R.I.P.

Michael Jackson. Wow. Stunned.

He was a fascinating guy. I hope everything comes out about him. I know I am sick but recluses are very interesting. The molestions, plastic surgery disasters, and now an early death. What the heck was going on?

as a tribute to MJ, I think I'll play the Glands.
After all the band recorded many songs, if not hits, on Michaels old organ.

totaji wrote:

> The molestions, plastic surgery disasters, and now an early death.
> What the heck was going on?

Not to mention the heavy narcotics use (evidence entered in his last court trial) and anorexia.

50 is way too young to die. But then again, what Michael put his body through -- it's really a shame.

True. He was no Keith, or Iggy, or Lou ... he should have known better.

Wow, the death of the guy from the Ventures inspired a more prolific response. Let's give the man his due: Thriller was one FANTASTIC record. Billy Jean is one of the greatest songs in the history of pop music....and the video is even better! I also have quite a soft spot for Black Or White from one of the later records. Just for fun, I looked up the 1983 Pazz and Jop poll. Thriller is #1 of course with some other unbelievable records not far behind. As a side note, can you believe the albums 7-through-24 which beat out record #25 ?


1. Michael Jackson: Thriller (Epic) 1305 (100) *
2. REM: Murmur (I.R.S.) 986 (77)
3. Talking Heads: Speaking in Tongues (Sire) 746 (67)
4. X: More Fun in the New World (Elektra) 717 (65)
5. The Police: Synchronicity (A&M) 470 (43)
6. U2: War (Island) 372 (36)
7. Lou Reed: Legendary Hearts (RCA Victor) 365 (31)
8. Johnathan Richman & the Modern Lovers: Jonathan Sings! (Sire) 324 (33)
9. Richard Thompson: Hand of Kindness (Hannibal) 310 (33)
10. Bob Dylan: Infidels (Columbia) 282 (29)
11. Elvis Costello: Punch the Clock (Columbia) 261 (26)
12. Culture Club: Colour By Numbers (Epic) 257 (27)
13. Randy Newman: Trouble in Paradise (Warner Bros.) 247 (26)
14. George Clinton: Computer Games (Capitol) 241 (24) **
15. Big Country: The Crossing (Mercury) 238 (25)
16. Jerry Lee Lewis: The Sun Sessions (Sun import) 238 (12)
17. Aztec Camera: High Land, Hard Rain (Sire) 232 (22)
18. T-Bone Burnett: Proof Through the Night (Warner Bros.) 230 (24)
19. David Bowie: Let's Dance (EMI America) 221 (23)
20. James Blood Ulmer: Odyssey (Columbia) 217 (17)
21. Rolling Stones: Undercover (Rolling Stones) 211 (22)
22. The Blasters: Non Fiction (Slash/Warner Bros.) 206 (21)
23. New Order: Power, Corruption and Lies (Factus) 202 (23)
24. Malcolm McLaren: Duck Rock (Island) 201 (20)
25. Prince: 1999 (Warner Bros.)

Quote

As a side note, can you believe the albums 7-through-24 which beat out record #25 ?

Yes, because #15 should be #1.

Was this a hell of a day of carnage amongst pop icons, or what? I guess the closest one I can remember to this was when Jimmy Stewart and Robert Mitchum (and Charles Kuralt) all died on the same day. (I think - they may actually have been spread out over two days, but I seem to remember they all went the same day.) I wonder if that one had the same sort of impact on people who grew up in the 40s or 50s as this one does on the ones who grew up in the 70s and 80s? I would tend to doubt it, because they were all fairly old geezers who'd lived full lives so it wasn't completely out of the blue. But Michael at 50? Geez.

This is so huge that I was just watching MTV where they were actually covering a topic that dealt with music! So you know this has to be a big event, to trigger something so unusual as that.

But anyhow, Michael Jackson was another one of those cases (like Phil Spector, mentioned a couple of weeks ago) where the price of genius seems to be huge personal demons to struggle with. Who knows if anyone could handle the massive fame Jackson had to struggle with without losing it, especially since he became one of the biggest stars in the world at age 5 and then saw his fame continue to grow beyond even that? People have always wondered why so many child stars go so spectacularly astray when they reach adulthood, but I've always thought it was even more strange that some of them DON'T. The Shirley Temples and Jodie Fosters of the world have just got to be exceptional people to begin with. And there are few who got it worse than Jackson, and it's no wonder a man who was thrust into the limelight at such a young age and was never able to step out of it, and was called the biggest star in the world and seriously was credited with contributing to the end of the Cold War might lose his bearings.

