RIP Nostalgia
Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett AND Michael Jackson all in one week. those are some hard hits for entertainment royalty.
Comments
Wow, the MJ death really took me by surprise. I know he had a rough last decade, but it seemed like he was trying to make a legit comeback. That is a shame for all three though.
Jack-o is faking his death. He just did that concert in London, saying it would be his biggest and best. I say he gets some plastic surgery, goes black again, moves to some island somewhere, and lives off the Beatle money forever.
Orrrrrrr he scored a shit ton of amphetamines to get his 50-year old fucked-up self through an exhaustive show and they took their toll on his heart.
I was reading an obituary and suddenly struck by how damned bizarre the whole long story is. I wondered how supremely weird it would be to read this same sentence as a person 300 years in the future: “He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters.”
I have a feeling Paul McCartney and South Carolina’s governor are both rubbing their hands together and laughing somewhere right now.
And how unexpected that Elizabeth Taylor outlived Jackson. I would have never predicted that in a million years.
Honestly, not to speak ill of the dead and not even getting into all the questions about his later in life behavior……I never really got the feverish appeal of Michael Jackson. I mean I was 13 when Thriller came out and I didn’t know anyone in my age bracket who liked Thriller. It was all young kids and like older parents and grandmothers. I realize that’s a pretty gigantic demographic, just as it is now but I was never quite sure how this retroactive musical credibility came to be. He just always seemed to me to be all marketing and really good production (Quincy Jones). He could sing and dance, no doubt but the whole musical genius thing….I just never got it. Especially when Prince was around at the same time, writing every note, playing every instrument, and just generally pushing the boundaries of music at the time.
I, for one, loved Thriller. I loved the weird makeup, the choreography, Vincent Price, I loved it all. This past Halloween, I was at a county fair on something like “The Music Express” with Thriller blaring and a stomach full of fried dough. It was a great seasonal moment that still makes me smile.
I think he had a lot of catchy tunes, an original dance style, and put his own spin on fashion at the time (all with the help of stylists, marketers, and publicists). I even enjoyed two of his last videos, the one with Magic Johnson(Remember the Time) where at the end somebody just turned to dust. And the “Black/White” video was cool because it was just when people started experimenting with that whole morphing-peoples-faces technology. At that point, I wasn’t a fan of the music, but the videos were neat.
I should add I suppose that I love the Jackson 5.