Saxophonist Martin Fierro dies at 66
March 31st, 2008
Saxophonist Martin Fierro, best known for his work with the late Jerry Garcia, died Thursday of lung cancer at Marin General Hospital. He was 66.
Mr. Fierro, who was playing full time before he was high school age in his native El Paso, Texas, moved to the Bay Area in 1968. He had spent the previous 10 years splitting his time between Los Angeles and Mexico City, where he ran a successful jazz quartet.
He joined fellow former Texan Doug Sahm in an eight-piece psychedelic blues band that played around Bay Area clubs and recorded the album “Honkey Blues” as the Sir Douglas Quintet Plus Two (”He never could count,” said Mr. Fierro). He also played on the 1969 debut album by Mother Earth, “Living With the Animals.”
As leader of Shades of Joy, Mr. Fierro conducted and arranged the soundtrack to the 1970 allegorical Western “El Topo.” He recorded with Quicksilver Messenger Service on the 1971 album, “What About Me.”
He played on the 1973 album by the Grateful Dead, “Wake of the Flood,” and joined the band that year for a round of East Coast dates. He also was part of the Legion of Mary with Garcia and keyboardist Merl Saunders. Mr. Fierro and Saunders were dropped in August 1971 and the name reverted to the Jerry Garcia Band.
Mr. Fierro continued to play on and off with Saunders, as well as groups led by guitarist John Cipollina. He joined the Bay Area jam band Zero, starting an enduring musical relationship with guitarist Steve Kimock, and played in the Zero reunion last year at Wavy Gravy’s birthday party at the Regency Ballroom.
He played his final gig on his birthday, Jan. 18, in Forestville, Sonoma County.
He entered the hospital at the end of January and received his diagnosis a few days later.
Tags: gravy, wavy
March 31st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubeman!
March 31st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
“I Was On the Global Warming Gravy Train”then I fell off and needed to find a new one. Hey! How about:”I’m Now On the Big Oil Gravy Train”And man, talk about gravy!
March 31st, 2008 at 5:17 pm
The article says global warming is real; the author has become skeptical that carbon emissions are the sole cause: The cause of global warming is an issue that falls into the realm of science, because it is falsifiable. No amount of human posturing will affect what the cause is. It just physically is there, and after sufficient research and time we will know what it is.permalinkparentmatts2 (0 children) [+]matts2 1 point 10 months ago [-]”Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations.”Nonsense. Science moves by both observation and models. Another term for a scientific model, btw, is theory.
March 31st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
http://www.wackywavinginflatablearmflailingtubeman.com/
March 31st, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Air Dancers
March 31st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
I’m not sure why you’d want that.http://www.wackywavinginflatablearmflailingtubeman.com/
March 31st, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I’m interested in finding some images of them but I can even think of the term to search for. Much thanks
March 31st, 2008 at 9:30 pm
best place to go for contrasting information iswww.realclimate.org
March 31st, 2008 at 10:20 pm
So…how does he explain rising global temperature averages, melting icecaps, and superstorms?
March 31st, 2008 at 11:11 pm
“Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations.”This is true. But there is a reason that the scientific community must resort to model simulations. In a true laboratory experiment, we’d have a control Earth and several other Earths upon which we would make our pertubations and observations. This is simply not possible due to issues of scale in space and time, and the fact we only have one Earth (not to mention we live on it). So the models, based on lab experiments at the micro scale, applied at the macro level, are the best approximation that we can do.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:01 am
the sun. There is now a credible alternative suspect. In October 2006 Henrik Svensmark showed experimentally that cosmic rays cause cloud formation. Clouds have a net cooling effect, but for the last three decades there have been fewer clouds than normal because the sun’s magnetic field, which shields us from cosmic rays, has been stronger than usual. So the earth heated up. It’s too early to judge what fraction of global warming is caused by cosmic rays.permalinkparent[deleted] (0 children) [+][deleted] 0 points 10 months ago [-]Most heliologists have said that the sun isn’t having that sort of effect on climate; and if it was, it wouldn’t “ramp up”, it would be more like when you turn on a gas burner, but the pilot light doesn’t catch immediately, causing a “woosh” ignition.In other words, if you were correct, we wouldn’t be discussing that possibility. We’d be ash.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am
Sigh. Firstly, the guy is not a climatologist, and while I’m not one either, I have looked into some of the claims he makes in the past and found them to be baseless. Just to pick one example, he says:”In October 2006 Henrik Svensmark showed experimentally that cosmic rays cause cloud formation. Clouds have a net cooling effect, but for the last three decades there have been fewer clouds than normal because the sun’s magnetic field, which shields us from cosmic rays, has been stronger than usual. So the earth heated up.”How many errors can we find in two sentences?Svensmark did not show that cosmic rays cause cloud formation. He showed that in a lab, they could cause the “building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei” (this quote from the press release). It did not show that there is any lack of such building blocks in the atmosphere that was impeding the formation of cloud condensation nuclei, or that there is any lack of such nuclei that’s impeding the formation of clouds.The statement “clouds have a net cooling effect” is inaccurate. Some clouds cool, others warm, and the science is currently unclear on which is which.There does not appear to be any long-term upward trend in cosmic rays anyway (http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr.jpg, from http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/)Not that I blame the author for these mistakes - they’ve been made many times before and appear credible to anyone who hasn’t had the chance to look at the opposing views. I am sure he read them somewhere - probably the same places I did - and didn’t find any credible refutations. Which is a pity.
April 1st, 2008 at 1:42 am
The Ludwig von Mises Institute has gone neoconservative? Interesting!