Michael Jackson is "evil"

...best one yet.....

I read this thread yesterday, then last night had a v scary dream where the zombie Michael Jackson was trying to kill me. Fortunately, I managed to partially saw through his neck with a bread knife and wake myself up before he did me any serious injury.

well ?

I agree with this too, strangely. Was there an explanation why he's doing that hand thing, though?

This is the time,
for Belial is merciless,
Time for Time's ending.
In the chaos of lust.
This is the time,
For Belial is in your blood,
Time for the birth in you
Of the Others, the Aliens,
Of Itch, of Tetter,
Of tumid Worm.

Michael Jackson is dead.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/fbi-releases-files-on-michael-jackson/?hp
maybe not so evil

The real evil is in the ones that constantly hounded him for that BS. He's was a weird guy, always was, yet it gave everyone a license to take bogus accusations seriously and use them to make a killing off crucifying a pop idol with a bad childhood.

What does it say about him? I'm just on my phone tonight and can't access the .pdfs.

nothing really.

er well nothing NEW I should say.

He hid microfilm in a pumpkin.

Giant pdf files, yummy.

x-post

Microfilm : also yummy.

he does seem a bit like an animated skeletal being of the grave here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uelMtJ0Ax04

this moment is here, it seems

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/01/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-sundance/

idk if I need four hours of this

yeah a four-hour doc about this subject sounds like absolute hell to watch.

if you do a search for this on twitter or wherever you get a blizzard of posts from MJ obsessives explaining how it's all a conspiracy to defame him. i don't have the stomach to read about this stuff again but it is striking how much the charges against MJ have largely disappeared from his, i guess, legacy/reputation.

really? not in my world

he's less disgraced than a man who sexually abused children should be

i guess i mean that i see a lot of ppl expressing their love for MJ and his music without the kind of qualifiers you'd usually hear if someone were expressing admiration for roman polanski, r. kelly, etc.

like we hardly need to cancel him now, he's dead. but people definitely feel more capable of playing his music, or talking about how good it is, with no qualms and no provisos than they do of say r kelly or gary glitter

or what he said

Where are all the Jimmy Savile fans now?

yeah well, it feels like most people have always been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36sKMwbwfWc

even around here.

idk what it is about Thriller, it just makes otherwise reasonable people completely lose perspective

whereas I soured on him after idk 8th grade or so

this is perhaps an instructive thread
Bashir's Michael Jackson circus......

funny business is pop-star paedo optics, and Jarvis Cocker looks an even bigger paedo than he did these days.

Dunno why we need four hours when Kunt & The Gang covered it all in 2 minutes and 17 seconds

https://youtu.be/0UvHbBZBias

he's less disgraced than a man who sexually abused children should be

OTFM

I've suspected the allegations against Jackson were true for decades, and believed them fully since Robson, a showbiz professional who actually had something lose, came forward in 2012. And I've never stopped listening to or loving Jackson's music. I've never resolved this, nor do I know that I ever will. But as much as the artist-from-the-art question has been hashed to death, I still think it's a discussion that needs to be revived in this case - I assume there are millions of other people who aren't ready to let Jackson's music go just like that even if they're inclined to believe the worst. Is that chickenshit?

I read the big Taraborelli MJ book and I walked away feeling like he wasn’t a molester but just ... way ... off ... in ways that were weird. Definitely sounds like this doc is gonna make me rethink that. What a drag.

honestly I never really had much doubt that he was pretty much everything his worst critics said he was, at least in re. his pedophilia. everything pointed to it. that he was enormously talented has nothing to do with it. attempts to deny or minimize it have long seemed embarrassingly willful.

i've been surprised that people like quincy jones etc. have stuck by his legacy as if it weren't fatally tarnished. it's one thing to be proud of the music you made, quite another to pretend that jackson didn't inflict terrible damage on people (and, of course, terrible damage seems very likely to have been inflicted on him).

above all the self-made image of MJ as some kind of "humanitarian," which still persists against all the evidence, needs to be put out of its misery.

i guess i don't really see what makes enjoying MJ's music while acknowledging his abuse difficult. i can see being queasy about certain of his more obviously megalomaniacal songs, all the "heal the world" bullshit, but that stuff made me gag when it came out. but given the awesome amount of compartmentalization humans can do (every time you bite into a burger, for one thing...) setting his personal actions aside while enjoying "human nature" seems pretty trivial.

