Dear Musicians, stay off aircraft

@werehatrack I was going to post the same thing, lol!

My brother was a cargo sales manager at Continental Airlines when this song came out. They played it at a big meeting as an example of why customer care and service is so important.

They said something to the effect of “you never know when a customer could do something clever to get the word out about how you’ve wronged them. United should have just replaced his guitar. It would have cost them far less both financially and in good will”.

“It was widely reported that within five days of Canadian musician Dave Carroll posting a video for a song called “United Breaks Guitars” on YouTube back in July 2009, United Airlines lost 10% of its market value, costing shareholders roughly $180 million dollars.”

Carroll did a good job, too. Almost 15 years later we still sing this song around our house every once in a while. My kids have a Taylor guitar and it’s a catchy tune. .

@k4evryng And then “United bought Continental”, and Continental ate United from within.

@werehatrack United screwed over a lot of people with that merger…including my brother, who was a couple of years away from retirement.🫤 Offered him a crappy forced ‘early retirement’ package, even though he was fairly high up in the company (actually…it was likely because he was high up that he got pushed out…which just sucks). But he still gets to fly for free for the rest of his life, and now that he’s retired, he has the time to do so. I guess that’s a small win for him.

So now I dislike United even more, and feel a little extra joy when I hear this song and know what it did to them.

@Kidsandliz Not a private plane or a small charter, anyway. And for several of those, the artist was the pilot. (John Denver was hang gliding and struck a cliff, as I recall.)

@Kidsandliz @werehatrack John Denver was actually piloting a small aircraft that he had modified slightly. The modification, it is believed, caused part of the issue that led to the crash.

@jcutrell The NTSB report states that the only mod made to the Long EZ on the pilot’s instruction was repainting, and that while he had requested a change in the location of the fuel selector valve (to place it back in the location required in the design instead of the location where the builder had mounted it), this had not yet been done. This was an experimental aircraft designed by Rutan and built by a third party. It did not have the type of engine specified in the design documents; it was equipped with a Lycoming O-320 instead of a Continental O-200, Continental O-240, or Lycoming O-245. This was a heavier and more powerful engine. The aircraft had been reballasted appropriately via the location of 40.6 lbs of batteries into the nose, and the weight and balance were both within limits at the time of takeoff. I am not familiar with the airframe, but of the four engines mentioned, I’d have chosen the O-320 as long as it was not one of the D suffix versions with the problematic siamese-twin magneto setup and the low-reliability automotive-style lifters. (It is probable that those lifters had been upgraded for improved durability by 1997, as they were already known to be suspect in 1979.)

@jcutrell Much of what I’d recalled or heard about Denver’s crash was completely wrong. Pretty much everything except the overall location, in fact.

@pakopako Where’s the list of musicians who’ve died on busses?

@pakopako And this is why John Madden “used” to take the bus…#NoLongerWithUs

@DonBirren @pakopako Not sure how big that list is, but I can definitely think of one…Cliff Burton, original bassist for Metallica, died in 1986 because of a bus accident.

@DonBirren @pakopako @tohar1 Randy Rhodes’ plane crash also involved the tour bus his bandmates were on, but I don’t think there were any injuries on the bus.

@DonBirren @Limewater @pakopako You speak the truth! I remember it pretty well as I only heard about it the next day (my birthday) on the radio.

@ironcheftoni The only time I ever saw my grandmother show emotion over a famous person was when she cried hearing that Jim Reeves had died.

@PooltoyWolf All the ones I know the circumstances of were private or personal aircraft.

@lisagd @PooltoyWolf I got deep in the list without finding one that was on a scheduled airline. I only know of two where the artist was the pilot, John Denver and James Horner, but I think there is at least one more that I’m just not recalling.

@lisagd @werehatrack The common thread here is that flying commercial is generally much safer, statistically, than flying private or flying yourself. (This isn’t even considering that large commercial airliners themselves are more reliable than smaller general aviation aircraft.)

