Category: Michael Jackson

The Lydster, Part 66: Dead Rock Stars

(I didn’t have a blog in Lydia’s first year; so here are photos from the summer of 2004. Today Lydia is five and a HALF, so here she is a little more than five years ago.)


I try really hard not to indoctrinate my daughter with my music. I want her to find her own way, and then pick and chose which of mine she’s comfortable with.

But when Michael Jackson died, he was on TV ALL OF THE TIME. She inevitably heard some of his songs. ABC by the Jackson Five is immediately infectious for a child. We went on a car trip during July and I played the first disc from the J5 box set in the car. It’s quite danceable, and now she knows who Michael Jackson is – well, usually; sometimes his morphed appearance confused her. She loves to dance in the house and the solo hits such as Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, Rock With You and Beat It will make her want to move her feet.

A fact that will shock you: I’m a big Beatles fan. I was watching lots of Beatles-related items such as some old videos around 09/09/09. Lydia wanted to know all about them. I said, “That’s a group that was very popular when Daddy was growing up.” Her next question: “Are they still alive?” Well, the drummer is still alive; his name is Ringo. And the guy…THERE…his name is Paul.” Since both John (d. 1980) and George (d. 2001) passed away before she was born (2004), it’s all ancient history to her. She asked over and over about their state of mortality – “Is that one dead?”

Subsequently, EVERY group she heard me play was the Beatles. Sometimes, it WAS the Beatles, but more often it was not. I was slow on the uptake as to why she was so honed in on the Fab Four. It was because of the animated program The Wonder Pets.

From the Amazon description: “The Wonder Pets! get groovy in the newest release, ‘Save the Beetles!’ Yes, the Wonder Pets are called up on the ol’ telly with a request for help from four members of a famous rock band, the Beetles, whose yellow submarine has gotten tangled up in kelp. As they journey to rescue them, they’ll dive straight into Beatlemania pop-culture (and reference numerous Beatles song titles and lyrics along the way!)” She saw this episode at least twice on TV – and I watched it myself at least once. THIS was the real jumping off point.

Mary Travers just died, and on ABC World News, what does the daughter here but “Puff, the Magic Dragon”? I’m singing along, and Lydia asks, “How do YOU know that song? I learned it in day care.” Well, dear, long before you heard it at school, I heard it on the radio.

ROG

ROG

Black or White

In high school and early in my college days, I made attempts to write songs. In retrospect, they probably were not that good, though I do have some affection for a couple of them. Among other things, I realized that I had, on more than one occasion, unintentionally swiped the tune from an existing song. Still, I wish I could find the notebook where I was keeping the lyrics over a number of years.

One of the songs was called “Black or White”. It started:
“My father was a singer of folk songs,
My mama used to hum along.”
I remember that part, because it was true.
In the chorus, there was this couplet:
“It doesn’t matter if it’s black or white.
Music is music if the feeling’s right.”

I do recall the specific inspiration for this song. My father had moved to Charlotte, NC. Whether it was true or his perception, he felt that the gumbo of folk music that he had performed in hometown Binghamton would not fare as well in the South of the 1970s, and for a number of years, he just stopped playing. I found this quite disheartening.

In the same vein, it was a song for Dionne Warwick, Charlie Pride and Jimi Hendrix, who were often put down, including by black people, because they weren’t singing the music they were “supposed” to be playing, jazz, soul or blues, but certainly NOT pop, country or rock. (I have an irrational affection for the song Then Came You by Dionne and the Spinners – “see, she can do soulful; now, SHUT UP, already!”)

When Michael Jackson’s song Black or White came out in 1991, complete with the lyrics “It Don’t Matter If You’re Black Or White,” it made me feel…wistful. If I ever DID find this book and recorded the song, people who think that I had ripped it off from MJ, when i had written it at least a decade and a half earlier. (And no, I don’t believe he ripped it off from me, either.)
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So, I’m waiting and waiting for Fred Hembeck to post something about his daughter Julie’s birthday this week, but nothing. So I write to him, and he tells me I should have been checking out Facebook! I’m mediocre re Facebook at best, and not much better with Twitter. There’s something rather ephemeral about those social network platforms; it’s different with the blog, which is a web LOG. Anyway, belated happy birthday, Julie! Really, I didn’t forget.

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ROG

Yawn – here now the news


I have found a lot of the details of the recent news less than riveting.

The Sanford sex scandal: more hypocrisy from someone who chastised others (in his case, Bill Clinton, among others.) Another sobbing confession; comparing himself to King David was a nice touch though. In fact, the only real issue for me is possible is him being “out of pocket” for a week. Don’t know South Carolina law, but it’s the disappearing that seems to be the real issue. And I can’t help but think that if he HAD notified his staff and the lieutenant governor he was away, the sex part might not have come out at all.