I am in the same boat as Whiney.
I don’t mind being wrong, but I will def need to watch the doc in installments because it sounds like beyond-Frontline levels of awfulness

I will admit that I have been blinkered in what I chose to believe & that’s my own thing that I have to examine

I've always been back and forth on the issue. Like, do I take it at face value that the first two claims from the 90s and 00s were made by what seem like opportunistic jackals, or were they simply just the targets of extremely well-crafted smears by the defense?

I remember one time about 10 years ago, I brought the idea up of Michael Jackson abusing children, because for some reason I was convinced that he did it during that period. I think it was on a thread about some other monster celebrity, but I can't find the post at the moment to link to. I do remember that a poster who I really respected admonished me for bringing it up. Something along the lines of he was found innocent in a court of law. I dunno. So after that, for a while I went back to not believing the accusations.

Also, you have Cory Feldman, a guy who has been open in the past few years as a victim of pedophilia in the music industry. He was friends with MJ as a child and even had a falling out with him. But these days, as he has tried to point the finger at the men who did rape him, says that MJ wasn't a pedo.

I'm definitely not trying to convince anyone otherwise. There's plenty of evidence and anecdotes that MJs behavior around children was inappropriate. And I haven't seen this new documentary or read anything about these more recent accusations yet. Just trying to show how the issue is muddied in my mind.

Ultimately though, I don't think I'll be able to stop singing along to the Tillamook Country Smokers song.

"music industry" should read "entertainment industry"

Adam Bruneau at 9:18 22 Dec 09
The real evil is in the ones that constantly hounded him for that BS. He's was a weird guy, always was, yet it gave everyone a license to take bogus accusations seriously and use them to make a killing off crucifying a pop idol with a bad childhood.

The defences by otherwise reasonable people have always sounded completely deranged - “no, he collected and slept with children in a totally innocent, non-molesty way”. Like listen to yourselves ffs

AB always reliably had the worst take on everything though

I think the reason many hedged one way was that the first two cases were brought by parents and the affected kids didn't really talk about the incidents publicly when they became adults (which is of course their right not to).

now that you have two adults corroborating what happened when they were kids, a little more difficult to say "ahh they have ulterior motives", esp when one of them is Wade Robson.

The defences by otherwise reasonable people have always sounded completely deranged - “no, he collected and slept with children in a totally innocent, non-molesty way”. Like listen to yourselves ffs

OTFM

i guess i don't really see what makes enjoying MJ's music while acknowledging his abuse difficult. i can see being queasy about certain of his more obviously megalomaniacal songs, all the "heal the world" bullshit, but that stuff made me gag when it came out. but given the awesome amount of compartmentalization humans can do (every time you bite into a burger, for one thing...) setting his personal actions aside while enjoying "human nature" seems pretty trivial.

― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy)

i stopped having a personal problem listening to and enjoying his music once he became incapable of taking actions that would hurt other people, but i have also never been sexually abused or assaulted and i understand that others' mileage may vary

The way I framed it was "would you give a regular person anywhere near this much benefit of the doubt?" Think we can all understand the feeling of not wanting to hear the creator of something you like has done bad things, but should also recognise that this same instinct leads abusers to believe they can get away with anything, just because they made whatever album / film / book and have everyone telling them they are therefore special.

^^^^

ime it’s always been accompanied by this weird pop psychology “he was just trying to get back to the childhood he was denied” - but never just to explain his actions, always rather to exonerate him completely - and as you say the same sympathy would never have been extended to your average person who touches up kids

Just read Ben Lee's review in The Guardian and even that is hard to take.

FYI "Ben Lee's review in The Guardian" -> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/25/michael-jackson-documentary-leaving-neverland

ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten)
Posted: January 25, 2019 at 11:47:31 PM
I read the big Taraborelli MJ book and I walked away feeling like he wasn’t a molester but just ... way ... off ... in ways that were weird. Definitely sounds like this doc is gonna make me rethink that. What a drag.

Are you referring to Untouchable? I read that a couple years ago and came away with the same feeling. The book was pretty unsparing toward MJ otherwise. I don’t remember what year it was written but maybe those earlier weird parent driven accusations were all there was to go on at the time.

that review...this will be grim

Yeah. Just read it.

