Lincoln music icon Moore dies at age 58

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By CINDY LANGE-KUBICK / Lincoln Journal Star

In late February, Terrence Moore’s friends threw him a party.

Three bands played, beer flowed and a silent auction raised thousands to help pay medical bills for the man behind Dirt Cheap Records, diagnosed with intestinal cancer in January.

Moore, sick from chemo, weak from weight loss, showed up in a wheelchair.

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Terrence Moore (LJS file)

Terrence Moore (LJS file)

An hour later, he was dancing, wearing a flowing red and black Super Fly coat he once bought at an estate sale as a joke.

He closed down the party.

“I will tap into last night’s energy often in the months ahead,” he wrote to friends the next day.

Love energy, he called it.

Early Friday morning, Moore — Lincoln music business icon, friend to hundreds — died.

He was 58.

“He didn’t care much for material things,” said his sister Kathy Jensen. “He absolutely cared for the environment and people.

“I don’t know if there’s a better word than hippie. He wanted to change the world.”

Moore started Dirt Cheap with three partners in 1970.

A few years later he opened the Palms Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant.

After the record store and restaurant closed, he continued to support community-minded endeavors, giving seed money to KZUM, serving on the board of Open Harvest, managing Ecostores Nebraska.

Moore was inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame earlier this year.

The father of five and new grandfather was working as a development specialist at KZUM when he became ill.

Thursday, Moore was taken by ambulance to the hospital. 

All day long family and friends gathered. The same friends who cooked meals and helped his mother care for him during his illness.

He had prepared for that day. He left messages in his journals and planned his funeral service with his pastor.

Moore slipped away as Thursday turned to Friday.

All evening the family played CDs for the man who loved music.

There was one they listened to over and over, his sister said.

“It was this Hawaiian guy. Izzy. It was just so beautiful.”

And so on his last day, the man who introduced so many people to so many kinds of music listened to a man named Israel Kamakawiwo’ole sing a song familiar to nearly everyone.

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there’s a land that I’ve heard of, once in a lullaby…

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.