Flash

See that girl? Her name is Flash Bathory and she's dead at 19 years old. No one seems to no what happened to her other than she died in her sleep.
Now dying in your sleep is a decent way to go, providing it is your sleep and not brought on by some sort of central nervous system depressant that makes you forget to breathe. Flash passed back in September, in Texas. Now I'm fairly sure that Texas is a state were you can find out stuff like cause of death in public records. Problem is, I am pretty certain that Flash is not this girl's given name and Bathory is a common name of choice among the Shred Metal community due to the legend of Countess Elisabet Bathory of Hungry, aka The Blood Countess. Seems the her highness liked to torture people and was from some place in the Dracula part of the empire. If you go to You Tube, you can hear Flash play her guitar. Thing is she is playing the same song in every video. She has some nice licks, but if you understand how shred guitar is played or you are a player yourself, you might not be as impressed as some people seem to be. You ought to check it out an see if you can spot the component parts. I bet you can. Still, I think Flash had potential. So damn young too. If you look at her stuff from the NAMM convention of 07 she is all baby fat (and playing the same song) while this year she dyed her hair really red and started to get a shape. (but not a new tune for the NAMM show) Friends post online about how she was always jogging and eating health food or vegan. I think some music people thought she might break out and become a force on guitar. Unfortunately , she was not advanced enough to go into that gang of young genius that claims, Robert Johnson or Jimi Hendrix or D'jango, Christian and the rest. She should have put off the death for at least 5 years because it would not hurt to have a girl guitar hero.
I went to Flash's web site. It was well done and spiked with hope. Even though her family had put up a notice about her death, it didn't cover up the buttons to check her calender, buy her CD, go to "Myspace" or leave her a message. All that stuff, ready and waiting, but the clicks go nowhere at all. Why am I writing about Flash Bathory? I'd never heard of her until I saw a notice of her passing in an advertisement put out by the guitar company whose product she endorsed. Not a real well known outfit either. Well when it comes to sudden or tragic death, I'm drawn to a quote from a Terry Pratchett story that goes "Man isn't dead as long as his name gets mentioned." Although as I get older the litany of names gets longer, I do my best to mention the ones who may have vanished but need to stay alive in someones heart. You probably do it too.