enjoyed the michael jackson piece. only thing is i remember your mom as loving that album. shortly after it came out we drove to atlanta. we wore that tape out. and knew most of the lyrics by the time we got there. i haven't spoke to her but that's my clear memory.Heh, I remember that trip. We drove from Baltimore to Atlanta, for some book conference. When you're young, your sense of time is all screwy. I remember feeling like the trip was taking forever. I don't remember Thriller, so much as Joan Armatrading. But I trust Dad's memory more than my memory on that one.
dad
(I couldn't help but think about my own personal musical hero, Joe Strummer, who also died of a heart attack at the age of 50. Too soon. Too goddamned soon.)
]]>Anyway, thanks.
This moment really sucks.
]]>May you find peace, MJ. Go with God.
]]>My dad bought the Thriller album (and nothing should tell you more about the huge reach of that record than that my dad bought the Thriller album) and my brother and I would just wear it out when we would see him. Every song on it was great. EVERY song.
]]>MJ will always occupy a space in pop culture, in great music. Despite his obvious struggle through life, his talent is too great to push aside and cast away. Thriller's on just about every playlist I've made, because no matter what - those songs bring me back to that place, in my brother's bedroom, resetting the needle to the beginning again. It brings me back to my basement rewinding the dance on the video to learn the moves from the dance. But most of all, as my music taste evolved to many different genres, the early MJ stuff never got simplistic. The music is complex enough to listen to over and over and hear something different, feel something different each and every time.
I'm with you: put him right up there with Aretha, Otis, James, Etta, Marvin et al.
RIP, MJ. was looking forward to seeing if you still had it in ya this summer....
]]>I say all this as a big fan of the music, I grew up with it, too. And still listen to it, and found the discussion of his place in music history very interesting last week.
But the man's flaws are not the kind you overlook. If anything, they are the kind of thing you hope he burns in hell for.
]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjLGEZZ7CG4&feature=player_embedded
]]>It's easy to say he provided the soundtrack to my generation, but it really is true. The first record I owned was "You Can't Win" from the Wiz soundtrack. I remember being a little kid dancing to "Rock With You." I remember being stunned along with everyone else by his Motown 25 performance. I remember how huge "Remember the Time" was during my college years. Hell, a surprising number of great hip hop songs are based on Michael Jackson samples ("It Ain't Hard to Tell" pops immediately to mind). And even after all the freakiness overwhelmed his career, I still grooved to "Butterflies."
Michael will be missed.
]]>CNN SUCKS
]]>combine that with the weird notion that someone dying somehow means we can only focus on the positives of their life and to acknowledge the negatives is disrepectful, and it's safe to assume Michael Jackson will be Saint Michael at least through early July.
reading the comment that Al Sharpton was eulogizing him makes perfect sense - a fake "reverend" (with his own demons kept hidden behind the volume of his voice...and hair) singing the praises of a man who exploited little boys.
Thriller is a masterpiece. some of us think Off The Wall is even better. Michael Jackson's combination of charisma, singing and dancing talent may never be surpassed. sadly, none of that genius can salve the wounds he has inflicted on innocent children and people who looked the other way then and do so now should be ashamed.
]]>Janet - Together Again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MROVvcmSyeI
Sully's posted the Billie Jean dance from MTV's 25th Anniversary show, which I remember seeing at the time. It still makes my heart jump. Today a friend pointed me to this bit of film from a commercial MJ did, and I think it's lovely.
]]>But ever since then, he was a tragic and ghoulish figure, an unpunished sexual predator, a pathological liar, and deeply sick man who was rich enough to stay out of trouble. The removable nose, the phobias, the sleepovers, the chimps, the blond kids who clearly weren't his, the sham marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, the incredible narcissism of the "king of pop" bullshit, the Martin Bashir interviews... All of that was totally insane and awful.
His death today feels like a formality.
No. That's why everyone's reaction is so complex.
MJ was an abuser, all right. But people who work with abusers agree that abusers *all* start out as victims. And everyone -- *everyone* -- can tell MJ was abused emotionally (at a minimum). What's worse, we all helped. All of us, because we couldn't resist his incredible talent, helped create a situation where his childhood was sacrificed -- and it broke him.
I don't think anyone knows why MJ broke when Stevie Wonder or Shirley Temple didn't -- how much is due to his particular circumstances, how much to some natural fragility. But we all helped break him, and that's why more people are saying "I hope he's found peace at last" than "good riddance".
]]>Was he an unpunished sexual predator? Possibly. He should be remembered for everything, including his later controversies.
On the upside, there will be many delightful retrospectives, and probably (another) movie made about him.
]]> Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.
Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.
Do we really pardon creative people's human sins? Or are we just sophisticated enough to be able to compartmentalize and view the man's life as different from his work?
