Paul Gray tribute pages

Overnight hundreds of tribute pages to Slipknot bassist Paul Gray popped up on Facebook. Many have just a few dozen fans, but a few stand out as more popular picks.

There's what seems to be his official fanpage. At 14,000+ fans, it seems to be a fairly central location for fans to leave comments, with hundreds arriving every hour. 

This Gray page has about half that many fans, but also appears pretty active. 

Also, check out Kyle Munson's blog post sharing his thoughts. Kyle spent a lot of time covering the band in his time at the Register's music writer, and his experience with the band has been very helpful in my coverage over the years. Especially now.

Gray has been a trending topic on Twitter for about 24 hours now, with comments from around the world.

Since I was a teen in Iowa in the late 90s, Slipknot was very much a part of my high school years. I remember seeing them at a Type-O-Negative pre-show at Hairy Mary's (I'm pretty sure it wasn't Safari anymore) in 1997 because a friend had told me how crazy their show was. That was when Anders Colsefini was still the singer. It's weird to think that with Peter Steele's death, two musicians I saw that night have died recently.

I remember seeing a review of "Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat" in some little skater zine my freshman year in college and mailing it back to my girlfriend at the time so she could pass it along to the band. I remember seeing my first Slipknot shirt outside of Iowa, and thinking it didn't look right on someone wearing khakis.

When I went to England five years ago Slipknot was almost always brought up when someone found out I was from Iowa (them or Bill Bryson). When my dad told my then future step-brother that I write about music, "Do you know Slipknot?" was the first thing he asked me.

Okay, that's enough rambling from me. If you have any thoughts you want to share here, please feel free.