{"id":4985,"date":"2009-06-26T08:06:02","date_gmt":"2009-06-26T13:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4985"},"modified":"2009-06-26T08:06:02","modified_gmt":"2009-06-26T13:06:02","slug":"as-things-were","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4985","title":{"rendered":"As Things Were"},"content":{"rendered":"

It occurred to me last night; my kids have no concept of Michael Jackson, other than the freakish tabloid-fodder plastic-surgery nightmare figure he’s been their entire lives.\u00a0 Indeed, I dont’ think anyone under age thirty has any other reference for Jackson.<\/p>\n

But walking through the parking lot at Rainbow yesterday, I did <\/em>hear three different people cranking Thriller <\/em>and Off The Wall<\/em> in their cars.
\nAfter the past twenty years of tabloid fodder, it’s easy to forget…<\/p>\n

…well, I almost wrote “Who Michael Jackson really was”.\u00a0 I don’t know if Jackson himself, much less anyone else, knew that answer.<\/p>\n

But it is easy to forget the swathe he cut through popular music from the late sixties to about 1988.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s hard to remember sometimes that the Jackson Five <\/a>were not just a child-prodigy novelty act,<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

…or that Off The Wall, <\/em>cut when he was barely twenty, <\/em>was not only one of the highest points of seventies R’nB…
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

…but a hell of a lot of fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s been plenty written about Thriller\u00a0 <\/em>– the biggest selling record of all time, and one of the soundtrack albums for the entire decade.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Plenty has been written about Thriller<\/em>.\u00a0 I really have only one thing to add.\u00a0 Growing up (at that time, going to college) in one of the very whitest places in the world (I never met an Afro-American face-to-face until my late teens), I didn’t encounter a whole lot of R’nB as a kid.\u00a0 Or late teen.\u00a0 Or college kid.\u00a0 It took an album like Thriller <\/em>to crack places like…<\/p>\n

…well, everywhere.\u00a0 Especially where I <\/em>was at the time.<\/p>\n

The early eighties were one of the great periods in the history of popular music not because of Thriller<\/em>, necessarily, but because of something that helped producer the album: in the early eightes, like the mid-fifties and the mid-sixties, “black” and “white” music cross-pollinated like ever before and, sadly, never since.<\/p>\n

In 1981,popular music was divided as strictly as Berlin was.\u00a0 R’nB and rock met on the top forty, but only as a measurement of sales.\u00a0 Black audiences and white audiences prett much kept to themselves.\u00a0 And MTV was getting beaten on for only playing white artists (back when, for those who remember, they actually played music videos).
\nAnd then, Eddie Van Halen played on a Michael Jackson song<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And for half a decade or so, the black and white divide in music evaporated.\u00a0 Almost overnight, the best rock band in America was two white guys, two white girls and two black guys led by a pint-sized prodigy from Minneapolis.\u00a0 Suddenly synth-pop imported R’nB conventions wholesale.\u00a0 Suddenly Aerosmith <\/em>led rap’s crossover to the mainstream.\u00a0 For half a decade or so, black
\nCould that happen with music today?\u00a0 At all?
\nOf course not.\u00a0 I doubt it could ever happen again.\u00a0 But while it lasted, it was amazing.<\/p>\n

All of the King’s psychologists, and all the King’s prescription meds, couldn’t untangle the workings of Jackson’s mind; growing up with a psychotic stage father who almost literally tortured his children to stardom, the mind-warping fame in his early teens, being the biggest star in the world at a time when most kids are just getting over acne and learning to drive inside the speed limit.<\/p>\n

Jackson was poised for a “comeback”, starting next month.\u00a0 It’s tempting to wonder – could it have worked?\u00a0 If it had, it’d have been a first.\u00a0 Most superstars – like Jackson’s ex-father-in-law and, now, fellow casualty of fame, Elvis Presley – are motivated by very different things in their fifties than in their twenties, and so are their audiences.\u00a0 Some superstars – Bruce Springsteen, Prince – lose their original muse, but manage to find another one, more or less gracefully.\u00a0 Others keep flogging the same horse that got them to where they’re at.\u00a0 Could Jackson have extricated himself from the baggage of his own hyper-success, to say nothing of the problems in his own mind, and found that new spark?<\/p>\n

Anyway.\u00a0 Too much thinking.\u00a0 RIP, Michael Jackson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It occurred to me last night; my kids have no concept of Michael Jackson, other than the freakish tabloid-fodder plastic-surgery nightmare figure he’s been their entire lives.\u00a0 Indeed, I dont’ think anyone under age thirty has any other reference for Jackson. But walking through the parking lot at Rainbow yesterday, I did hear three different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoriam","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}