Anyway, no question Mike Jack "wrote well". The last time you could roll through the FM dial and hear only one voice on every station was right after Sinatra died. Mike was a giant.
]]>Forward, 2008, I end up drunk at a wedding (the great cultural leveler, IMO) and PYT (Pretty Young Thing) gets played. I am grinning and laughing my ass off. I realized I have always like this song ever since my step sister played it for days on end way back when. I go home and download it I-tunes and play it a bunch of times along with Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough. Forward to today, MJ dies. My first reaction is "Oh NO!!!PYT!!!." I turn on CNN and some talking head says that most people remember MJ #10 as a great performer, the first nine being as a shape-shifting, child molesting etc etc pervert. I immediately turn of CNN and go to MTVJ, who is playing nothing but MJ. "Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough" is on. He looks more joyous and exuberant to me than I ever remember. I know I have seen this before, but he never looked like this! I have this momentary feeling that he finally looks relieved and, also, happy. I see that his fucked up life finally might fade away and that what he had tried so hard to achieve, which was bring everyone a happiness he never had, might finally come forward. Shit. I was one of those naysayers. But hey, it is over for him now. Hopefully we can all try to remember him for his great intentions and not his failings. Much like I wasn't always right.
]]>Read Sullivan's post. He kinda encapsulates what I've been feeling - Michael Jackson's life was a tragedy for everyone involved (including the children), but we helped create him.
We all have demons, and though Michael's were bigger than most, I really don't see how letting the guy rest in peace in the first hours of his death is inappropriate. Bringing up the worst of him this soon says more about you than him, to me at least. That said, if nothing else, you don't have to worry about him abusing kids anymore, so let him rest, at least for now.
]]>In the later part of his life, MJ may have been deluded, narcissistic, psychotic, irresponsible, and many other not-so-great things. And again, a grown man having sleepover parties with boys who aren't relatives is certainly cause for suspicion. But there's enough shadows of doubt in all these accusations that I think it's unfair to label MJ a child molester, or to say he should burn in hell. At least OJ was eventually found guilty in a (civil) court of law.
]]>Oh, and Thriller is awesome. Never a big fan of The Girl is Mine, but every work of art needs a flaw or two.
]]>Only an "upside" if they don't get my time or money. He was "dead to me" a long time ago when he went in for that "race-change" shit ... Sad life, but I'm way, way over it.
So much of Michael Jackson on Youtube has been disabled.
I'm glad the 25th Anniversary of Motown performance has not. I was so happy to see this embeddable. It was the moment when you KNEW he had crossed into something never seen before. That performance STILL holds up after all these years.
]]>I feel like I'm mourning not so much a man, but the final death of my youth.
]]>Some of us who were not kids when MJ came along remember a different sort of awe. We saw the huge grownup talent in the child and some of us wondered, as we do whenever we see a prodigiously gifted young genius, if he would be OK-later, when the fame ran out. We remember those in between years when he looked so unready for adulthood, when his voice didn't seem to change and when he seemed to be hiding his face and the torment of adolescence seemed to be especially painful for him.
MJ came out as a fully adult artist on the Motown 25 TV show. The next day he was the biggest star in the world. The clubs in New York played the video of that performance nonstop. MJ wasn't just someone who kids discovered. He had context and it seemed that he was OK. He'd made it. Things were going to be good for him, and that meant good for us.
And then he went mad.
]]>RIP MJ....
]]>Is it because it was little boys and not little girls that people aren't completely sickened by it? Because you know if it was little girls, the guy would be a pariah. The double standard is really sad. It's the same thing with the Catholic Church. This organization systmatically covered up hundreds of rapes of young boys and society hardly fucking blinks. Makes me sick to my stomach.
And that defense of MJ's "sleepovers" was weak - the only reason he wasn't "convicted in a court of law" was because he paid people off. Innocent men don't do that, especially not when accused of being a kiddy rapist. No defense I've yet heard of MJ is remotely credible.
Again, I love the music, but these kind of elated celebrations of the guy are too much. And I include myself in this criticism, I want to hear the old music now, too. But part of me feels like we should all hold our heads down in shame.
I can understand someone defending the guy on the facts, but very few people are willing to do that. Instead, they just say we all have demons, and sort of ignore it. Andrew Sullivan is just making excuses for the guy, practically saying it wasn't his fault he molested those kids, it was his dads fault, our fault, anybody but Michael's. Fuck that shit. Don't believe it. Plenty of people have fucked up lives, a lot more fucked up than being the biggest freaking pop star in the world, so let's stop blaming the world for Michael Jackson's "demons" and be real and say the guy was a sick evil human being and deserves our n. Not our praise.
]]>
But I will bet anyone who wants to go long that 500 years from now they will absolutely still be banging the hell out of Thriller.
