The Column

Friday, June 26, 2009

Jackson, before and after becoming weird

Like the Kennedy assassination, the death of Elvis, and the murder of John Lennon, a generation of people will remember exactly where they were when Michael Jackson died.

For the record, I was hanging out with a few friends, eating pizza, when one of my friends got a text message. After an incredulous "no way!" we turned on the TV to see the first reports.

Jackson wasn't exactly a performer who turned my head. Talented, sure. Knew how to deliver a song, definitely. Mixed dance steps with catchy vocals and hook-laden songs, without a doubt. But maybe it's because I'm of a slightly older generation (though Jackson was only a year younger than me), and because my tastes in music lean toward tight, edgy arrangements played on real instruments (leaving most electronic stuff for the amateurs) with occasional, no-nonsense vocals. My music collection has a lot of jazz, a healthy dose of blues, bluegrass, some country, rock, gospel, and classical. There's not a single Jackson side in there anywhere, and the 80s is a decade largely overlooked in my collection.

Years ago I did have one Michael Jackson album, "Off The Wall." It wasn't mine; it belonged to an ex-wife so you could say I married it. Or something. But I did like that album. Michael at the time was in his early 20s, his Jackson Five days were behind him, and he hadn't started getting into those freaky things folks call his persona yet. He was just a young black man with a respectable 'fro, and he was good. Even though his later accomplishments outsold "Off The Wall," I'll look you in the eye and say that album was Jackson at his best.

Somewhere along the line the wheels came off, and the public ate it up. He developed the look, which spurred a lot of comaprisons to the then-woeful Atlanta Braves -- both wore one glove and no one was sure why.

As a musician, I can appreciate the visual aspects of performing. My old mandolin player used to use two benchmarks to judge a musician -- his ability and whether he "looks like a character." I do have my own look and mannerisms when I play -- I'm usually pretty animated, running off all this nervous energy, and I dress a certain way when I'm on, so the mandolin player decided I looked like a character. Michael Jackson definitely looked like a character, that is until he started looking like a nightmare.

I don't consider Jackson a musical superstar. His music, as I mentioned, didn't exactly grab me by the ears. But you can call him a multimedia superstar and I won't dispute that. The music, the dance (good enough to get Fred Astaire's respect), later the filmmaking -- his Thriller was an OK song, but the video was what made it something special. The video also ushered in a new art form as the music went visual.

In the mid-90s and later, Jackson spent less time singing and dancing, and more time just being strange. He became a favorite of the trash tabloids. In the past decade the young black man was transformed to a white dude with witchy hair, decomposed nose, and child molestation charges hanging over his head. And his personal life became a well-documented train wreck. So well-documented that I'm not going to waste space belaboring all of it. That's what tabloids and trash blogs are for.

Michael Jackson was 50 years old, with quite a body of work behind him. Even though he was old enough for AARP membership, you can almost put him in the same camp with John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, or jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown. His career had an open end. There are still questions of what he might have accomplished had he been able to concentrate on his work instead of on being a weirdo. There's still a disquieting feeling that what you heard up until 1990 or so merely hinted at the gift he had in him.

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