Michael Jackson RIP

[Salty Swift]

i'm curious where you put disco in all of this? is disco simply a subgenre of 'soulless soul' from the mid to late 70's, or is it something else altogether? because i think jackson's music has more to do with that than it does with motown and soul of the 60's.

A really good example of successful disco with soul is this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtAIyYW1Fzc

Easily my all-time favorite title involving MJ when he was still performing with the Jackson 5 (or maybe they were the Jacksons at this point). And they had a powerful political message back then: all you gotta do is dance, dance, dance!

Michael was such a gorgeous kid, especially back in those days, when he had an afro.....man, I miss him
This is just one of the reasons why I miss him so....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW1fXL3s7bk

[Jared McKinley]

yeah. i'm far to young to have "been there" during disco (born five months before Thriller came out) and have only experienced the music through its recent cultural reevaluation via queer theory. i like to think that i like soul music, and certainly feel like i should, but i listen to donna summer way more. anything involving georgio moroder and cool synthesizers, really. a shame, i know.

MJ's death kinda got me thinking: i will actually feel pretty devastated when prince dies, and i should see him perform at least once before that happens.

I saw Prince at Coachella last year. Though I don't really dig the new stuff, and though his band arrogantly stumbled through Radiohead's "creep" acting like, "yeah we can play your simplistic indie shit", Prince himself was flawless. He was so flawless that I really contemplated that he might not be human but an android. Nobody is that ON all the time. Flawless choreography, flawless vocals, never a moment off. I was floored. That is the only time I have ever seen him life. He brought out The Time and Sheila E. It was fucking awesome. Especially on the old tunes. I totally came in my pants.

RE Michael Jackson. I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone can say he was part of the de-souling of soul. That kid had fucking soul. He did what Tina Turner did, though more successfully, which is hybridize his background with rock music. In fact, I hypothesize that he never repeated the same success he had with Thriller because the future albums lacked that rock sound he incorporated. That is a wild guess really. And it doesn't account for the very successful and wonderful singles he managed later. I mean, fuckin Smooth Criminal is a fucking awesome song. Then again, it's kinda rockin too.

Michael is not as flawless as Prince as a performer. But I think his influence is gonna be longer lasting. MJ is known the world over. Prince, though pretty fucking gigantic, is no MJ.

That said: a man who can sport glass high-heeled boots, extremely effeminate clothing, performing at the superbowl with a bunch of football idiots, and instead of getting his ass kicked, is loved? Shit, that is fucking amazing.

[washline]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... 4369.story

[Dan Warburton]

"He loved the poetry section," Dave Dutton said as Dirk chimed in that Ralph Waldo Emerson was Jackson's favorite. "I think you would find a great deal of the transcendental, all-accepting philosophy in his lyrics."

Like this, for example:

Your Butt Is Mine
Gonna Take You Right
Just Show Your Face
In Broad Daylight
I'm Telling You
On How I Feel
Gonna Hurt Your Mind
Don't Shoot To Kill
Come On, Come On,
Lay It On Me All Right...

[washline]

Hey, don't you be talking no shit about my man MJ, Big Danny Warbutts! Don't you realize he's become the "transcendental signified?" I don't care if he's written some doggerel. he's a great artist and we're not to speak ill of him on this forum. he was the true soul of soul. He was the crossover man, the hybrid of race and sound! And now that he's dead, he's going to become the new Elvis!

[Jared McKinley]

"He loved the poetry section," Dave Dutton said as Dirk chimed in that Ralph Waldo Emerson was Jackson's favorite. "I think you would find a great deal of the transcendental, all-accepting philosophy in his lyrics."

Like this, for example:

Your Butt Is Mine
Gonna Take You Right
Just Show Your Face
In Broad Daylight
I'm Telling You
On How I Feel
Gonna Hurt Your Mind
Don't Shoot To Kill
Come On, Come On,
Lay It On Me All Right...

Fuck yeah! That's even better than that hack Emerson.

[tarfumes]

RE Michael Jackson. I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone can say he was part of the de-souling of soul. That kid had fucking soul. He did what Tina Turner did, though more successfully, which is hybridize his background with rock music. In fact, I hypothesize that he never repeated the same success he had with Thriller because the future albums lacked that rock sound he incorporated. That is a wild guess really. And it doesn't account for the very successful and wonderful singles he managed later. I mean, fuckin Smooth Criminal is a fucking awesome song. Then again, it's kinda rockin too.

Actually, he took some stabs at repeating the "Beat It" formula post-Thriller, from the clumsy ("Dirty Diana" from Bad) to the largely successful ("Black or White" from Dangerous). I think the main reason he didn't repeat his Thriller success was that he seemed to be constantly second-guessing himself with regards to what he thought audiences wanted. Instead of trying to expand on the groundbreaking arrangements of Thriller, he was mostly flailing around trying to hit a moving (and rapidly fragmenting) target. Also, the debacle of the Jacksons' Victory tour ($30 tickets!) turned public opinion against him, long before the accusations of child molestation emerged (and washline's Ishmael Reed/Counterpunch post above gives a much-needed perspective on those charges). After that, it's no wonder Bad wasn't as big a hit as Thriller...but hardly anything could have been.