]]>I don't know, it just doesn't make me feel good to rip on the guy in death. That's true for me of murderers too. Or anyone else. To me, it doesn't matter. We're not arguing whether he should go to jail, we're arguing whether we should talk of the worst of a person hours after his death. For me, that's not the person I want to be. If you think that somehow it enriches your life to remind yourself that you weren't as evil as Michael Jackson, go for it. For me, I feel better about myself watching Smooth Criminal and crying about the loss of those moves. That says nothing about his personal life, but I think his music and his talent affected my life personally far more than his actions ever will.
]]>A plausible argument, perhaps. But let me flip this on you: Would the father of a kid who was truly molested take the money rather than continue the trial of a man he knows to be guilty? If they weren't after Michael's millions to begin with, wouldn't they rather see justice carried out? Could a respectable father really put a price tag on his victimized son's dignity?
In the 2005 trial, evidence and testimony from the first trial were recycled- and MJ was acquitted. And nobody was paid off there.
Unless an R Kelly-like video surfaces, we have nothing but shades of gray, and- I should hope- the principle that people are not guilty until proven otherwise.
]]>My memory's linear time clock may be off but that's how I remember it.
Jesus, I watched that 10 year old child, just 2 years my junior, belt out "Who's Loving You" like he was pussy whipped. Where'd that come from? It seemed as if entertainment was all he was made of. Can you imagine what a conversation with him would be like? Every rare instance that he was interviewed just talking (before he lost his mind), there was no there there.
As for his predatory ways, as a survivor of just such behavior, that sorely disappointed me about him. Children with parents as opportunistic as his own. It would seem he would want to protect them instead of prey upon them.
Yet, I can still do the choreography from Thriller.
]]>We played the grooves off of that record. My girlfriend had Michael Jackson's Off The Wall on vinyl. For a post-adolescent white trash burnout, steeped in rock and leavened in punk and new wave, listening to something so mainstream felt downright subversive. But it would have taken a deliberate act of cultural bigotry to dismiss that album. Not that I pretend to be free of such bias; selective cultural inhibition is always operative in each of us, not only in determining what we won't allow, but what which we force upon, ourselves.[...]
Michael Jackson was not the first superstar, but he may be the first to publicly renounce personhood itself in favor of renown. Michael Jackson didn't lose his individuality, he discarded it as a hindrance to celebrity. What was always unnerving about him was the absence behind the mystique. He did not start out as a "personality", real or fabricated; there was never anything there to begin with beyond the remarkable talent. Through the years I've become convinced that the absence of personality, and eventually the grotesquerie that was offered in its place, amplified that talent. We never got to know him, even as we watched him grow up. It wasn't just that he was private--lots of celebrities are "private"--it's that he deliberately crafted a persona without personhood. He cobbled together a few cliches he found romantic--the eternal child as a result of being robbed of childhood, the lonely genius, the besieged eccentric--all bathetic in their self-pitying grandiosity. Michael Jackson made himself into a comic caricature of egomania.
He refused even to accept the limits of nature, treating his physical body as if it were as malleable as his public persona. Had he been less delusional, and perhaps more ably befriended by those around him, he might have been made to see that neither of these things were very much within his control. Michael Jackson, in his repeated disfigurement under the knife, took on the vanity of the nation. In this, his most ridiculed aspect, that which is considered most "abnormal" about him, he is in fact most like us. He was, if anything, a pioneer in the realm of plastic surgery. When he started out on his gruesome way, the practice was far less common than it is now. Michael took on our vanity the way Christ takes on our sins.
Read the rest and see what you think.
]]>The boy who made so many lonely people dream of loving someone and being loved never knew love.
]]>They were. He had some excellent work even as late as his final album. I'm so sick of everyone blotting out his achievements post-Thriller. The dude deserves his due. If the MSM hadn't fuzzed out the power of that last album with unfair reviews, we might still have Mike with us today.
Were they as good as "Thriller"? Of course not. Were they heads-and-shoulders above his competition? God yes. Tell it like it is not like it ought to be to fit the accepted narrative of the man-child-genius-who-lost-his-mind. The dude brought the quality all his life and all he got was character assassination. Good God.
]]>Vitiligo is chronic, and there is no cure. Until very recently, there were no treatments to reverse the progress of the condition and bring pigment back to the skin. For years, the only real treatment was pharmaceutical and it removed all of the pigment from a person's skin and turns them essentially albino, which is what he did. He wasn't chasing some white ideal. He simply couldn't bare looking at himself. I imagine living with vitiligo is pretty difficult no matter what, but for a black man, who is the biggest star in the world...
http://www.bagofnothing.com/2007/12/black-tv-anchor-turning-white/
His interest in children was weird and unnatural, and the whole Wonderland thing was freaky and sad. I would not have let my kids go on unsupervised sleepovers. And I haven't listened to Jackson in ages precisely because the kids thing is weird and wrong. The idea that he has and is raising children worries me, and naming all of them after himself is another "whoa, you are not normal, and the childhood thing is off-the-charts freaky" moment.