The blow-by-blow of the joke we (not laughingly) call the New York State Senate doesn’t interest me any more. I just want them to grow up and gt back to work. Last week, I asked my wife if she had heard the big news. She said, “You mean how a senator insulted the governor?” I said, “No, that Michael Jackson died.” Don’t even care which senator said what to whom. i DO think that the governor, David Paterson, is looking more..gubernatorial in all of this, though.

And speaking of Michael Jackson, we’ve now gotten into the silly season, and most of what has happened since about Monday, I’ve caught the headlines, but am actively not reading the stories. A couple things I noticed though. Last Friday’s ABC News, which dedicated the majority of the show to Michael, played snippets of songs by the J5 and MJ; they described the first song as “One More Chance-1970” when it was “I Want You Back”. It would have been an understandable error on Thursday as a breaking story on Thursday, but sloppy on Friday. At least two podcasts identified “Ebony and Ivory” as by Paul McCartney and MJ, when it was by Macca and Stevie Wonder. The good news is that a couple of folks – wish I could remember who – who noted that Off the Wall was Revolver to Thriller’s Sgt. Pepper; less well-known but the better album.

Should Bernie Madoff gotten 150 years? Of course not. He should have gotten 99 years, and with good behavior would be out of prison before he hit 120. But seriously, it doesn’t much matter to me.

Oscars are going to have 10 best picture nominees? Whatever. There were double-digit numbers of nominees in several categories in the late 1930s (and I don’t care enough to even look it up!) I do recall that 1939, one of the best years in cinema, had a huge number of nominees. I wonder, though, that by dumping some of the non-competitive awards, it will change the character of the show. And would the nomination of, say, The Dark Knight and WALL-E (probably) in the Best Picture mix have changed the outcome last year? Unknowable, of course.

I’m watching Bill Moyers on PBS tonight, but even after that shot of Christianity in the liberal tradition, I’m convinced most people will still believe that when they hear the words “Christian in America”, they’ll assume, in the words of local pastor Jo Page: “anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-socialized medicine, pro-gun rights, pro-creationism, pro-abstinence and literalist when it comes to reading the Bible.”

Is Shia Labouef dating Megan Fox? Surely, I don’t care, but am surprised to note that I actually know who they are. (I saw the movie “Holes” and I read other blogs.)

I do care that Karl Malden died, but he’s been out of the public eye so long – one appearance on the West Wing in 2000, nothing else since 1993 – that most people thought the 97-year-old had passed away years ago. I did watch The Streets of San Francisco regularly, but save for On The Waterfront, I’m not sure I ever saw him on film. And he never convinced me to buy American Express travelers’ checks.
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ROG

I Remember Where I Was When I Heard Michael Jackson Died

I do know and am quite likely to remember how I learned of MJ’s death.

Just as I remember when JFK died – fifth grade, Miss Oberlik’s class, Daniel S. Dickinson School, Binghamton, NY. Just as I remember finding out about the Challenger disaster – working in the back room at FantaCo Enterprises, the late comic book store store on Central Avenue, Albany, NY, while listening to Q-104, when Mary Margaret Apple interrupted the music to give the news.

This is not to say – lest you start to fret – that I’m making a comparison about the import of these events. I am talking about how memory works.

I was at the Albany Public Library, main branch, computer room, shortly after 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 25. I needed to write about my daughter for a blog post the next day. Then I heard someone say to the woman at the desk that Michael Jackson had died. WHA? So I went to CNN and AP, both of whom indicated that Michael had been rushed to the hospital but neither of whom had announced his death. Most sources indicated that TMZ, the Matt Drudge of entertainment sites, WAS declaring Michael dead, but that they were seeking independent verification.

About 15 minutes later, CNN notes that “multiple sources” have noted Michael’s passing. In the moment, I was more peeved that TMZ had been right in breaking the story, that this was a greater sign of the deterioration of the mainstream media, than the death of an entertainer who I’d watched, sometimes with tremendous admiration and other times in disdain, over the past four decades. Someone who, and I ALWAYS hate this, was younger than I am.

The death of Michael Jackson is this fascinating cultural and technological phenomenon. It slowed Twitter to a crawl and taxed much of the rest of the Internet as well.

Here’s what always bothers me about these types of stories. There are folks who say endlessly, “Why do people care about THAT? If people spent more time caring about (pick one or more) world hunger/the health care crisis/the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/whatever, rather than some entertainer’s death, we’d be better off.” It’s often the same people disdain the use of television (they don’t have one or only watch PBS).

