{"id":23398,"date":"2020-04-07T17:50:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=23398"},"modified":"2020-04-07T17:50:52","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T21:50:52","slug":"producer-hal-willner-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/producer-hal-willner-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Producer Hal Willner Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A FLG Maurepas upload - Carla Bley Bland with guests - Misterioso - Jazz Avant-Garde\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uH0t-ZL7Jmc?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember when we used to have a little morbid fun over rock &#8216;n roll deaths with celebrations featuring the &#8220;He was a great&#8230;man&#8221; tag and clip from Alex Cox&#8217;s <em>Straight to Hell<\/em>? Those were the days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, a COVID-19 tag has come into existence. I don&#8217;t like this tag. It&#8217;s not funny at all. Today, producer <strong>Hal Willner<\/strong>, who I first knew of as a musical director for <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em> and then the brains behind a series of underground star-studded tribute albums in the early 1980s, died from coronovirus. He was 64, right about the age for someone to feel more fondly over a <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rock-n-roll-cabbage-patch-kids\/\" target=\"_blank\">Delaney &amp; Bonnie trifle<\/a> than anyone from another generation might feel. Terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--nextpage-->\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not an expert on the work of Hal Willner, so you&#8217;re on your own in reading some great appreciations that are already appearing. I will always associate him with turning me onto the music of <strong>Thelonius Monk<\/strong>, through his 1984 tribute <em>That&#8217;s the Way I Feel Now: A Tribute to Thelonious Monk<\/em>. I was just getting into some jazz music. He also did a Disney music tribute around that time &#8211; the Disney music I grew up on, not the crap that the Cabbage Patch generation and beyond grew up with. I haven&#8217;t listened to those albums in ages either, but I&#8217;ll pull them out. Either way, they helped me feel cool when I was the age my oldest son is now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In poking around for some video of interest and relevance to what we&#8217;ve been through here in the Halls of Rock, this Willner talk at a memorial service for Lou Reed seemed appropriate. Check it out, when you have some time. We&#8217;ve lost a good egg!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"lou reed memorial  5 Hal Wilner and  surprise memories\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6oha1LyQDCs?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/producer-hal-willner-dies\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/producer-hal-willner-dies\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a><\/nav>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember when we used to have a little morbid fun over rock &#8216;n roll deaths with celebrations featuring the &#8220;He was a great&#8230;man&#8221; tag and clip from Alex Cox&#8217;s Straight to Hell? Those were the days. Now, a COVID-19 tag has come into existence. I don&#8217;t like this tag. It&#8217;s not funny at all. Today, <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/producer-hal-willner-dies\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[729,1035,68],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23398"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23398\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}