But on molestation he was cleared. Maybe he got away with it. Maybe he just had no idea how to do normal, and people saw that and saw money. Who the hell lets their kid have an unsupervised sleepover in the bed of an adult man? Kind of suggests they were looking to be able to sue. When he and Lisa Marie Presley married someone said "Duh, two people who never had a normal childhood, who grew up in the laser glare of the media, they have a lot in common."
So maybe he was a child molester who got away with it because the people who accused him weren't that believable, and he had money. Or maybe he was an awful, tragic man whose obsession with childhood innocence, enabled by almost unlimited money and warped by his having no childhood himself, led to him acting in ways that are freakish to normal people, that he didn't quite get because he had never been normal. I don't know which it is. It's just very sad.
]]>Reading some of this stuff and watching as this ridiculous media hype turns into one of those bloated “Princess Diana’ is Dead!” moments of mass idiocy, I feel forced to state the obvious regarding Jackson's music.
Michael Jackson had NO soul - not in the context of great black music. Certainly not as a singer, not even a little bit. Great dance moves, great choreography, incredibly catchy hooks, remarkably facile performer, superb production, definitely the top of the bubble-gum pops. But in the annals of African-American music, he couldn’t touch the classic singers. Not even close. The music itself was essentially synthetic from day one (and not even at the level of the best of the Motown “hit factory” era) and stayed rather sadly puerile up until the end (which I’m afraid was well before 6/25/09.) Nothing terribly wrong with that – “King of Pop”, etc. etc. Bring in Eddie Van Halen and The Saccharine Beatle - whatever! Go for it, Q! But the adulation (I just turned on cable news briefly and they’re still obsessing) has reached the level of insult to any sense of proportion or sanity. I’ll end with the observation that Jackson’s career and brilliance – which was way heavy on artifice, maybe even exclusively pop artifice – is also a testament, along with Madonna’s, to the malign influence of MTV on American music.
]]>I'll leave it to G*d to parse out the rights and wrongs. Judge not...
]]>As for the plastic surgery: Let’s put it this way, that was fucking crazy. But, I’m not convinced that had anything to do with chasing some white ideal. Or necessarily wiping out African features. I’d say that’s a plausible hypothesis, but that it’s also a hypothesis which relies on him not having vitiligo to strengthen itself, and, as I said, there’s no question in my mind that he had vitiligo. So, accepting that he had vitiligo. Accepting that he was a neurotic, emotionally troubled 22 year old, who just happened to also be the most famous person in the world, who just happened to have been raised from a very young age to be terribly image conscious, who just happened to be a black man who was constantly having to hide the fact that he was literally LOSING his blackness, then I don’t think it’s much of a leap to say that he may undergo some ill-advised aesthetic procedures. That those procedures can lead to subsequent procedures (corrective and otherwise). Bad plastic surgery happens. And once it happens, and you’re the most famous person in the world, an emotionally stunted guy in your 20s, a black man dealing with vitiligo, it’s not hard to imagine going under the knife again to try to fix it. And again. And again. And again.
Look, I’m not saying the guy wasn’t pathological. I think it’s pretty clear that he was. I think we make the mistake of trying to attach a racial/socio-political diagnosis of that pathology when it’s just as plausible (even more so) that he was a terribly private and emotionally stunted young man who simply lacked the support structure or individual maturity to deal with what can be a very traumatic diagnosis for somebody that isn’t the most famous person in the world. That he lacked the foresight to understand that the ‘cure’ can sometimes be worse than the disease.
At any rate, you’re not required to like Thriller. Or Off The Wall. Or any of it. I think “The Girl is Mine” is pretty terrible, too, but Paul McCartney did some kick ass stuff in his time (on average, he did a lot more awesome stuff than John Lennon, even though Lennon was cooler). I think Eddie Van Halen is great on Beat It. I didn’t participate in the thread last week where TNC was asking where MJ fit in the greater context of black music. To me, he’s clearly always been a pop act, and I see nothing wrong with that.
Incidentally, check out the number of superlatives in my longer comment. I'm not bitter in the least - not particularly moved one way or the other a this point, because the MJ "tragedy" is such old news and has already been mined by everyone from Oprah to Larry King. Just kind of annoyed that last night I flipped on MSNBC and instead of any discussion at all about health care debates from Ed Schultz or any updates on Iran from Rachel, it was wall-to-wall our "off the wall" pop star. Pretty sad commentary on the culture and what passes for "journalism." Also, the people commenting were generally moronic or banal. I mean, Larry King actually had Kenny Rogers on the phone. And I only coud stand a few minutes - god knows what the obsessives sat through.
]]>