Described as “a sensitive boy”, he preferred dance over basketball

He's Australian, I doubt he'd be playing basketball tbh.

The Rolling Stone review similarly doesn't hold back

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/leaving-neverland-michael-jackson-doc-sundance-784801/

Cool that as a society we waited til after he was dead to figure this out

He's Australian, I doubt he'd be playing basketball tbh.

Friends of mine were on the basketball team in high school, and the Sydney Kings were a pretty huge thing in culture and merch amongst youths at the time*. Just looked it up & Robson’s home team won the championship twice in his time living there, and were in the finals the last year before he moved to America.

*not least because they were ~the~ Sydney team, vs 30-odd rugby teams, but

as a society we waited til after he was dead

We figured this out over and over during the last two decades of his life, stans are still going to disbelieve despite this latest documentary

(xp) Ah right, I was thinking he must have mentioned something about basketball himself in the documentary.

I honestly have not spent much time digging into the MJ accusations, since I had WGW’s take on things, always thinking he was more a deeply fucked up victim and deeply weird than an actual criminal. Obv he was a victim at this be point too, of course...

It’s not surprising at all that his hardcore fans would completely disbelieve it, we live in world where Ted Bundy still has fans who believe he was innocent, the scumbag from lostprophets probably gets fan mail every day, R. Kelly is being railroaded and the girls were “getting something out of it too...”

I just wonder if he was always like that, if any of this shit goes back further than these accusations. I haven’t read any biographies on the dude so idk. From the far outside looking in, he seems to have had it more together at the beginning of his solo success, and then he just rapidly disintegrated personally, professionally, creatively...

Obv he was a victim at this be point too, of course...

“...a victim at one point too...”

In that thread I linked above ilxors compare MJs behavior w kids to an adult who climbs trees - ie weird but not dangerous or criminal

just an Icarus flying too close to the sun

or a kelly slater of pedophilia, endlessly riding the barrel, but never gettin truly pitted into the nastiness of it all

the scumbag from lostprophets probably gets fan mail every day

a while back i was startled at seeing him on the cover of some true crime magazine on the stand at walmart.

confirmation bias : I voted for X so he must be right, I liked Y's records so he must be innocent

looking forward to seeing this, but...I’m surprised there are so many MJ truthers on this site

i think we can safely remove the quote marks from this thread's title now

Yeah, no

https://globalnews.ca/news/4890058/michael-jackson-musical-to-hit-broadway-in-2020/

all hardcore fandom is bizarre, but that there are people, in 2019, sending threats to the director of an anti-MJ movie is just astonishing to me

I mean, he was probably the greatest performer of the 20th century

Wrong

James Brown

Come on, it's clearly Shakin' Stevens

Bert Williams

how can you all be so wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aH_hS_AVuA

(well, at least until the Netflix Charo documentary, which i hear is a major bummer)

I think the reason people wanted to not believe wasn’t because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did. The crimes are too reprehensible to square with the idea of the person eho made such great music. Not an “excuse” for overlooking the crimes but an explanation.

what does great music have to do with being a piece of shit person (or not), though? pretty much all of what we publicly knew about MJ's private life and psyche, even prior to the major revelations about his pedophilic abuse, pointed to a deeply fucked-up person at best. i mean, i found the allegations surprising insofar as such things are always surprising, but him being a great talent didn't factor into that one way or the other.

I have known that art can be disconnected from the creator's morality for awhile, it's true

i'm sort of inclined to think that expecting those who make the art you like to be wonderful people is sort of childish.

or any particular kind of people at all...

ok but like

what he is accused of is unconscionable. it makes sense ppl would be disturbed to know they were dancing along to music made by someone who did that.

he wasn't accused of being a cheater or a jerk. he has been accused of being a predator.