It should be noted, however, that Off The Wall didn't have any guitar-heavy songs and was still as big a crossover hit as was possible at the time.

[Jared McKinley]

RE Michael Jackson. I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone can say he was part of the de-souling of soul. That kid had fucking soul. He did what Tina Turner did, though more successfully, which is hybridize his background with rock music. In fact, I hypothesize that he never repeated the same success he had with Thriller because the future albums lacked that rock sound he incorporated. That is a wild guess really. And it doesn't account for the very successful and wonderful singles he managed later. I mean, fuckin Smooth Criminal is a fucking awesome song. Then again, it's kinda rockin too.

Actually, he took some stabs at repeating the "Beat It" formula post-Thriller, from the clumsy ("Dirty Diana" from Bad) to the largely successful ("Black or White" from Dangerous). I think the main reason he didn't repeat his Thriller success was that he seemed to be constantly second-guessing himself with regards to what he thought audiences wanted. Instead of trying to expand on the groundbreaking arrangements of Thriller, he was mostly flailing around trying to hit a moving (and rapidly fragmenting) target. Also, the debacle of the Jacksons' Victory tour ($30 tickets!) turned public opinion against him, long before the accusations of child molestation emerged (and washline's Ishmael Reed/Counterpunch post above gives a much-needed perspective on those charges). After that, it's no wonder Bad wasn't as big a hit as Thriller...but hardly anything could have been.

It should be noted, however, that Off The Wall didn't have any guitar-heavy songs and was still as big a crossover hit as was possible at the time.

Dude. Yer high. Dirty Diana is a fucking awesome song.

And I admit. I love Bad too.

but I am probably no connoisseur of taste. I love Dirty Diana much more than Black or White. In fact, Black or White is a weak ass song. I change my mind. I am not going to play humble here. You're high.

[Alastair]

Fuck yeah! That's even better than that hack Emerson.

[bedouin]

^^^
hahaha
Keith must have been some hacker to debug that one...

[yonhosago]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TJPX8aPIGo

Embarrasing like there's no tomorrow.

The Orfeón de Carabineros de Chile (something like the police force brass band) playing "We are the world" outside La Moneda (presidential palace) paying hommage to MJ.

Obviously the people loved it.



What can I say, I live in a third to fourth world country mothafockas!

[jon abbey]

What can I say, I live in a third to fourth world country mothafockas!

pretty sure we all do at this point.

[Jesse]

What can I say, I live in a third to fourth world country mothafockas!

pretty sure we all do at this point.

[maRi]

The Orfeón de Carabineros de Chile (something like the police force brass band) playing "We are the world" outside La Moneda (presidential palace) paying hommage to MJ.

Obviously the people loved it.

I think the clip is nice. I love "Remember the Time" performed by Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. This band is not as good, but they are not embarrassing. So, what do you find embarrassing? None of this seems typical of or specific to the Third World.

[Noj]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELyTBXzfQJ8

[yonhosago]

The Orfeón de Carabineros de Chile (something like the police force brass band) playing "We are the world" outside La Moneda (presidential palace) paying hommage to MJ.

Obviously the people loved it.

I think the clip is nice. I love "Remember the Time" performed by Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. This band is not as good, but they are not embarrassing. So, what do you find embarrassing? None of this seems typical of or specific to the Third World.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6oNNCmjD-Y

[yonhosago]

On a side note to this. Here in Chile, where people know little english, or pronounce it very bad, songs are memorized phonetically, and many popular or marginal verbal expressions are derived from english words, or english words are used directly with a spanish meaning or usage (wittgenstein "the meaning is the usage": here in Chile the act of computer chatting -msn, gmail, slsk, etc- is known as chatear; an english professor I knew a while ago lived in a very popular hood; the little kids from the hood, knowing he was an english teacher, asked him "Hey teacher, how do you say chatear in english?"); so, here, when people sing MJ's "We are the world" they sing (and you hear): "We are the world.....we are the Chile".

Am I being serious? Hell yeah....I'm bad, I'm off the wall serious!

[yonhosago]

The Orfeón de Carabineros de Chile (something like the police force brass band) playing "We are the world" outside La Moneda (presidential palace) paying hommage to MJ.

Obviously the people loved it.

I think the clip is nice. I love "Remember the Time" performed by Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. This band is not as good, but they are not embarrassing. So, what do you find embarrassing? None of this seems typical of or specific to the Third World.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6oNNCmjD-Y

why I posted a random link of one the few visual documents of the bombing of La Moneda palace in 1973 as response of why a police brass band playing MJ's "We are the world" just outside La Moneda palace yesterday is something typically third world?

Essentially for the same reasons an event like Rumble in the Jungle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rumble_in_the_Jungle) was something typically third world. A stellar boxing event, with a side all-black stars music festival, all held IN THE SAME stadium/venue were weeks before the event (and the arrival of the international TV cameras) political prisioners were executed in secret.