I collect death. Sorry to be dark today. But I mean in my job, where I've made it my business over the years to take note of every musician or music industry figure who passes, sometimes with a simple "RIP" at the end of this newsletter, sometimes with a personal remembrance. Everyone deserves to be seen off. Everyone who touches others with art deserves to be remembered. I have readers who, like my parents with the Boston Globe, have told me they start every day with the obits. And I've collected more death this year than I've ever collected before. It's mid-October and I've recorded just shy of 500 notable music-industry passings in 2020. In all of 2019, I noted 433. The year before, around 250. Partly, I'm sure, I'm getting better at this—that's a weird way to put it, I know. Partly, of course, there's the cruelty of Covid-19. But even that horrific virus—PLEASE WEAR MASKS, everybody, in honor of the late JOHN PRINE, or ADAM SCHLESINGER, or ELLIS MARSALIS—isn't enough to account for the extraordinary amount of loss in an obscene year that has also claimed, among many, many others, EDDIE VAN HALEN, LITTLE RICHARD, BILL WITHERS, POP SMOKE, NEIL PEART, MCCOY TYNER, KENNY ROGERS, HELEN REDDY, JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE and ANDRE HARRELL. Medical experts talk about the effects of Covid not just in terms of the lives it has directly claimed, but also the excess deaths caused by the cascading effects of life in a pandemic. Is this a year, an outlier year, hopefully, of excess music deaths? A year of karma? Is it just dark everywhere right now? RIP, again, to everyone we've lost this year. Wear masks, seriously, everyone who's still here. This week marks a seven-month anniversary for many of us. I'm praying for light, and for fewer reasons to say goodbye ahead... Just over a week ago, LORENZO MOLINA RUIZ, trumpeter for the country-rock band the MAVERICKS, and a friend were assaulted in a sports bar in Nashville because, Ruiz says, they were speaking Spanish. Now comes word that a week before that, in New York, Japanese jazz pianist TADATAKA UNNO was severely beaten in a subway station by a group of people who, he told CNN, called him a "Chinese mother***er." He's recovering from surgery and unsure if he'll ever be able to perform again. Sending hugs and thoughts of harmony to both of them... PHAROAH SANDERS turns 80 today and he's celebrating with virtual concert, recorded three weeks ago at the Los Angeles club ZEBULON with fellow tenor saxophonist AZAR LAWRENCE. It's a ticketed event, starting at 7pm in various time zones... BTS has the top two songs in the BILLBOARD HOT 100, the first artist to do so since guess which group did so for four weeks in 2009. But in China, the K-pop group is losing not only fans, but endorsements... MILEY CYRUS, KESHA, PHOEBE BRIDGERS and others perform in honor of the late JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG... An opera for LOVECRAFT COUNTRY.