[PJ] The era of mass media may have ended decades ago, but the hangover is about to hit us all hard. In "The coming death of just about every rock legend," Damon Linker of The Week explores the rock & roll carnage to come:
Yes, we've lost some already. On top of the icons who died horribly young decades ago ‐ Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, John Lennon ‐ there's the litany of legends felled by illness, drugs, and just plain old age in more recent years: George Harrison, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Tom Petty.
Those losses have been painful. But it's nothing compared with the tidal wave of obituaries to come. The grief and nostalgia will wash over us all. Yes, the Boomers left alive will take it hardest ‐ these were their heroes and generational compatriots. But rock remained the biggest game in town through the 1990s, which implicates GenXers like myself, no less than plenty of millennials.
All of which means there's going to be an awful lot of mourning going on.
Behold the killing fields that lie before us: Bob Dylan (78 years old); Paul McCartney (77); Paul Simon (77) and Art Garfunkel (77); Carole King (77); Brian Wilson (77); Mick Jagger (76) and Keith Richards (75); Joni Mitchell (75); Jimmy Page (75) and Robert Plant (71); Ray Davies (75); Roger Daltrey (75) and Pete Townshend (74); Roger Waters (75) and David Gilmour (73); Rod Stewart (74); Eric Clapton (74); Debbie Harry (74); Neil Young (73); Van Morrison (73); Bryan Ferry (73); Elton John (72); Don Henley (72); James Taylor (71); Jackson Browne (70); Billy Joel (70); and Bruce Springsteen (69, but turning 70 next month).
A few of these legends might manage to live into their 90s, despite all the ... wear and tear to which they've subjected their bodies over the decades. But most of them will not.
This will force us not only to endure their passing, but to confront our own mortality as well.
This is what happens when a genre is exhausted, and there aren’t any new stars of an equal stature arriving to take the place of the departed. As I wrote at Instapundit back in 2016, shortly after David Bowie, Lemmy of Motorhead and Glen Frey all trundled off to the place Pink Floyd dubbed "The Great Gig in the Sky." Growing up in the 1970s with a father who had an enormous collection of Big Band records, I would semi-regularly see him a bit morose in the morning, after the Today Show announced that another swing era superstar had died. Louis Armstrong in 1971. Gene Krupa in 1973. Duke Ellington in 1974. Ozzie Nelson in 1975. And Bing Crosby in 1977 (the big one, as my dad worshiped Crosby). 
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