AJ Pero, best known as the drummer for heavy metal band Twisted Sister, has died. He was 55.

The news was posted on the official Twisted Sister Facebook page this afternoon. No cause of death was given.

Andy Fraser, an English bassist and songwriter best known for his tenure in the hard rock band Free, died on Monday. He was 62.

Weaned on early American blues like many of his other contemporary peers of the period, the London-born Fraser found a mentor in Alexis Korner, who was one of the more seminal figures of that late 1960s British blues boom by way of electricity. It was Korner who suggested Fraser, 15 at the time, to blues king John Mayall and his Bluesbreakers when the band needed a bassist. Korner then became a sort of liaison to getting Fraser, after his stint with Mayall, associated with the band he is most remembered for and went on to co-found.

Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, a regular in-house character on the zany, ridiculous quintessential slice of inane 1970s life game show The Gong Show, which was a brief and bizarre phenomenon in the annals of television, died in Pasadena, CA on Monday, according to the NY Daily News. He was 82.

The show regular — like The Unknown Comic on the show (who regularly told purposefully bad jokes with a cheap paper sack on his head, replete with badly cut out eye and mouth holes) — became iconic because of the sucked-you-in kind of surreal whimsy that the game show manifested in its heyday. The Gong Show was created by Chuck Barris, a deft creative producer who had already had massive success with similar prior programming like The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game, shows that exploited and celebrated in ribald and sometimes hilarious fashion the complexities of being in a relationship and not being in one, respectively.

Remembering Sir Terry Pratchett, author of the “Discworld” book series, who has passed away at the age of 66.

It is with a heavy heart and teary eyes that I write this article about the life and loss of Sir Terry Pratchett. Writing an obituary is always a sad time but in this case, it’s akin to the end of an era. I first read The Colour of Magic in late 1983, shortly after it was published. I was fairly new to the fantasy genre, having read the first book or two of David Edding’s Belgariad and the first book of Raymond E. Feist’s “Riftwar Saga.”

What I found in that first “Discworld” novel was something that not every author, regardless of the genre, understands. What I found was a wit so cutting that you were almost taken aback. The book was pure, unadulterated fun! Lots of novels are good, but not many will keep you smiling throughout the entirety. And that fun never ended, not once in the forty “Discworld” novels that he produced for my enjoyment. Well, it never ended until today, that is.

Harve Bennett, who was responsible for the production end of many classic mid-1970s fantasy programs, like The Six Million Dollar Man, as well as some of the more memorable Star Trek theatrical releases, died Wednesday, March 4, in Medford, OR. He was 84.

Born in Chicago and a graduate of California’s USC Film School, Bennett did a stint in the Army before settling into the production end of show business, eventually become Vice President of ABC Programming for a spell. Post this position, Bennett became a full-fledged producer at Universal Studios, helming the classic late 1960s/early 1970s youth-are-cops Mod Squad and sci-fi/fantasy yarn styled programs such as the aforementioned Six Million Dollar Man, the spinoff gender bender of The Bionic Woman, as well as miniseries and other programs like Rich Man, Poor Man and 1975 television adaptation of The Invisible Man series.