EXPIRED: 04/15/10 – Jack Herer, 70, was known as the Emperor of Hemp. And that he was. Early in his career he wrote G.R.A.S.S.: Great Revolutionary American Standard System, which proposed a 1-10 rating system for pot potency and quality of high.
As a cannabis activist he wrote the books The Emperor Wears No Clothes which have since been widely used in America to decriminalize personal pot use.
EXPIRED: 03/04/10 – Lolly Vegas, 70, was lead singer and guitarist for Redbone, a Native American rock band that sold millions with the hit “Come and Get Your Love,” in 1974.
He and his brother Pat, who played bass, were session musicians who performed together in seedy nightclubs in downtown Hollywood. They had changed their last name from Vasquez to Vegas to hide their ethnic background and gain more success and wound up doing session work with Dr. John, Leon Russell, Glen Campbell, Johnny Rivers, and many others.
In 1964 they got a break when they were cast as regulars on the TV variety show “Shindig!” and were soon catching attention of other musicians who liked the brothers as backup musicians. A few years later, one of their songs, “Niki Hoeky,” became a hit single for P.J. Proby. Suddenly, they became popular songwriters for the likes of Bobbie Gentry, Aretha Franklin, and the Righteous Brothers.
But it was Jimi Hendrix who talked to them about embracing their mixed blood ancestry ethnicity and eventually who talked them into forming an all-Native American rock group.
EXPIRED: 02/08/10 – Phil Harris, 53, was the captain of the fishing boat Cornelia Marie, and more recently, the unlikely star of the TV, “Deadliest Catch,” seen on The Discovery Channel.
Harris started working on fishing boats at age 7 and started work 10 years later on a crab boat. When Harris turned 21, he ran a fishing vessel out of Seattle, making him one of the youngest to captain a vessel in the Bering Sea.
EXPIRED: 02/03/10 – Frances Reid, 95, had, since the beginning of time, it seems, played Alice Horton on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, the 3rd longest running soap opera in the United States since it began in November 1965. Reid first appeared in the television version of the radio soap opera Portia Faces Life from 1954 to 1955. She next portrayed Grace Baker on As The World Turns from 1959 to 1962, and Rose Pollack on The Edge of Night in 1964.
uRdead2me 