Joey Ramone

popular name: Dave Brockie

date_of_death: March 23, 2014

age: 50

cause_of_death: Heroin overdose

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Dave Brockie was a Canadian-American musician, songwriter, performer and mastermind / lead singer of the heavy metal band GWAR, in which he performed as Oderus Urungus. If you've never seen or heard GWAR, then imagine if KISS had a love child with Alice Cooper using sperm donation from Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And even then you're only at 50% of what GWAR brings to the table. Brockie formed GWAR in 1984 as a joke side project to his Richmond band Death Piggy. With the help of several co-conspirators, the group became an outlet for Brockie's wildly creative and outrageous imagination. Band members dressed in elaborate and grotesque latex costumes, took on stage names (Brockie was known as Oderus Urungus) and created elaborate shows that saw characters eviscerated and audiences spattered with fake blood. After the 1988 debut Hell-O, which leaned in a punk rock direction and was produced by New York institution Mark Kramer, GWAR switched to a more metal-oriented style on the 1990 follow-up, Scumdogs of the Universe. Aided greatly by the heavily-played video for "Sick Of You," the group was quickly embraced by the metal crowd and Scumdogs went on to become the band's biggest-selling album. Exposure on the hit TV series Beavis And Butt-Head only heightened GWAR's profile in the early 1990s, and the band would go on to be a mainstay in the American metal scene for the next two decades.

popular name: Horace Heidt

date_of_death: December 1, 1986

age: 85

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: Horace Heidt was an American pianist, big band leader, and radio and television personality. His band, Horace Heidt and his Musical Knights, toured vaudeville and performed on radio and television during the 1930s and 1940s. As leader of the Musical Knights, Mr. Heidt was the host of talent shows on radio and television and was credited with helping the careers of Art Carney, Joel MacRae, trumpeter Al Hirt and the King Sisters. His band recorded such hits as ''I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire,'' ''Deep in the Heart of Texas,'' ''Ti-Pi-Tin,'' ''The Hut Sut Song,'' ''Little Sir Echo,'' ''The Pennsylvania Polka'' and ''Heigh Ho.'' He is also credited with devising the first radio show to conduct ad-lib interviews with an audience, called ''Answers by the Dancers.'' It got started in 1932 when a microphone from the bandstand fell to the dance floor. Mr. Heidt jumped down, grabbed the mike and began chatting up the audience.

popular name: John Philip Sousa

date_of_death: March 6, 1932

age: 77

cause_of_death: Heart failure

claim_to_fame: Music

best_know_for: John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era known primarily for American military marches. Some of his best known marches include "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (National March of the United States of America), "Semper Fidelis" (official march of the United States Marine Corps), "The Liberty Bell", "The Thunderer", and "The Washington Post".