Hell, even Alex Chilton went a little funny in the head, and he had nowhere near the experience with the Box Tops as Jackson had.

Anyhow, I'm rambling trying to wrestle Jackson's life into some sort of recognizable narrative or context. Who knows if that can be done? But I think Nosepail already paid him the greatest tribute - look at that list of albums released the same year as Thriller - #2 is my actual favorite from that year, but I can't honestly say that the choice for #1 is incorrect. In retrospect, 1983 was one mofo of a year for music, and Jacko towered over it like no one else.

Nice comparison/contrast between the two artists who did dominate mainstream music for the decade of the 80s. So was Janet's work with Jam & Lewis the closest thing to a synthesis of the two?

Speaking of Purple Rain, has anyone checked out the free tribute album to it you can download from Spin yet? The only time I ever think about it is at work, but to get the download you have to answer a question from a page in the magazine, and I never think to check that when I'm home.

OK, after a weekend of being innundated with MJ's catalog, which songs can you still bear to hear? Which songs would you not mind hearing right now. I think I can only tolerate:

* ABC
* Billy Jean
* Beat It
* State Of Shock (one I actually havent heard on the radio)

The opening riffs to Wanna Be Starting Something and Rock With You send me sprinting to the radio dial. A week ago I liked those songs!

Yeah, I never want to see another MJ video again, after all the MTV's were overplaying them. And I never want to hear another post-Thriller song by him again, either. But I pretty much already felt that way before he died. Off the Wall hasn't left the CD player yet, though. Imagine what it's like in Eastern Europe, though. That guy was bigger than Lech Walesa.

Maybe it's because I don't listen to the radio much or watch MTV, but there are a bunch of MJ songs I could listen to and dig right now:

I Want You Back
ABC
The Love You Save
I'll Be There
Off the Wall
Rock With You
Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)
Dancing Machine
Beat It
Billie Jean
Thriller
Man in the Mirror

I saw the Reivers Saturday night and they played a stripped-down cover of "Shake Your Body."

The Embarrassment's cover of "Don't Stop" is still one of the best. I love that the video is shot at what looks to be someone's backyard party.

[video.google.com]

dirty diana
beat it
rock with you
7-8 jack 5 cuts
don't stop
i'm a pedophile and i have the little boy blues

It's 3:54 am here (Atlantic time zone.)

I just found out, this very minute, right here on the Trouser Press board.

(Haven't had a the tv, radio, or internet on in nine hours.)

I cannot imagine this world without Michael Jackson (though, so far, it feels pretty much the same.)

It's a little frightening.

I guess death is inevitable. And not very predictable.

M. Johnson wrote:

> I guess death is inevitable. And not very predictable.

It certainly is inevitable, and it is frequently all too predictable when you know all the details.

and

death tastes like chicken.

back 2 bach bakers.
all is right with the world.

RE: After all the band recorded many songs, if not hits, on Michaels old organ.


not to mention a bunch of orange county kids who played with his organ on the weekends

Michael Jackson and Prince both hit their peak around the same time (well, just a year apart anyway). They had the biggest hits of the year, in consecutive years. It's probably safe to say that in the '80s, they were the two most famous African-American figures in pop music. Both were seen, rightly, as musical geniuses. Both had rather troubled (though very different) childhoods. And both were known, then as now, to have a pretty deep streak of weirdness.

Fast-forward a quarter-century, and it's amazing to consider how divergent their career paths and lives have been. Purple Rain was the peak of Prince's commercial success, but he managed to view it as a big spike on a very long graph. At times, he may have viewed it as a high bar that he'd like to top, but he seldom fretted over it, and he never let it define him or his music. He became incredibly prolific: if you include special albums for his fan club, his output averages more than one album of new studio material per year. (That's not even considering that several of his albums have been multiple-disc sets.) And his personal brand of weirdness has turned out to be essentially benign.

Purple Rain was like a solar flare: a strong, powerful phenomenon, astonishing and beautiful to witness, but not one that interfered with the essence or performance of its originator. Thriller, on the other hand, turned out to be a supernova. Michael became obsessed with topping it, even though it never was possible. (I've read that, during the recording of Bad, he had a note taped to his bathroom mirror to inspire him: "100 million copies." Imagine looking at a note like that every day before starting work.) Each subsequent album took years to make, partly because he felt that each new album, even if it couldn't out-do Thriller, still had to be an event. After Thriller, he managed to record and release four albums of new material in 26 years. And even if you believe he was innocent of the crimes he was accused of, it's clear that his personal weirdness took him to depths that few mortals could stand to face.

