Hi Nichole,
Well how about Michael Jackson? Shit! He always looked a bit peaked to me but I sure didn’t see this coming. You know when I was coming up in the sixties Motown and Stax records were producing some of my all time favorite music. Motown had that real full, orchestrated, Phil Spector sortta sound. Phil Spector, now there’s a bizarre story. But I digress. Stax had a more stripped down funky sound. I always gravitated to the Stax and Atlantic records approach. The Motown machine seemed to get real traction but the sound evolved over the years and by the time Michael Jackson was making his first records the only Motown artist who was really capturing my imagination was Marvin Gaye. Of course Michael was only like five years old at the time. By 1970 I was pretty much into the Grateful Dead, stuff like Jeff Beck and pretty soon Bob Marley. So I really missed Michael Jackson until Thriller came out. Produced by Quincy Jones, Thriller was over the top. Up until Thriller, the fairly new MTV was being accused of shutting out black performers. Thriller took MTV over and totally changed music television both in terms of content and visual production values. For a while MTV was kinda cool, even for an old fuck like me. So that was about the extent of my involvement in his music.
The other Michael Jackson was this extremely private, self protective person who couldn’t help but live the most public life in history. He always seemed to be doing such weird shit. Strange fashion changes including, but not limited to, skin pigment adjustments. Turning his yard into Disneyland. Having little kids over to play with Barbies and shit. As every stand up comedian in the world noted “gee Michael if you weren’t so shit bird odd people would not spend so much of their lives speculating on the question, how shit bird odd are you?” But you know, he never was convicted on any of those pedophilia charges, he always appeared be a decent sort, he had a good message in his music for the young folks who loved him, and the mother fucker surely could dance and sing, fergetaboutit.
Being odd is not illegal, being rich is not illegal, being the most famous person in the world is not illegal. This culture has this tendency of finding certain people, treating them like some deity, waiting until they are comfortable in the role and then like some early twentieth century lynch mob grabbing them up, hanging ’em from a tree, and throwing shit at them until they die. I don’t know, I guess I just really don’t see the humor in that.
Love dad
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