Is being a murderer more unconscionable than being a child molester? Because I've been known to listen to music by a few of those tbh.

i mean

i don't think ppl "shouldn't" enjoy the music

but

it promotes a different kind of relationship to the artist

and the musical "text"

dude

stop

we are embodied subjects. art of any kind is interesting to us because people made it. there isn't just "art" and "life" these things are co-implicated

soto, why should i stop?

it's just a reflex for you guys to get annoyed when i am engaging normally with the topic of discussion

Think to yourself.

it's just a reflex for you guys to get annoyed when i am engaging normally with the topic of discussion

i think it is

"Michael Jackson likely assaulted children and should I keep listening to his music?" is the question, and it doesn't require every tergiversation of thought on ILM.

it's an old question fair enough. i was just pushing back against the idea i saw implied that for some listeners the knowledge wouldn't matter--like you can make a neat separation

Treeship, I assure you that for some people it won’t matter.

and it doesn't require every turdferguson of thought on ILM.

required posts only. got it.

i hear you, treeship. i don't know that a "neat separation" is necessarily possible in any situation, since our minds are always active and moving from one thing to the next, even while listening to "billie jean."

but i do think humans have an incredible ability to compartmentalize, in a way that is at once necessary, useful and, often, extremely disturbing.

for ex., it disturbs me greatly that i spent most of my life able to eat meat without thinking about the sufferings of nonhuman animals (who experience emotions much as we do). but what makes that disturbing is not only the act itself, but because by eating meat i helped, indirectly, to perpetuate suffering. i don't know that i've heard a concing argument that by not "cancelling" thriller etc., we are helping perpetuate child abuse in any sense, although i recognize that some do make arguments of that nature.

uh, not "concing".. convincing.

I find that the tendency to think of the scruples of an artist as being somehow transferable with their genius is the root cause of why an individual like MJ's behaviour was enabled. Being able to enjoy MJ's music while acknowledging that he's a child predator becomes an act of defiance, consuming the man's work while vilifying the man. The ultimate expression of this idea I guess would be if somebody were to learn the moonwalk so they could dance on his grave

People also ask
Is Captain EO still open?

Is Captain EO still at Disney World?

How much did Captain EO cost?

Can you rent out Disneyland?

https://media.giphy.com/media/6bdgw4Myfpxr1jkTiG/giphy.gif

I think the reason people wanted to not believe wasn’t because they didn’t take it seriously, but because they did. The crimes are too reprehensible to square with the idea of the person eho made such great music. Not an “excuse” for overlooking the crimes but an explanation.

― Trϵϵship, Saturday, January 26, 2019 3:46 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think people wanted to *not* believe, i just think that casual knowledge of the situation would lead one to think that the real story was he was a super strange, childlike, damaged man, and his hanging out with kids all the time was deeply misunderstood as a result, and since nothing ever came of the allegations years ago, it could have all just been some kind of misunderstanding.

for a long time i've personally really only had extremely casual knowledge of the situation and allegations from long ago, and as a casual observer i thought it really was a thing where he was completely fucked up and creepy but maybe not exactly creepy in *that* way.

In a vacuum, without specific reference to Michael Jackson, at this point, I would consider “hanging out with kids all the time” to be indicative of someone likely to abuse kids.

yeah that’s a good summation. i was less willing to believe the basic reporting, because it seemed like such a gleeful takedown. the deeper investigative reporting I read left me with the impression that he had spent so long messing with reporters that the ultimate media field day about his pedophilia was largely of his own doing. but at the time it also felt like the initial accusers were kids coached by cash-grabbing parents.

it’s not that i didn’t think it was possible he was a legit predator, it was more that I hadn’t found what was being reported at the time to be convincing/credible. I admit part of me didn’t want it to be true, and i had some confirmation bias for sure.

and since nothing ever came of the allegations years ago

Nothing except Jackson’s representatives paying tens of millions to his accusers, and corroborated testimony of him regularly plying his prepubescent same-bed sleepover pals with alcohol, and Jackson throwing massive publicity stunts to try and avoid testifying, and...

"nothing ever came of the allegations" doesn't mean, imo, there wasn't smoke there. but for me all that's not a punishment or justice, that's just making a problem go away. it went away enough that he was still a star, primed for a massive comeback concert before he died, and the jokes about his issues turned him into a clown, not so much a monster.