> So was Janet's work with Jam & Lewis the closest thing to a synthesis of the two?

Perhaps, insofar as MTV made Janet a star. MJ and Prince both became stars in the video age; Michael almost single-handedly broke down MTV's color line, and Prince's pseudo-autobiographical movie made him a superstar. With those two stars, though, their visual presences served to draw attention to what they had to offer musically. Janet Jackson, on the other hand, owes her success almost entirely to her appearance and dance moves on screen. No one involved musically in Janet's career — not Jimmy Jam or Terry Lewis, and certainly not Janet herself — has anything approaching the genius of either Janet's brother or Jam & Lewis' former employer. (I never considered that connection; very nice, Reno.)

I do have that issue of Spin at home, but haven't downloaded the tribute album yet — probably because I almost never download music at all. I can see, though, that I'll have to get around to that approach before much longer. I don't have a working 8-track player, so how else am I gonna get the new Cheap Trick?

Delvin wrote:

> I don't have a working 8-track player, so how else am I gonna get the
> new Cheap Trick?

You could buy the CD from Amazon...? The album is pretty darn good. The production quality is rock solid.

Surely there's a '78 Camaro you could borrow from someone to listen to it. I'm going to add it to the collection of 8-tracks I have:

Just Another Band From L.A. -- Mothers of Invention
Tommy (pt. 2) -- The Who (who needs that context-filling first part?)
The Beatles (pt. 1) -- The Beatles (who needs that experimental stuff?)
The Jazz Singer Soundtrack -- Neil Diamond


Yeah, I need help.

Post Edited (01-14-10 20:03)

Here's my 2 cents:

[40til40.blogspot.com]

It rambles a bit.

Excellent analysis Delvin. I think that explains his marriage to Lisa Marie, and his purchase of the Beatles catalog. He was attempting to merge with two of the biggest stars in the firmament - Elvis and the Fab Four. He wasn't obsessed with music anymore, but simply with being The Biggest.

> By the way Michael Baker, STEVE was looking for you in another post.

Don't say you weren't warned.

And now we will begin to get the rest of the story...

Jackson's 'Missing' Doctor To Speak To Police


Previously, on TP....

M. Johnson wrote:

> I guess death is inevitable. And not very predictable.

It certainly is inevitable, and it is frequently all too predictable when you know all the details.

Wow.

A few early observations / questions:

Did it seem like the media was over-stating the "multitudes" gathering outside the hospital where MJ died? It only appeared like a small crowd to me. With the advent of the WWW, maybe people can ambulance-chase from home and felt no need to throng outside the place?

Michael Jackson seems oddly humanized by death. It might be the only thing that could have made him seem anything less that totally mythic. Forget all the weirdness and the media circus that was (essentially) his entire life and what remains now is that he's just another dead man gone, with a family and children left behind.

Seems like another whole lifetime since he was a "legitimate" pop star. Almost surreal trying to separate that image from the truly bizarre creature he morphed into.

Very strange to contemplate the entire event. Hah! Even his death qualifies as an "event." Weird. Weird. Weird.

I imagine The Onion headline: "Prince and Madonna Forced To Contemplate Their Own Mortality."

Hmmm.

HollowbodyKay wrote:

> Michael Jackson seems oddly humanized by death. It might be
> the only thing that could have made him seem anything less that
> totally mythic. Forget all the weirdness and the media circus
> that was (essentially) his entire life and what remains now is
> that he's just another dead man gone, with a family and
> children left behind.

Death is the great equalizer. You can deny most everything else.

From an early age Michael Jackson was a tragic figure, worthy of Shakespeare. Now his children must contend with his legacy.

So it goes.

Since Jackson's death was announced, it's been a kind of mantra on my mental crawl:

"... monsters like The King Of Pop ... I like the sort of music covered in The Trouser Press because it doesn't create monsters like The King Of Pop ... I like the sort of music covered ..."

...

It's like the "Jeffersonian" ideal of representative government: You go and do your thing for a while and then go on to something else. It was never supposed to be your ENTIRE LIFE from age four until you die. On a global scale.

Sure, there are people who do it for a living ("A Ca-reer! A Ca-reer!"), but ... c'mon.

...

Weirdest image so far? Jackson on screen with Ed @#$%^&* Sullivan! Whoa!

I don't think M.J is really dead. I think this is all a career stunt to send his star above the stratosphere.

You see, when the Hollywood millions and people around the world are attending his funeral in person and via T.V., Michael will jump out of the coffin and shake on some shiny new dance moves in front of the mourners. Yes, people will have heart attacks but it all will be worth it so that Jackson's star in the firmament shines brighter than The Beatles, Elvis and James Brown combined.

