Damn!

Howie Klein, former music executive and later a political activist, has died at age 77 of pancreatic cancer, not something I would wish on anyone.

My exposure to him was primarily as the proprietor of the blog Down With Tyranny,  but he was everywhere in pop music during his earlier career.  (Not sure what will happen to the site with him gone)

He and I were on the same page about the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Howie Klein, a veteran record executive, radio DJ and political activist who was a leader in the famously artist-friendly Warner Music family during its golden era of the 1980s and early ‘90s, died Wednesday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, according to a social media post from his sister. He was 77.

He was a top executive at Sire Records during the label’s peak era — a time when the label had everyone from the Smiths and Depeche Mode to Madonna and Lou Reed on its roster — and later was president of Warner’s Reprise label from 1989 to 2001. He was a co-founder of the San Francisco-based 415 Records during the 1970s, and was a strong and vocal presence in the music industry’s anti-censorship efforts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, focusing on political activism in his later years.

You can read the rest of the article for his voluminous background in music, particularly Punk.

He occasionally wrote about music on DWT, and I wish that he had written something on the Ur-Punk band Death.