All throughout 2020 since March, anyway a song rattled around in my head: People Who Died, by the Jim Carroll Band. It was a minor hit in the early 1980s; maybe you know it. Carroll, the punk-poet author of
The Basketball Diaries, wrote it as a sort of tribute to friends he knew who died before their time. Some of them met wild ends: a guy killed by bikers, a woman who jumped in front of a subway train. Others left Earth via less dramatic but nevertheless heartbreaking routes. My favorite line goes:
Bobby got leukemia, fourteen years old / He looked like sixty-five when he died / He was a friend of mine. The chorus goes:
Pistoleros Frontman Lawerence Zubia Dies At 56 kjzz.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from kjzz.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Lawrence Zubia (far right) with The Pistoleros in a 1997 photo.
Kelly Sedei
Zubia regularly performed at venues around the Valley over the past few decades, both as a solo artist at various local bars and with The Pistoleros. Six years ago, the band signed with Fervor Records, releasing two albums, 2014 s
Shine and 2017 s
According to a GoFundMe launched to help with living expenses following his April surgery, Zubia enjoyed performing and spending time with his children when he wasn’t working his day jobs as a courier, concierge, and handyman. (Zubia had to halt his performances in the spring because of the pandemic.)