March

Two of my favorite artists of any era were born this month. Both left us too soon:

John Garfield would have been 97 on March 4. He died at 39 in 1952. Uber-fan Kim Morgan wrote one of her semi-regular paeans to Garfield here. Like Ms. Morgan, Garfield is consistently among my top 2 or 3 favorite actors.

Arthur Lee, leader of the great psych rock band Love, would have been 65 on March 7. He died at 61 in 2006. I was lucky enough to see Arthur perform Forever Changes in 2002 before he became ill with the leukemia that would take his life. In what has to be one of the coolest motions ever passed by a governing body anywhere, members of Parliament deemed Forever Changes "the greatest album of all time" in 2002. Of course, in its home country, Forever Changes is barely known amongst the general public, much to the chagrin of rock snobs like myself.