I hate having to do this again so soon.
Brian Young, one of the most consequential people in my life, and a huge contributor to this blog through his work with me on Radio Free Charleston, passed away Tuesday afternoon, two days after suffering a stroke.
He was surrounded by his wife, Debra, his daughters, Birdie and Cadance and more family. I hate this for them and send my deepest love and condolences. This has me torn up and I can only imagine how horrible it has to be for them.
Brian was one of my best friends, but we weren’t attached at the hip. We were the kind of friends who could go months or years without seeing each other, and then instantly pick up where we left off when we reconnected.
Brian was a genius drummer, a technical wiz with video and communications technology and he was one of the funniest people I ever met. In the 36 years we knew each other, I can’t think of a single disagreement we’d had. Aside from being hilarious and fun to be around, Brian was also the most competent and reliable person I’ve ever known. You could always count on him.
Brian is also one of the “RFC Big Shots” listed at the end of every video edition of Radio Free Charleston.
I met him at The Charleston Playhouse in 1989, the night I’d been invited there by Johnny Rock. We hit it off, and I hired him to work part time at WVNS, where I hosted the evening show every night, plus the original broadcast radio incarnation of Radio Free Charleston.
It was there that we’d improvise comedy bits for the show and began collaborating on other projects. In the ensuing years he’d call me in to run camera on some of his projects, I wound up co-producing demos for his band, Three Bodies, and we became very close friends.
In the early 90s Brian contracted an illness that had him hospitalized for quite some time. He pulled through, but was on medication that impaired his health a bit. Around the same time my parents started having various health issues, and I wound up withdrawing from most of my social circles to act as their caregiver.
Brian and his daughter, Cadance, at a Halloween show in 2007.
We’d still touch base. He called me the day before his first marriage and we talked for about three hours, and agreed to stay in touch. However, life got in the way, and a decade passed before the fateful day in early 2006 that he called me again, and pitched the idea of reviving Radio Free Charleston as a video show, which would be produced at LiveMix Studio, his new business that he’d founded with Kai Haynes and Greg Wegmann. I’d been hearing about LiveMix, and this was just a few months after I began writing PopCult. We still kept up with each other’s work, and this was a perfect storm for us to collaborate again.
If Brian hadn’t called me, there would not have been any video episodes of RFC, and it’s doubtful that it would still be going as an internet radio show to this day. RFC is my greatest work, and if not for Brian, it would have been long forgotten, consigned to the memories of the folks who tuned in to it on broadcast radio in the middle of the night 35 years ago.
I owe Brian so much, and the Charleston Music Scene owes him a huge debt.
Brian as part of a Zombie Kick Line
I would be remiss if I didn’t go back to Brian’s sense of humor. If he saw this he’d start mocking it and peppering it with high-pitched f-bombs while reading parts of it in goofy voices.
In some ways, Brian was my comedic soulmate. We could always crack each other up. It could be pure silliness, dark absurdity, clever wordplay, or just goofiness, but it was always funny.
And fun.
Thanks to social media, Brian and I were able to stay in touch better than we did back in the pre-internet days. Just a few weeks ago I was reminiscing on Facebook about a day where Brian and I ran amuk at the Charleston Town Center.
About 35 years ago, during the heyday of the original version of Radio Free Charleston, I was running around the Charleston Town Center with Brian Young, and we went into the arcade they used to have in the food court and, using a roll of quarters I had been given by an advertiser (they did weird stuff like that back then), we decided to launch an assault on the arcade’s claw machine.
We traded off, with one of us operating the claw, and the other spotting from the side.
In less than half an hour we burned through most of the roll of quarters.
We had to stop because we had emptied the machine. Brain went to Graziano’s and got a trash bag for us to carry them around in.
Then we proceeded to run around the mall like lunatics giving little plush animals to our friends who worked there, along with a few folks we’d never met. I still had about twenty left, which I gave to the kids in my mom’s daycare center.
Brian responded to this with “Good times.”
Whistlepunk
That was the Cliff Notes version of the story. After we’d emptied the claw machine (perfectly legally and legitimately) the guy who ran the arcade called Mall Security and said we’d broken into the machine and stole the little plush animals.
So while we were running around the Mall giving out the plush gifts, Mall police were attempting to catch us, in the particularly inept way of lukewarm pursuit that only Mall police can manage.
Two grown men, not yet 30 but acting half our age, managed to elude them for over an hour, running all over the mall, ducking in and out of different stores, before escaping to the parking building and freedom.
At one point, one of us, I forget which, but there was instant agreement, yelled, “Let’s run down the up escalator!” So we took off down the up escalator in the center of the mall, got to the bottom, saw all the Mall police piled into one of the glass elevators coming down to where we were, and just stopped running and escalated back up to the second floor.
I think at that point they gave up.
Brian and I brought out the inspired lunacy in each other.
I’m going to miss that. I’m not the only one. Aside from the fun and games and craziness, Brian Young is one of the best human beings I ever met. I know I’m not the only person who feels that way. Everybody loved Brian. My heart is broken for his family.
I will always be grateful for having known Brian. He made this world, and my life, better.
Later today I will be re-recording the third hour of this week’s Radio Free Charleston radio show to bring you an hour of his amazing drumming with a variety of bands. That will debut Thursday at 2 PM on The AIR. Next month, following this month’s video edition of the show dedicated to Lee Harrrah, there will be a video edition of RFC dedicated to Brian.
There will be no formal service for Brian. Instead, next summer, there will be a concert that will be a celebration of his life. I will keep you posted on that when the plans are made.
Despite all the fun, we were capable of being deadly serious, as you can see by our expressions in this photo.
Over the past eleven years, your humble blogger and his lovely wife have made many trips to Chicago in the Christmas season, and we always find the time to visit Chicago’s Christkindl Market, one of the biggest traditional German holiday festivals in the US. In the tradition of the German town fairs of the holiday season, this Christkindlmarket is set up in the historic Daley Plaza, in the shadow of the famous Picasso sculpture. This pop-up market runs from before Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, every year.
We find ourselves still a little truncated this week due to some internet and power outages that have played havoc with our PopCulting, so we’re going to try to keep it short and sweet and cover some cool STUFF TO DO all over the state, as briefly as possible. We still have a bit of a monster of a list of things to do.
Comments