VG is right that the casual observer who didn't pay much attention would think a lot of things based on the tone of the whole thing at the time, and maybe not so much that he was guilty.

the reporting on him in the 80’s-90’s seemed like endless variations on WACKO JACKO themes so if you were any kind of fan you were kinda skeptical of the media’s take on him anyway. Or at least I was.

ime reporting on someone due in court who suddenly has health issues that preclude travel, or a previously unheralded condition, or injury, that lead to them arriving at court hours or days or years past their scheduled dates, clad in hospital attire or carrying oxygen tanks, in front of cameras, never ends up with that person being a sweet blameless angel*

(not trying to scold anyone for concluding differently, or not seeing the same reporting - just saying there totally was plenty of evidence all along for ppl to conclude that he 100% was a predator)


* Veg - eg from Skase to Pell

There were bits from the police reports (iirc the boy describing accurately a birthmark on the underside of his penis for example) which should have been enough to give anyone pause.

i'm just sorry I skipped that Woody Allen double feature last night

I've never been a fan of his music ('Wanna Be Startin' Something' excepted) so I can't be suspected of exonerating him for personal reasons, but for the longest time – in part due to lack of interest – I merely thought of him as a broken eccentric whose insuperable frame of reference was childhood trauma. And yes, this excused many things (short of pedophilia, of course), which in retrospect seems selective and naïve (how many 'common' criminals get a free pass on account of deterministic psychosocial factors?). I never cared enough to look into the details of his alleged misdeeds, however (I had no idea about the birthmark episode, for instance), which explains why reading articles about this documentary is the first time I've ever felt positive that he was, indeed, a child predator. I'm just throwing this out there to corroborate what VG and omar little are saying about casual observers.

Should be mentioned also that public perception was influenced by the amount of money he spent on lawyers for this very purpose.

The crimes are too reprehensible to square with the idea of the person eho made such great music.

The idea of the person was the idea of a weirdo though, are there defenders of him saying "he's who I want to be?"

There's a great article by Cintra Wilson about him, as someone who's been sent explicit fan mail since he was 8, and told this is what fame and success was - that he should never have been let near kids, but fame gets whatever fame wants.

tergiversation of thought

my.... look at the size of Alfred's
*tips shades*
vocabulary

yet a date canceled on me last night *kicks dirt*

That’s a Henry James word if ever I saw one

My vocabulary's more Sidney James tbh.

An amazing word thank you Professor Alfred

Agree with the thoughts thread about how a less-famous / less-talented person wouldn't have been given a pass on the behavior but. Isn't it a little more complicated here?

His actions were directly related to his fame, and in a lot of ways his predation was enabled by it. He would not have had the same access to kids if he were not MJ.

Ignoring what we know now, imagine two scenarios: "hey mom, Creepy Frank from Radio shack wants me to stay over at his trailer tomorrow night. He says he's gonna get KFC and let me play Atari." Vs. "Hey mom, this fabulously wealthy, globally famous superstar has asked me - ME! - over to his mansion for a sleepover party! He has a private amusement park and a collection of exotic animals."

His fame was bound up with his music, and his predation was bound up with his fame.

Alfred and George Will dropping that word w in 24hrs of each other is lol

and we both write well about baseball

it's nice to learn a new word, even in this dreary context.

aside from the "birthmark" thing (gross), among the many, uh, bread crumbs suggesting that everything in the allegations was true was the cache of pornography (including a great deal of ponography featuring young-looking men--that is, men looking like boys--cavorting around nude) that was discovered in his closets after his death and reported on a number of years ago. all of the accusers explained he "groomed" them with precisely this sort of thing. so for quite a while i'd say it'd have been more surprising if he /wasn't/ an abuser than the other way around.

is it wrong to be grateful he died before he did this to other kids?

course not

90% of hoity-toity words in English are only mildly formal in French, if at all.

I was reading Nixonland on my kindle the other day, and I came across a couple of words I didn't know. So my wife tells me, you know, the kindle has a dictionary! Just highlight the word and press or whatever and it pops up. So I did that ... and the words were not in the dictionary.

I would use that word but i find it a bit flasht

how a less-famous / less-talented person wouldn't have been given a pass on the behavior

Many of these perpetrators hold so much power over their victims in even tragically standard, non-celebrity cases. I think in the case of MJ and his ilk, huge amounts of wealth expanded that power to influence several people around the victim as well, maybe more so than usual. Parents, friends, caretakers, all either under his sway, paid off, pressured to look the other way. In the case of R. Kelly, what's been stressed is how much further out of whack he maintained/designed the power imbalance. Not only did he prey on one of the most traditionally overlooked demographics - poor black girls - he reportedly avoided outwardly pretty girls as well, so he was intentionally exploiting their self-esteem as well, even more than these predators often do. Truly monstrous.

