December 4, 2023

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Atlanta deejay Jon Kincaid dies He was acknowledged for slicing edge tunes on WREK

Kincaid, 57, died of heart failure Jan. 4 at Emory College Healthcare facility in Atlanta. A memorial assistance is currently being planned.

He could in no way be mistaken for a casual music admirer.

“He had an incredible memory and an encyclopedic mind,” explained older sister Tammy Kincaid Foley. And a true knack for spotting emerging talent.

“I keep in mind him as soon as declaring we will need to go to the Biltmore Resort,” explained Foley. He mentioned, ‘There are these two bands you need to have to listen to.’”

The early 1980s party was in the resort lobby, in which she observed herself up-shut and individual with a youthful, to some degree eco-friendly but promising Athens export named R.E.M.

Kincaid turned friendly with them and with the associates of Drivin’. The team labeled him their unofficial archivist.

“He understood more about our band than we did,” reported Nielsen with a giggle. “We could phone him up and say ‘What was that song we did one particular time and at what venue?’”

Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ direct singer Kevn Kinney recollects how Kincaid when drove by way of a snowstorm for a single of their album launch occasions at Athens’ 40 Watt Club. With the roads worsening that night time, R.E.M’s Peter Buck invited them all to crash at his Victorian household.

Kincaid devoured new music publications, wrote for market magazines and haunted nearby history stores.

His radio display developed a devoted adhering to of listeners enamored of his recipe of very carefully curated songs, tales about teams and artists in addition dwell and recorded interviews.

Foley recalls the time her brother interviewed punk group The Ramones on the station, and identified out that Joey Ramone experienced a raging sinus an infection and essential medication.

“He drove them around Atlanta. Joey was seeking to get anyone to fill a prescription and Jon realized a guy from high university whose dad was a pharmacist, and they went to his area but they would not fill the prescription since it was created in Florida.”

His knowledge was by no indicates constrained to rock, claimed Amy Potter, a former WREK station manager.

Kincaid programmed significantly of the station’s regular playlist, a musical soup blending everything from blues, bluegrass, publish-punk and other types of rock to jazz, classical and major band selections.

Potter recalled a single of the school’s deans making an attempt to shoo Kincaid out when he ongoing performing in various roles lengthy following his university student days have been above.

She resisted. “I couldn’t tell Jon to depart,” she explained. “He was generally there and encouraging out,” equally with his audio expertise and educating generations of college students on just how faculty radio was finished.

Kincaid struggled with his health in recent yrs, which his buddies knew about. When he required quintuple bypass surgical treatment in 2004, nearby artists set alongside one another a reward live performance at the Range Playhouse. He’d been functioning day jobs to feed his volunteer radio pattern but experienced no professional medical insurance policies.

“He was just a audio geek” is how close friend Scott Extensive summed him up. And his interests were under no circumstances shallow.

“Once he jumped into any rabbit gap he received into, he chased it all the way to the finish.”

DiscoverGo through and indicator the on the internet guestbook for Jon Kincaid