Cancer Rising, Goodnight Grant, So Long Jessi

A few weeks back my urologist cut something out of my bladder. A papillary carcinoma, I think it is called. One more box to tick off on my Medical History, one more reason I’ll never buy life insurance: Cancer.

Oh, I’m alright. Doc’s pretty sure they “got it.” Of course, having a cam and a cutter crammed up my prick may be a little more frequent feature of my life. But, so it goes.

It goes, that is, until you’re gone.

Grant Hart is gone. 56, cancer.

Jessi Zazu is gone. 28, cancer.

I scroll through my Facebook friends – Jesus, lots of gone ones. Most gone to cancer. Devin, Greg – hell, so many.

Shit’s in my family, too. My in-laws and my sister-in-law have had their battles with the stuff.

My mom was lost to cancer, at 73. She’d be 100 in October. My dad followed her three years later; he was 87. He would have been 109 yesterday if he was from the Caucasus Mountains and ate lots of yogurt. Cancer? Nope. Heartbreak. It happens. Saul Bellow understood.

Oh, that’s to say nothing of the several friends still living who are duking it out with the big C.

You tell me anyone’s really interested in a “cure?” What, and lose out on all those trillions of dollars spent on treatment and palliative care? Bullshit. Call me a cad, but I’m not clogging up some mall panting and puffing to raise “awareness.” Who the fuck is unaware of cancer? That shit is for people who were in fraternities and sororities. People who like to give the appearance of doing something. And God bless'em, huh?

The recent deaths of Grant Hart and Jessi Zazu have me worked up because these aren’t just people who died (Jim Carroll, he died). They are people I crossed happy paths with. My band the Mahoots had the pleasure of playing with Husker Du during the River City Reunion in 1986. It was a fun show. We adjourned to our guitarist David Moore’s downtown loft for further recreation after the show. A good time was had by all, even if the frictions within the band were evident in small ways and Grant’s spat with his bf Ivan turned into an eggs smashing on heads affair. Still … I remember good humors all around. In the following years I’d run into Grant now and again. My friend Todd played with him for a time. One time we nipped off for an adult beverage after a greeting on the street. Once I directed him to a music shop for strings or some needed provision. 

I always kinda preferred his soaring melodicism to Bob’s grumpy thing in Husker Du. And I found something entertaining or moving about much of his fairly sparse solo catalog. He went out on a high note with the sprawling The Argument in 2013, a modest, yet massively ambitious interpretation of Burroughs interpreting Milton. I knew he’d been ill recently. But his death was still a shock. I’ll remember him as a hale fellow well met, a passionate individual and a very talented and expressive artist.

I never shared a show with Jessi Zazu. Or drinks. Never actually met her. But when I discovered Blurt editor Fred Mills’s shared enthusiasm for her band Those Darlins, he offered me a gig (yes, I got money) interviewing Jessi for a piece on the band. Phoners are always a little weird. Lacking the nuance of facial expression and hand gestures inhibits what you say a little bit. In my case, not much, because I error on the side of expressing myself and hoping for the best, but it’s still a funny dynamic. Jessi was a great interview. She sounded a little road weary, but we had a long conversation about her family, her inspirations (esp. Patti Smith), the band’s history, , and a host of things. I got plenty of stuff for my piece, and I felt like we’d hit it off. Prior to her death I knew nothing of her illness. So gifted and young. And gone.

I don’t write about music for the money. There isn’t much to speak of. I don’t even write anymore for access to swag – promo cds, show passes, backstage bullshit. Who needs it? For $14.99 a month my whole family has access to the whole damn release schedule and catalog on Apple Music. I write about music because it touches me, because I want to connect to others about music. I write because it’s a shout out to anyone whose life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll. For those of us who are marching, sometimes slogging, through this slough of despond, it’s the friends we make along the road that make it worthwhile.

Yeah, yeah cancer sucks. But what really would suck is not feeling the sting of death. Death is only consequential because we love. I don’t really believe in anything very encouraging in terms of the great beyond. But wherever they go, whatever’s next I hope Grant and Jessi find peace, a few laughs and a strong beat at their back.