"hey mom, Creepy Frank from Radio shack wants me to stay over at his trailer tomorrow night. He says he's gonna get KFC and let me play Atari." Vs. "Hey mom, this fabulously wealthy, globally famous superstar has asked me - ME! - over to his mansion for a sleepover party! He has a private amusement park and a collection of exotic animals."

True enough, but I am frequently surprised at how close some of these incidents are to the Creepy Frank scenario.

His actions were directly related to his fame, and in a lot of ways his predation was enabled by it. He would not have had the same access to kids if he were not MJ.

as opposed to run of the mill priests, scout leaders, teachers, sports coaches, party clowns ....

we are embodied subjects. art of any kind is interesting to us because people made it. there isn't just "art" and "life" these things are co-implicated

― Trϵϵship, Saturday, January 26, 2019 4:47 PM (yesterday)

this is a good point. Dunno why ppl were giving you shit about it ... though, there are some people who are "outliers" who do separate these things, or they do for certain artists/works ... like in general, I think this is true, but I don't think it's true of everyone and everything, but MJ tends to be someone who it is true of moreso than like, jazz dudes or classical composers, and I wonder how much the connection is fandom that began in childhood/youth, connecting this to the post upthread who commented that this was a childish mode of thought

otm. i think that the fandom starting in early childhood is def a big part of my experience & why it took longer for me to accept

and sure, childhood fandoms fade & some ppl don’t hold onto shit for that long & can accept facts etc but that wasn’t me.

I think it’s hard for a lot of people to connect weird era MJ to their childhood memories of peak level Off the Wall/Thriller MJ, it almost seems like two different people, like he completely transformed mentally and physically into another person. Which is not to say he wasn’t always weird or creepy, it just wasn’t so obvious earlier.

Anyway all of my comments upthread were to say that so many details of the earlier accusations were successfully brushed off by the payouts and joking tone of the media and how some of the gleeful mockery of MJ was so focused on his public image, which was separate from the allegations (and having known victims of childhood abuse I can say that at least one of them is so traumatized that she is similarly childlike and incapable of healthy relationships). I think the media coverage of this was a farce and didn’t serve the victims very well.

Agree with that omar

agree

A friend of mine is 5 years younger than me & always thought I was from outer space for liking MJ. She’s like, “all i remember is he was a creepy-ass weird looking dude” and she did NOT fuck w his music at all.

A few xps: Sarahell, fair point

I was born in 1986, so I don't remember a time when MJ wasn't a huge punchline. None of my friends were really into him, up until he died and suddenly it was "damn Michael you were always such a huge inspiration to me". To tell the truth I was sorta the same, it's not until he died and I saw the 24/7 coverage of his life that I realized how many great songs he really had. I'd never seen the "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" video, nor the Motown 25 performance, etc etc. The only ones I knew were the ones Weird Al covered and "Billie Jean". The accusations of molestation and whatever the fuck he was doing to his face kinda superseded everything. I read a *lot* about that and still had no clue what to make of it. Best I could conclude was the same as a lot of people here, the fact that he was so incredibly strange and obsessed with his lost childhood makes it difficult to conclusively say. MJ probably got scammed a *lot* while he was alive. I was in the "definitely inappropriate but probably not sexual" camp, though obviously that's wishful thinking since I was starting to like his music. I remember thinking, "if he really is guilty of this surely people will come out after his death"...

The real Xennial/Millennial generation gap regarding MJ is represented by what your elementary school did as the second bar of “I pledge allegiance to the flag/Michael Jackson is a fag”

MJ was my first musical hero, I played my tape of Bad constantly, went to the cinema to see Moonwalker, even read the tie-in book aged 10 or so, but then by the mid-90s I had gone off him completely and have never regained that interest, so was odd to see peers waxing nostalgic about him, always wanting to make excuses for his obviously terrible behaviour, what was it they were getting out of it? Still don't understand tbh.

xp - uh, what?

Did they not have that in OAKLAND? They certainly had it in Florida

What I assume was the OG version was about Pepsi, what I assume was the new school version was about the allegations

Never heard of either thing but I’m sheltered

Never heard of either thing either, does that make me a millennial or an xennial

I cannot be the only ILXor who had those!

