Prince, one of the biggest luminaries in all of music history, was found dead this morning at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota, according to TMZ and confirmed by the AP through the musician’s publicist. He was 57. There’s no confirmation of cause of death at this time.

It was reported last week that Prince’s private jet made an emergency landing in Illinois, where the musician was then admitted to the hospital, but he then continued his concert tour the following day, with reports that he been sick with the flu, but recovering

Born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, MN, the mononymous performer who was able to deftly, soulfully, and incredibly parlay a wide amalgam of sounds and styles into a kind of funk/R&B/rock fusion that continues to dazzle the globe.

As Opening Day of our national pastime has just dawned upon us, what a perfect time to relive a classic sports comedy that coincidentally was released 40 years ago today, The Bad News Bears. The movie is about a bunch of hapless misfits who do more damage than good on the little league field.

With a naturalistic quality that director Michael Ritchie, who had helmed the similarly styled 1975 underrated comedy Smile in which the action is set at a high school beauty pageant, employs throughout but still with the same sharp eye for the kind of middle of the road, middle class America that was perfectly rendered on the screen in The Bad News Bears, Ritchie’s flair for the San Fernando Valley and this kind of mid-1970s quintessential America, where much of the action in The Bad News Bears is set, is prevalent, constant, and throughout the picture.

Keith Emerson, large proponent in ushering in the prog rock sounds of the late 1960s with the legendary Emerson, Lake and Palmer, died on Friday at his home in Santa Monica, CA, according to a post by ELP on their official Facebook page. He was 71.

Undoubtedly a trailblazer of the Hammond and Moog keyboards, Keith Emerson and ELP created sounds which at once borrowed from a sort of blues/rock foundation with multilayered complex arrangements on top, and even mixed with a quasi-Classical feel to boot.

Taxi Driver, the pressure cooker of a film about one man’s lonely journey into a nether region of metaphoric and literal hell by way of a society that doesn’t even want to begin to understand him, celebrated its 40th anniversary over the weekend, opening in New York City on Feb 7th, 1976 and opening in a wide release on February 8th.

The film, an early masterpiece by director Martin Scorsese, who was coming off twin successes with Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore respectively, is a stark, brutal, dark, and pulsing look into the open wound that was New York City circa 1975. During that turbulent and gritty time, the city was almost limping on legs from a bygone era that started to erode and disintegrate by the time the film was made. On cracked concrete streets, with asphalt that seemed to emit snakelike steam from its sewers could only a film like this be born. Taxi Driver stands as a true testament to the blood, sweat, and tears put forth by the creative triumvirate of Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader, and the lead actor who played one Travis Bickle, Robert De Niro, was already a legend even then when the cameras started rolling as production commenced.

Paul Kantner, an innovative guitarist and songwriter instrumental in being at the forefront of the San Francisco sound of the late 1960s with Jefferson Airplane, died yesterday of multiple organ failure and septic shock. He was 74.

The news was confirmed by the late musician’s ex girlfriend and publicist, according to the BBC, which added that Kantner had suffered a heart attack several days earlier.

The San Francisco native co-founded the psychedelic rock outfit best remembered for classic songs like “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” sung by the dynamic Grace Slick. Jefferson Airplane, with Kantner, frontwoman Slick, frontman Marty Balin, and masterful guitarist Yorma Kaukonen, was part of a musical brotherhood that also included bands like The Grateful Dead and others and had a musical swagger that spoke about sex, freedom, rebellion, and the anti-establishment. Airplane records like Surrealistic Pillow and Crown of Creation still stand as benchmarks in the genre of the times, classic records which perfectly capture the zeitgeist.