RIP

One of my favorite musicians died last week at 40 years old.
Lance Hahn was the guitar and voice behind two great punk rock bands (Cringer and J Church) that came out of the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 80s and early 90s.
He died Oct. 21 after falling into a coma 9 days earlier from complications related to kidney disease.
Hahn’s lyrics were always pretty fun, and even though he didn’t write the song “Marie Provost” (it was by Nick Lowe) I always enjoyed the song’s true story of the early cinema actress who fell from stardom and was later found dead in her apartment — gruesome material, to be sure, but it was delivered in a fun and ironic way that made it kind of light:
“The cops broke in and they looked all around/ throwing up everywhere on what they found/ the handiwork of the little dachshunds/ the hungry little dachshunds.”
Anyway, aside from all that, Hahn — especially in his earlier work — had a good way of appealing to the angsty little teenager that I was at 16, and while I was looking at the lyrics to one of the songs he wrote while he was in Cringer (and probably not much older than 16 himself), I could still see that.
The song was called Confession and it was a good one — I like the lyrics, especially the phrase “I’ll admit that life is grey/ But I carry on anyway/ I’ll admit that things may not get better/ But something makes me go on and on.“
In any case, 40 seems too young for anyone to die, but in Hahn’s case, at least he left some great records and there’s more than one former teenager (I’m raising my hand right now, anyway) that got a lot of comfort from them at some pretty bad times.
Thanks, Lance, and rest in peace, man.