throwing up the horns and yelling "Slayer!" carries much cultural weight. Everyone knows what that means. It means you are ready to fucking rock.

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Deftones: "Jump! Jump!"

Man, this has been a rough few weeks for musician-related deaths. First there was Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, who passed after battling for five years to recover from a horrific car accident. Then yesterday, Slayer guitarist, Jeff Hanneman, died at the age of 49. And the day before that, the world lost Kriss Kross rapper Chris Kelly, who was found unconscious at his home in Atlanta and died after being rushed to hospital. It's all been terribly bleak, truth be told.

So, jebus bless the remaining Deftones for what they did while performing at the Pageant in St Louis on Wednesday night. Footage has surfaced of them honoring Kelly's memory with a rambunctious full-on metal cover of Kriss Kross' 1992 hit, "Jump." The crowd seems to think it's a joke at first. Then they seem confused by Chino Moreno's sincerity. And then, once the cover kicks in full-throttle, they remember what a stupidly catchy song "Jump" is, and they rock the fuck out. You can see it unfold here:

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Fond memories.

Chris "Mac Daddy" Kelly, one half-of the '90s hip-hop duo Kris Kross, died of a possible drug overdose in Atlanta yesterday. Kris Kross, you may remember, was the duo responsible for 1992 crossover rap hit "Jump" (not to be confused with House of Pain's "Jump Around"), and for briefly popularizing the practice of wearing one's clothes backwards. It is also the group responsible for getting me to purchase my first rap tape. Or, rather, for getting my parents to purchase it for me, at a time when a working knowledge of "Jump" was basically a prerequisite for social inclusion on the elementary school playground.

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Richie Havens in 1972.

Richie Havens was an old soul, singing with the voice of an ancient wise man even when he was young. Every artist strives to find their own voice, but it seemed to come naturally to Havens. His deep sandpaper and honey baritone came from some inner place of power and transformation. He was able to make every song he sang his own. Havens gained a national following when he played the Monterey Pop Festival, but it was his performance on the first day of the Woodstock Festival, Friday, August 15, 1969, that made him an international presence.

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Spencer Moody and his beard.

Spencer Moody, who played with the Murder City Devils, is playing the Hemlock Tavern this Sunday. And if you care about rock 'n' roll and punk and experimentation and all that is right with music, you will squeeze your ass into that tiny, little, dark room and go watch him. Here are five reasons Spencer Moody fucking rules.

1. Sometimes he's a bit scary -- in a good way

Any Murder City Devils fan on earth will tell you that, on stage, Spencer Moody looks like he's about two drinks away from being the half-naked crazy guy on a corner in the Tenderloin at 2 a.m., loudly delivering a slurred sermon in which everyone on earth gets sent to hell because his heart got broken. Watch this video -- he even does it in the middle of the day, at massive festivals, where no one understands what the hell he's trying to do:

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Patti Page, R.I.P.

I'm staggering through Walgreens Wednesday night, my brain in slo-mo, and my body numb. I'm getting a cold and I'm hoping to diminish its severity with some mass-produced placebos. My head is thick, the walls are moving and the floor is tilted. I come to a shelf packed with various remedies all promising instant relief. I blink my eyes, trying to focus, when suddenly a familiar voice comes floating through the air, singing a song I haven't heard in decades:

"Throw mama from the train a kiss, a kiss
Wave mama from the train a goodbye...."

At first, I think I'm hallucinating. The garbled syntax of the lyric echoes my own muddled thinking, but then the old memory cells kick in and I'm transported back to my youth.

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[Editor's note: The following post by Houston writer and ESL teacher Shea Serrano was named the best blog post of the year in the first-ever Voice Media Group music writing awards. Originally published by our sister blog at LA Weekly, It's a sidesplitting minute-by-minute account of an afternoon he spent chaperoning a junior high dance. Read more about the VMG music writing awards here.]

By SHEA SERRANO

1:04 pm: In about 25 minutes, I'm going to be chaperoning a middle school dance. The dance is for the school's graduating 8th graders, of which there are several hundred. I've probably chaperoned fifteen of these things already. It's like being a bouncer at a night club, except this party will take place in a cafeteria and nobody told me not to let in Black or Mexican people.

1:08: Oh shit. They're serving free cake at this dance. That's actually kind of great. There'd probably be less hostility at proper night clubs if they gave away cake, right? Once when I was in a club, I got into a bit of a tiff with a gentleman. Shortly thereafter I snuck up behind him on the dance floor and punched him in his ear as hard as I could. I'm almost certain that wouldn't have happened if I'd had a slice of Italian Cream Cake on a Styrofoam plate in my hands. Fuck your nightclub for not serving cake, yo.

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For a lot of people, jazz is just a stereotype -- a nebulous free-form art that comedians (or any of us, really) will parody without ever knowing what it's really about. Just hit some keys and scat a few syllables: jazz! And there are certainly performers who embrace the improvisational liberties offered by jazz so enthusiastically that they endanger their accessibility to mainstream audiences. However, Dave Brubeck was not only accessible but popular. His defining quartet, which toured and recorded together for 10 years (1958-1967), created the first million-selling jazz album, Time Out, in 1959 -- the same year that Miles Davis released Kind of Blue and Charles Mingus put out Mingus Ah Um (all on the same label, by the way).

Brubeck's accessibility was not the result of catering to the marketplace, but grew out of a confluence of public interest in "difficult" music and artists (Brubeck, Davis, and Mingus among them) who had been working in jazz for decades and had simultaneously matured as recording artists.

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