Scott Miller, Game Theory and Loud Family Singer, Dead at 53

Scott Miller, a singer, songwriter and guitarist best known for his work in the bands Game Theory and the Loud Family, died on Monday, his website announced. He was 53.

“He was a wonderful, loyal friend as well as a brilliant musician, and I will miss him for the rest of my life,” wrote Sue Trowbridge, Miller’s friend and the Loud Family webmaster. She did not mention a cause of death.

Miller had been planning to reconvene with some of his old Game Theory collaborators this summer to record a new album, Supercalifragile, which would have been the band’s first since Two Steps From the Middle Ages in 1988.

Game Theory formed in 1981 in California, releasing four LPs and a smattering of singles and EPs with various lineups throughout the Eighties. The group, a college-rock favorite associated with L.A.’s “paisley underground” scene, developed a strong cult following before disbanding when their label, Enigma, folded. Miller went on to form Loud Family in San Francisco in 1991. The band released their last LP What If It Works in 2006.

A prolific songwriter, Miller was also a voracious listener and writer: Throughout his life he kept annual lists of his favorite records, which he began converting to CD in the mid-2000s. That project led to an even bigger one, a new blog called “Music: What Happened?” that was published as a book under the same name in 2010 and featured Miller’s critical musings on the past 53 years of rock history.

If you’re looking for a gateway into Miller’s vast catalogue of music, Trowbridge has made all of Game Theory’s long out of print records available to download for free through Dropbox.