@lisagd @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack

I got deep in the list without finding one that was on a scheduled airline.

Should have kept reading…

Stan was a fantastic folk singer who lost his life in the same accident that claimed Curtis Mathes Jr. - chairman of the television manufacturing company.

@PooltoyWolf @werehatrack It’s also safer than driving, statistically.

@lisagd
exactly!

@chienfou @lisagd @werehatrack I remember AC797, what a weird one. Still inconclusive on the actual cause, though my mind leans toward either smoking in the lav or faulty toilet flush motor/wiring. Tragic that it landed but experienced a flashover…

@lisagd @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack
Yep … It was a strange one. The fact that Stan Rogers and Curtis Mathes both were on it and the weirdness of the event is what makes it stick out in my mind.

@chienfou @lisagd @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack It’s funny, the pronunciation of Curtis Mathes in the commercials always made it sound hyphenated. I figured it was two guys last names.

@blaineg @lisagd @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack
The fact you can even remember CM ads on TV indicates a bit about your age!

@blaineg @chienfou @lisagd @werehatrack I’m very familiar with C-M as a brand and their equipment, but alas, they were long gone by the time I got into this stuff.

@PooltoyWolf
They were a bit ahead of the curve…

@chienfou @PooltoyWolf They had a warehouse and distribution facility near where I worked.

@chienfou @werehatrack Long gone now, I assume? I wish more infrastructure from classic American electronics manufacturing had been preserved for posterity. IIRC Zenith was the last to manufacture televisions in the United States, and their last sets were built in their Chicago plant around 1997.

@chienfou @lisagd @PooltoyWolf @werehatrack I was a kid, but Grandma had a CM “entertainment center”. TV, record player/changer (all 3 speeds), 8 track. Don’t think it had cassette.

@blaineg @chienfou @lisagd @werehatrack Amazing machine. I love console stereos in general, though a grail of mine would be one of the top of the line consoles with color TV, AM/FM receiver, reel-to-reel, and turntable…and all vacuum tube!

@DonBirren Or from substance abuse?

@DonBirren @macromeh Or died in bed. Beds are dangerous.

@DonBirren @macromeh We don’t have that kind of time.

@DonBirren @macromeh of substance abuse… Assume any dead musician not on the list above is from substance abuse.

@DonBirren @macromeh @OnionSoup
Maybe people should avoid being musicians. Sooner or later they all seem to die of something or other.

@DonBirren @macromeh @OnionSoup @rockblossom
And sadly… Too many take their own lives.

@OnionSoup

Assume any dead musician not on the list above is from substance abuse.

I’d say Assume any musician not listed above whose death was before age 35 was likely from substance abuse.

@DonBirren @macromeh @OnionSoup @rockblossom I’ve yet to encounter a musician that didn’t die.

@DonBirren @macromeh @OnionSoup @pakopako @rockblossom Some people think Keith Richards is immortal…

@DonBirren @Kyeh @macromeh @OnionSoup @pakopako @rockblossom He has yet to be proven otherwise. True for us as well, for what it’s worth.

@Kyeh @macromeh @OnionSoup @pakopako @rockblossom I think Keith Richards is just as surprised at his current state of non-death as everyone else is!

@DonBirren @macromeh @OnionSoup @pakopako @rockblossom

I’ve yet to encounter a musician that didn’t die.

Hmmm… for their safety maybe you should stay away from them then (snicker). Are you a suspect yet in any of their deaths? (I did catch your actual meaning here… my fingers got away from me on the keyboard )

@Kidsandliz It does make pako sound like a serial killer.

@Kidsandliz @rockblossom And he has never once mentioned having a murder shed, as far as I can recall.

@rockblossom

Maybe people should avoid being musicians. Sooner or later they all seem to die of something or other.

Poets, too.