"Some people say he lives on an island, with Marilyn Monroe.
Every night Jim Mo-Mor-rison puts on a great big show."

> I don't think M.J is really dead. I think this is all a career stunt ...

I did have at least one friend who, when the news was still just stating that he'd been taken to the hospital, said it probably was a career stunt. She suggested it was a ploy to attract attention to his upcoming concerts in London. I told her, "All 50 of them sold out! Doesn't seem as though he'd have to work very hard to drum up publicity for them!"

What's funny is that I have had somewhat of the opposite reaction - I pretty much shut his music out post-Thriller, so what I heard over the past weekend (which is admittedly not much since I didn't really have the radio on at all over the last few days) reminded me that some of the stuff I ignored wasn't bad at all - "Smooth Criminal" and even "Black or White" wasn't too bad except for the dismal rap break that everyone felt compelled to stick into their songs around that period.

And I agree, I definitely wouldn't mind hearing "State of Shock" again - that one does seem to have completely fallen off the radar and I haven't heard it in probably over a decade.

(Off topic, but since I mentioned the tendency in the early 90s to try to shove a rap up the ass of every song, I always liked TLC songs until they had to hand the mic over to Left-Eye Lopez to drive a stake through the heart of whatever groove they had going with a misplaced rap.)

The impulse to "shove a rap up the ass of every song" is especially embarassing when incorporated into a country song. I saw a performer do this on the Country Music Awards once about 10 years ago and it was so appalling I swore off awards shows of all kinds from that point on. Have not watched a grammys, oscars, emmys, etc since.

There's a thread...

I think "State of Shock" still sucks, esp. that Mick Jagger break down at the end. It's right down there with "Emotional Rescue".

Jackson just became less and less musically interesting as he went on, for me. BAD was a huge disappointment, in that there are some decent songs on it, but nothing as chance-taking as he was capable of. Even his mainstream stuff off his first two albums sounds better -- smarter -- than anything after that. He did some decent pop, to be sure, but nothing that would make him stand out or push the envelope. It all just sounds the same, but with less...purpose, other than money. Yeah, yeah, he was always out to make money, but there's "to make money" and there's "what I'm doing will still make money and I don't have to kiss ass to do it".

I spent a lot of time listening to Jackson -- his family, the older stuff, the videos -- over the weekend. A lot of head shaking, self-correction, and videos that became less and less interesting and more about showing off. You just want to go back in time and convince the guy that he could do what the great commercially successful artists did, which was to take your audience along for the ride, and let them grow with you. Jackson didn't seem to do this after he hit it out of the park. He just seemed content to hit the damned thing and run rather than teach people how to hit a curveball. In that, he seems similar to Elvis than anyone else, and that cautionary tale should upset everyone who hears it.

Sorry, I'm getting redundant here, and I talked about a lot of this in my self-promoting blog. The big surprise was how much The Jacksons stuff stands out. I could listen to "Shake Your Body" all night without getting bored.

[news.yahoo.com]


If Mike had lived, this would've been his next look.



Post Edited (06-30-09 08:58)

Quote

If Mike had lived, this would've been his next look.

Not according to this:



It would appear that they think he was morphing into a Shmoo. Or is it supposed to be Gloop or Gleep from The Herculoids?

It would be wrong to say that Jackson's death has been ALL I've been thinking about lately, but every time I return to it, I find myself fairly floored.

I was speaking to my mother tonight and told her it reminded me of the classic fable or story where a wish is granted in a perverted, unexpected fashion. My mother was wondering if maybe he'd made a deal with the devil. I said it seemed more likely to me that the deal-maker had been his dad. Either works, really.

...

"I wanna be the strongest man in the world!"
OK. But everything you touch breaks.

...

This all makes Elvis look positively mundane. Even The Incredible Hulk is involved in the fiasco! I mean, who else are you gonna train for your comeback with?

Weirder every instant.

(((Edited "Schmoo" to "Shmoo." Reminds me of that Lenny Bruce bit where he runs down a list of things and declares them either "Jewish" or "Goy" - the latter appears to be the overwhelmingly favored spelling))).



Post Edited (06-30-09 20:02)

Mr. Toland came up with a pretty darn good playlist right there.

Quote

The Embarrassment's cover of "Don't Stop" is still one of the best. I love that the video is shot at what looks to be someone's backyard party.

