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Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli and Martin Scorsese.

Alan Vega - WFMU’s Free Music Series, Southpaw, Brooklyn, New York, October 13, 2007

Another American original gone – Alan Vega, co-founder of Suicide, passed away last weekend. Even though he made some of the most harrowing music of the past half-century or so (”Frankie Teardrop” never fails to terrify), what stood out to me after listening to a bunch of his stuff in the past couple days was how positive and life-affirming Vega was overall. Hey, even Springsteen was a fan. Both with Suicide and solo, I never got the feeling that Vega was being nasty for its own sake. There’s plenty of darkness, but that’s just part of the picture he was painting. 

“Suicide was always about life,” he said. “But we couldn’t call it Life – we never would have gotten a gig. So we called it Suicide, because we wanted to recognize life.”