Here, I was figuring I'd just never heard of it because we didn't pledge allegiance to a flag.

i was born in 76, was in love with MJ as early as I can remember, trying to dance like him, watching his videos all the time. like, i remember when he was so huge they would interrupt the goddamn evening news to debut a new music video. I stayed a fan for a long long time. but it dropped off hella fast. by the time i was at uni i had maybe 1 or 2 friends who still liked him, but if you were too overt about you seemed like a weirdo so it was def something you kinda played down.

They dont say the pledge at school anymore fyi. At least, not around here

lol I did not grow up in Oakland. also it's been like 35 years since i did the pledge of allegiance in elementary school so I don't remember these details, but hey I don't want be too much of a dick about our charming running joke about my special snowflake life

I cannot be the only ILXor who had those!

― ebro the letter (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 27, 2019

you might be!

They dont say the pledge at school anymore fyi. At least, not around here

― Οὖτις, Sunday, January 27, 2019 5:43 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

despite it being unconstitutional to compel someone to recite it, it is state law here in texas to recite both the US and texas pledge

I mean, although we got to see 'Free to Be You and Me' on Movie Day, where I grew up wasn't very socially accepting of that freedom

I do remember MJ was in Free to Be You and Me modeling non-traditional masculine behavior ... though that's about all I remember about Michael Jackson in relation to my elementary school

I was born in 1971, so "Thriller" was huge right when I started paying attention to popular music. When I was in junior high school his hits were so ubiquitous as to be inescapable; having a critical opinion about him was almost superfluous. It would be like formulating a critical opinion about air.

At that time, his weirdness/brokenness as a person was either unknown or hadn't happened yet. He was presumed to be a fairly normal young superstar, I guess - he was said to have dated a famous model. There was a joke: "where did they find Michael Jackson's other glove?" "Brooke Shields's pants!" I think a decade later the same joke made the rounds, but with Macaulay Culkin instead.

I was born in 1979 and Thriller was the first contemporary popular music I ever got into (in kindergarten, where he was already famous). Tbh, though, some of the biggest fans I've known are second cousins who are ≈ 5 years younger.

xp important middle joke was eddie murphys line about why it wouldve been unacceptable for him to date brooke shields

xp i was born in 1981 i have also heard of michael jackson

Born at the tail end of 1971; heard all of the Thriller singles because I listened to American Top Forty every week when I was 12-13, but didn't actually like any of them; remember watching the premiere of the "Thriller" video at a friend's house; never owned a copy of Thriller; thought the song "Bad" was corny as fuck, never consciously heard anything else from that album; everything after that was "Oh, another Michael Jackson song" then "He's still around? Wow, what the fuck is up with his face?" then "This motherfucker is out of his mind and yeah, he's definitely a child molester."

Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 were way more important to me than anything Michael Jackson ever did.

i remember being into the horror movie narrative and the fact there were zombies in Thriller ... otherwise my experience/feelings were about the same as Phil's

Thriller, along with a J5-oriented greatest hits, was one of the first records I ever had. A few years later, it was my first-grade teacher's go-to album if she felt we needed to put our heads on our desks after lunch. Thriller or No Jacket Required, usually.

Anyway, I knew this was polled on ilx a ways back:~~~the Michael Jackson poll~~~

The MJ other glove variant I heard as a kid was Boy George’s pants. His freakishness/ambiguous sexuality was well in evidence on elementary school playgrounds circa Thriller imo. He had a pet monkey, a nose job, and sang about not getting girls pregnant, we all knew he was weird even if we thought he was awesome.

i remember pledging allegiance to the time; no idea what whiney's thing is

same age as ymp/unperson -- i owned thriller, but MJ was not that big a deal where i grew up. tempted to ascribe that to racism, but otoh prince was huge. i'm not sure i was even aware of bad coming out, but tbf i was probably listening more to classic rock by then

nb i did not have MTV, which might be an important missing link

I was obsessed with MTV starting at age 8, so MJ loomed pretty large!

As I said, I never owned Thriller, but I did own Purple Rain.

Same age as mookie and unperson, never had MTV, Thriller and Bad were huge radio presences. Still don't like Bad, not when George Michael outdid him in surprise and beats.

