Midnight is Dead.

Yeah, I know that title doesn't make any sense, unless you know about the band Crimson Glory, and know that their singer called himself "Midnight." And you probably won't make the connection even then unless you've had reason to think of the band lately. But there it is.

Crimson Glory was one of my favorite prog-metal bands in the late 1980s. The instrumentation was technical, the themes were the kind of cheesy I really appreciated in my late adolescence, and the singer had a hell of a voice.

But Midnight died yesterday. His real name was John Patrick McDonald, Jr. He was 47 years old, and he died of liver and kidney failure. That's pretty sad, even if he was a plumber or a mechanic.

Actually, his life would have been sad to witness if he'd been a plumber who called himself "Midnight," but that's beside the point.