[video.google.com]

- Caetano Velsoso's bossa nova version of "Billie Jean"

- Crispin Glover "Ben"

I don't know that it's that good of a cover, but I've always felt sorry for sitting on and breaking my brother's blue-vinyl 45 of Graham Parker doing "I Want You Back."

But the lesson is, a sofa is no place to leave 45s lying around, even if it is right next to the stereo.

Anyone watch The Michael Jackson Story on BET this past weekend? The father was played by Boom Boom Washington, I believe.

I never saw him live, but MJ came to visit me in the hospital. This was back in the early 70s. I was six years old and in Children's Heart Hospital in Philadelphia for a year due to severe asthma. The Jackson 5 stopped over and performed. They were great. I was looking for Michael Jackson after the performance, but couldn't find him. Unfortunately, I never got his autograph. Poor me, right?



Post Edited (06-29-09 16:03)

I did see MJ perform live, in 1988 in Denver. I was lucky to get a ticket to that one. (He sold out four nights at McNichols Arena.) I saw Prince perform there later that year.

The funny thing was, none of my friends wanted to go with me to either show. (Actually, it wasn't funny at the time.) To every one of them, both artists were passé. I actually got laughed at by at least a couple of people, when they learned I was going to see Michael.

Their loss, for certain. Both performers put on astonishing shows. Their respective commercial peaks were behind them, but both still were in full command of their creative powers.

[news.yahoo.com]

Horribly lazy newsroom practises mean't that there were rumours of Jeff Goldblum dying in a fall while filming in New Zealand just after the MJ / Farrah news. Turned out to be a hoax, but the idiots ran with it for an hour.

Am I the only one here who's actually surprised that MJ made it to 50?

In many ways, he'd been under steadily increasing stress since Thriller collapsed into its neutron-star phase. Photos over the past 20 years or so have shown a man who's looked less and less healthy. Attribute that to cosmetic changes gone awry, but plenty of other factors could have caused his health to erode.

Any musician gains energy from inspiration and creativity. But his obsession with topping Thriller seemed to reduce his inspiration to calculation. The diminishing commercial returns on his later work must have caused tremendous crises of confidence. He had stated in interviews, more than once, that performing on stage was the only place where he felt completely comfortable; his last concert performance was in 2001.

Add to that his increasing isolation, two divorces, the boundless public attention (much of it far from uplifting), the mounting debts, the crimes he was accused of, and an insanely public criminal trial ... and you get a picture of a person whose mind surely must have devolved into a dark, tortured place ... and taken his body along with it.

I was surprised but happy, considering. I always wanted him to have a legit comeback -- to throw off the crap around him and make another really good album. I felt like that would mean he'd triumphed over his demons, and set an example. Can't believe I was that optimistic.

Last night I made the comment that maybe all the surgeries, etc., was to make it where he would look the same, no matter how much he aged -- that he'd hit a point where he'd never change, grow older looking, whatever. For the last 10 years or so, he seemed to have done it. Once he hit this last "look", he doesn't move from it, although there's some deterioration at times (ewww!). The weirdest look for me is the one from the "You Are Not Alone" video, with the short, parted in the middle hair do, bleached skin, and not a muscle to be seen. He looks like one of the Kraftwerk robots they used to have play in concert.

God, what a sad, strange little man. I feel so sorry for him. I really do. It's weird to think that, as much as I didn't listen to his stuff, how he was a part of my life, and all of ours, whether we wanted him there or not.

"maybe all the surgeries, etc., was to make it where he would look the same, no matter how much he aged -- that he'd hit a point where he'd never change, grow older looking, whatever."

My friend, Eddie, has the same approach. But he and his band wear Mexican wrestling masks...it's worked well for them. Maybe Michael should have taken note.

The Residents have a smiliar approach.

Maybe he overcame the appearance of aging, but there was still the problem of the uncanny valley.

Ha ha ha! Good thought, Erik! Even Kiss hasn't had the success with its anti-aging approach that Los Straitjackets have had with theirs.

He actually said to me a long time ago that he could see the band doing this well into their 70s--the masks being one of the reasons. (It was on the record, so I'm not betraying confidence.) He's 56 now, and they're going strong. And the young drummer (Jason--a great, great, guy) has to help drive things along.

Well, I hope Jason drives them out to Colorado soon. Seeing them again would be a treat!

It's just been announced that Alexas Arguello has been found dead. I was going to make a case for him having relevance to this board due to his mention in Warren Zevon's "Boom Boom Mancini," then recalled that despite many declarations (most made by me) that an entry on Zevon was imminent, there is yet to be one. So technically Zevon remains a non-TP artist and thus Arguello's relevance to this board remains tenuous at best.