@DonBirren @Kyeh @OnionSoup @pakopako @rockblossom @werehatrack I once came across a thought experiment that was dubbed “Quantum Immortality”. The gist of it (IIRC) was that at each potential moment of personal death, the universe splits into one in which you die and one in which you don’t, and the surviving consciousness continues. Interesting concept.

@blaineg
That’s AWESOME!

HIKING! VIKINGS! STRIKE KING [BRAND FISHING LURES]! AWESOME!

@blaineg
Kind of made me think of this exchange as well:

In 1957 at the age of 80 Casals was the subject of a movie short, A Day in the Life of Pablo Casals. The movie’s director Robert Snyder asked Casals, “why he continues to practice four and five hours a day.” Casals answered: “Because I think I am making progress.”

@blaineg @chienfou And this quote from the Japanese painter, Hokusai:

until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. At 73 years I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects and fish. Thus when I reach 80 years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine are not false.

[translation by Henry D Smith II]

@Tadlem43 Reba has to have incredible survivors guilt for not being on that plane with her band.

@OnionSoup She wasn’t scheduled to have been with her crew; the band and the tour manager flew ahead to the next gig (I assume to get started on setting up) while she and her husband, her agent and the pilot of her plane stayed behind to get a night’s sleep before going on. At around two in the morning, her pilot came in and reported that there’d been a problem. The loss hit her really hard, and she dedicated her next album to them, but from the comments in articles I’ve seen, it looks like straight-up grief rather than any survivor’s guilt. The latter generally only happens when there was a change of plans that spared the survivor; that wasn’t what took place. Even so, they were a close-knit bunch, and she was still feeling the loss a decade later in interviews.

@OnionSoup @werehatrack wait, do you know Reba?

@OnionSoup @tinamarie1974 There are plenty of interviews out there She has not been private about her grief over this at all. It really hit her hard, by all accounts.

@OnionSoup @werehatrack but unless we actually know here we cannot begin to understand the complexity of her grief on this topic. There is what you say in public and what you think behind closed doors. Often these are two very different things.

@OnionSoup @tinamarie1974 But when there is this much in public, it’s reasonable to accept that she’s being open and honest about it. I refuse to question it farther; what she does not share is none of my business, and if she chooses to give a false appearance to it, that is also none of my business. I can only report what I see, not what she does not share. And what I see is what I stated. She has made profound grief over the loss very obvious. There is nothing to indicate survivor’s guilt. In point of fact, her experience falls outside the very definition of it.

https://www.verywellmind.com/survivors-guilt-4688743

@OnionSoup @werehatrack so maybe it should be framed as such like you did in your last response to me. To simply state she doesnt provides a very direct statement, that unless you really know her, may or may not be accurate.

@OnionSoup @tinamarie1974 If there had been an Internet in those days, we’d have a more accessible record of her contemporaneous statements, but what I had seen before is in close agreement with what she has stated in recent years when asked about the event. There are lots of accounts around for those who wish to do the reading. I think it’s important to note that eight months after the loss, she released what would reportedly be her all-time best-selling song, which involved her loss. To me, that indicates a level of courage and determination that many would find difficult to muster. It came at a time when the overall nature of the market was shifting, causing her to eventually question whether she should continue her singing career. She stopped touring for a while, concentrating on other enterprises instead. From what I’ve read, she returned only when a friend formed a new channel for promotion, with Reba signed as the first major-name artist for the brand.

@OnionSoup @werehatrack ok, and? I am just saying we should properly frame statements unless we know for a fact that the details are indeed accurate. I think we have all seen how media can twist views and perceptions based on how articles are written. The fact that she took an extended leave points to the fact that she needed to process complex emotions.

Remember MOST people do not share every detail of their life. They hold private things back and one must read between the lines, watch body language, etc to fill in the blanks. Since I dont know her Ive no idea if the plethora of material on the internet accurately depicts her mental state and level of grief on day 1, day 100 or day 1 million.

Tbh, I dont care enough about this topic to go out and research or to continue responding. More important things to do!