A time to grieve - Shawn's Sense with Shawn Loughlin

Listen... last week, you could be forgiven for grieving a lot of things. There’s the death of peace, civility and a proper democracy in the United States (rather than a burgeoning oligarchy run by a handful of the world’s richest people), any semblance of an even remotely progressive society and the official return of a safe haven for racists.

 

Grieving over those things would be understandable. You would be normal, caring and a good person if you grieved those things. Many people haven’t, both down south and here at home (there is, after all, no greater unifier than hating the same kind of people) but if you did, know that I did too, friend.

 

And yet, there were actual deaths to grieve. In a span of six days, three artists who were tremendously important to me passed away. 

 

Last week I wrote about the great David Lynch. A creative genius in the realms of many visual arts, Lynch is singular in myriad ways. His movies, almost without exception, are terrifying in a way that audiences struggle to put their finger on; they just know that when they see a scene in a David Lynch movie that makes them uncomfortable in a way they’re completely unfamiliar with, Lynch has done a job that no other filmmaker can do. 

 

He was thrice nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for films - The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - films that just would not or could not be made in today’s world. And yet they, and much of his other work, stand alone as one man’s vision, brought to life in a way that no one else could even conjure up.

 

One day later, legendary baseball announcer Bob Uecker passed away. He played in the big leagues from 1962 to 1967, winning a World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964, but where he made his mark was in the booth. He was the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers for 54 years and one of the men most synonymous with the sound of baseball. Toronto fans had Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth, Dodgers fans had Vin Scully and Brewers fans had Uecker.

 

However, where most baseball fans my age would be introduced to Uecker would be in Major League, one of the best baseball movies of all time. There, he played the beleaguered, sometimes foul-mouthed, sometimes drunk announcer of the then-Cleveland Indians during what began as a historically bad season.

 

It’s hard to see a pitcher lose one way off the plate and not think of Uecker’s (as Harry Doyle in the film) iconic, “Just a bit outside” with the just-right bit of stretch on “Just”.

 

And then there was Garth Hudson: the last surviving member of The Band, the four-fifths Canadian quintet at the centre of The Last Waltz; the band that, as The Hawks, backed Bob Dylan on his first electric tour in 1966.

 

Hudson was a multi-instrumentalist in The Band who spent most of his time behind huge keyboards and organs. He was born in Windsor, but grew up in London. For me, it will always be the saxophone solo on “It Makes No Difference” in The Last Waltz. It’s so arresting and scratches every musical itch you didn’t know you had, ending the song masterfully. Three and a half minutes into that song, there’s no indication that saxophone will be a part of it, and then Garth’s angelic, bearded face slides in from the left side of the screen and he hits us with not one, but two saxophone solos. Magic.

 

Hudson was the oldest member of The Band and the others saw him as a bit of an elder statesman and a teacher. He was 87 when he died on Jan. 21 in Woodstock, New York.

 

The world is darker without these men.