I’m willing to bet that if people spent as much time worrying about the health care industry as they did about Michael or Jon & Kate (who I must admit, I didn’t even know who they were until a month ago) or some other “frivolous” thing, it would have next to zero impact on the important issue. It is as though some individuals feel that passion for Off the Wall, Michael’s best album, could be somehow transferable to other, more “significant” things. (Speaking of which, apparently Michael’s soul has been saved, in case you were wondering.) Thank goodness ABC was planning repeats of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice last Thursday so they could preempt them for instant specials on Michael and Farrah Fawcett, who, not unexpectedly, had died earlier that day. (What, no special on Sky Saxon of the Seeds?)

So I will remember how I learned of Michael’s death, just as I remember John Lennon’s (heard it from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football) or the shootings of Lee Harvey Oswald and Robert F. Kennedy (saw them on TV in real time). The intensity of the events will wane, but a piece of the recollection will likely remain.
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Just discovered The Dead Rock Stars Club. Have only been in 2009, but it is quite detailed. Not does it have obvious choices such as MJ, Sky Saxon and Koko Taylor, but more obscure artists such as Viola Wills, and even folks you wouldn’t have thought of in this context: Gale Storm (I’m old enough to remember My Little Margie), Ed McMahon, and David Carradine, e.g.


ROG

ROG

Michael, Farrah, Ed

Just this month, a friend of mine bought me the 1979 Michael Jackson album Off the Wall on CD, after I noted that I only have it on vinyl and that I believed that Off the Wall was better than the album Thriller.

But my appreciation for Michael goes back earlier than that. The first album where Diana Ross “presents” the boys from Gary, Indiana to us was played often in our household. Not that I owned it; my sister did. On the surface, it was a little too childish to buy the music of a group led by a preteen. But I certainly did listen. I watched them on Ed Sullivan and eventually on their Saturday morning cartoon show. (In Gordon’s tribute to MJ, he picked a fine song from that debut album.)

But it was the second collection, ABC, that won me over. Not just the title song – “Sit down, girl, I think I love you” – but especially The Love You Save. I can competently sing every vocal part of that song – save for Michael’s. My sister got the third album, cleverly titled “Third Album”, and the fourth. I once requested on my favorite radio station of the 1970s that the DJ play Maybe Tomorrow, but she cut it off before that great call and response at the end.

I went away to college, appreciating what I had heard, but they left my consciousness until Dancing Machine in 1974, which I simply could not resist. Ultimately, I picked up that 1976 anthology.

There was this Andy Rooney special circa 1978 who did a riff on who was famous and who was not. Paul McCartney was famous; Michael Jackson, to his mind, was not. That would certainly change.

1979’s Off the Wall would sell sell over seven million copies domestically. But Michael’s commercial growth was stalled because MTV wouldn’t play MJ’s music, including the new (1982) Thriller; not their demographic. That is to say, too black. Columbia/Epic said, Fine, we’ll take off our OTHER artists from MTV; MTV capitulated. Given the way that MJ made MTV, and vice versa, it seems unbelievable now.

Every teenaged girl i knew thought that Michael was so “cute”. For whatever reasons, Michael’s appearance began to morph, all the weird stuff began happening. Seriously, I think the vitiligo, the skin disease that I also have messed with his head as much as his reportedly abusive father Joe. But I’m not going there. I choose to remember Michael as this force so powerful that on the Motown 25 special, he performed two non-Motown songs, mesmerizing the audience with his moonwalk, and forever stamped his ticket as a pop legend.
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I hardly ever saw Charlie’s Angels. I know watched one episode at my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC that first season; I think it was the now infamous prison episode. When I bought a notebook with Farrah’s famous red bathing suit on the cover, I said I was being ironic; well, maybe. Used that notebook as a journal and I still have it, actually. She showed that she could act in The Burning Bed, which I did see.

So, I didn’t have a great deal invested in Farrah the icon. But her very public fight with cancer and her dogged determination to tackle it was admirable, if a little uncomfortable.
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I always felt a little sorry for Ed McMahon. It was though, because he “lucked” into a high-profile, long-term job, he was somehow undeserving of it. Stuff happens; if he came onto a great gig, more power to him. Actually, I probably saw him more in his pitchman; he seemed ubiquitous in the roles, and I think it undercut his effectiveness. But he seemed like an OK guy. And in any case, he did not suffer the premature death of the others mentioned herein.
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In more upbeat news:
Help Polyvinyl Save 10,000 Records From Destruction. I did and will be getting Of Montreal and other artists in return.
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My niece Rebecca’s in a Top 40 Cover band, Siren’s Crush.
They’ve been in a battle of the bands and have made it the finals! The final competition is this coming Sunday night, June 28, 2009 at Viejas Casino, San Diego. 7 – 10 PM.
If you’re in the area, please come out and show your support. If you can’t make it, please send out good thoughts.
ROG

ROG
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