"My life's in Jeopardy, baby, wooo-hooooooo"

When I heard that Steve Wright had died, my first question was, which one? There are a LOT of them. Wasn't one of 'em in that Aussie band that did "Friday On My Mind?" Oh. The bassist in the Greg Kihn band. Well...did he...DO anything besides play bass?

Yes, he co-wrote the hit songs some people still remember. Just how much of the music he wrote, I have no idea. For "Jeopardy," he brought in the guitar riff and the rhythm, and apparently Kihn was inspired to knock off some words and melody. How much of the polish was both of them, I'd have to research, and who really cares.

I'll leave it to Kihn to talk about the guy. Kihn's a good writer, and it was from his website that the few subsequent obits and whispers came.

Kihn duly and sadly notes that only he and one other guy are still alive from the original band.

"Back in the day..." I liked Kihn's stuff. He was on a "cool" indie label called Beserkley, but was more accessible and "pop" than some of his bandmates. He had a stunning little Poe-inspired number called "Annabel Lee," and eventually got lucky with the mammoth novelty-rocker "Jeopardy," which benefitted by legendary announcer Don Pardo reprising and satirizing his role on that quiz show. Pardo always had a winking, insinuating way with words, which seemed to suggest that winning a year's supply of Rice-a-Roni was NOT such a great prize at all.

Kihn, whose record label seemed to insist on pun-titles for his albums (Kihn-tinued, etc. etc.) eventually went the way of MTV, and was one of those, "Oh, he was popular in the 80's" guys.

He stubbornly tried to get attention with a new album now and then (one of them had a forced-chuckle song about a flash-in-the-pan named Madonna). As he made the rounds of small venues and memorabilia shows, he began bringing along NOVELS. Yes, he was a fan of horror and mystery and pulp fiction, and so were his geek fans. He began writing that kind of stuff, and fans bought it, but not in huge amounts. Enough for him to keep doing it, again, and again and again.

He got the bright idea to use his fame as a rock guy and his connections, to write murder-mystery stuff with REAL rock stars in the story. He flirted with familiar titles ("Painted Black") and outright stole some ("Rubber Soul").

No, these books were not published by any major company, but "is that so surprising nowadays?" (Your cue, Greg, to write a book with Ian Dury in it).

Kihn met various Beatles at various times, so surely they wouldn't mind. Especially not the dead ones, like John and Stu.

"Rubber Soul," in the fragment he reads on GOOTUBE, includes a scene where JOHN AND STU, the dead ones, go into a record shop (not a boot sale) and marvel that the hip owner has CHUCK BERRY shit.

"Blimey!"

Yes, he has the Scousers actually saying "Blimey!"

Ah, the typical websites of a B-lister (let's be generous in the alphabetizing).

He's asking for tips, he's offering some free shit, and just about the only thing he's not doing is autographing, apparently. For some people, autographing a CD or record is almost as degrading as writing somebody's name on your ass for a FIVERRR on eBay.