Bad sucks, he needed Quincy

Bad sounded stiff to me even in 1987. Thriller was my favorite album as a kid though. And MJ was a guy who was briefly unassailably cool and awesome during that peak Thriller era. tbh the nose job shit and lyrical content barely registered to me at the time.

Thriller was the first album I really listened to.my brother got my parents to buy the lp when he was 4 and I was 2.circa 1986.my parents had stopped bothering listening to records at that stage,they kept theirs from the 70s in the attic.i loved it and in a way it really informed a lot of my musical taste (post-disco is still one of my favourite eras of music). was a fan of Jackson's music until dangerous came out - I eagerly watched the UK tv debut of the black or white video - and I found it a bit disappointing. The paedophile accusations fully put me off him completely and when I was old enough to think about it seriously I assumed his guilt.

Bad sucks, he needed Quincy

― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Sunday, January 27, 2019

Jones produced it too.

Bad is great

https://media.giphy.com/media/k0dx6E0VoQZdC/giphy.gif

Jeez I’m embarrassed now. I got it into my head bad was the first w/o Quincy. Still sucks.

ahahahaha velko

lol

I know this is pretty controversial, but I have to say despite what unperson etc say, imho Michael Jackson was a pretty big deal in the 1980s

Michael Jackson was probably the biggest celebrity of our lifetime!

My being just a few years younger than MJ, he'll always be that kid who was on all those early '70s variety shows with his brothers ("You 40-year-old midget," as Sammy Davis Jr called him in the J5 TV debut).

No way you're younger than MJ

MJ was a boomer.

Born in 1985, the only MJ joke I remember from high school is: 'What did the woman say to Michael Jackson at the beach? "Excuse me sir, you're in my son".'

bad is great

shit man even earth song is a tune

MJ was a boomer.

― nickn, Monday, 28 January 2019 06:04 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol btw

There is mnemonic device for remembering all the sizes of wine bottles that is this same type of Michael Jackson joke. This is my only contribution to this thread.

Michael Jackson Really Makes Small Boys Nervous
Magnum
Jeroboam
Rehoboam
Methuselah
Salmanazar
Balthazar
Nebuchadnezzar

https://pitchfork.com/news/michael-jackson-estate-denounces-new-sundance-documentary-on-alleged-child-sex-abuse/

but if they’re perjurers then when they stated under oath that nothing happened...

anyhoo yeah, cui bono etc etc

the one I remember is "What's the difference between Michael Jackson and a plastic bag? One is white and harmful to children, and the other holds groceries"

I loved Thriller as a kid (I was in 4th grade when it came out), all the kids in the schoolyard had vinyl Beat It jackets — I had the red one, others had the black one. But I started to sour on him with Bad — he looked different, the songs were colder, there was just something off. There's a joy and excitement still to Off the Wall/Thriller, while everything that followed seems calculated and creepy.

Dangerous is the album I listen to most, but what do I know

The plastic surgery was disturbing, it’s true. Around Bad seems to be when he lost any resemblance to his actual appearance—before he had a nose job and stuff but it wasn’t transformative

And for me, there was a plausible deniability (maybe not so plausible in retrospect) that the abuse allegations were unfounded, that he was a weird man-child but that it hadn't necessarily been sexual. That maybe he was asexual, which of course seems naive now.

All his attempts to be sexy or provocative felt like they came from a place of insecurity - the crotch grabbing, that weird kiss w/ Lisa Maria Presley at the VMAs, even stuff like "Billie Jean", kinda...I would've totally believed he was asexual

It seems like a lot of people were willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt despite his eccentricity/creepiness, and that this seemingly came from a compassionate place. It sucks fhat this generosity was misguided.

There *was* a kind of gentleness about him that doesn’t square with the image of a predator. However the evidence is what it is—it mostly points to his guilt

It's disturbing to consider this "compassionate place" was actually a well-funded PR campaign to burnish his image and discredit his accusers.

It seems like a lot of people were willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt despite his eccentricity/creepiness...

Yeah, or the PR campign exploited people’s desire to not think the worst of someone who was obviously suffering himself

idk it didn't seem like any of his celebrity friends were willing to say a single negative word about him either

eccentricity and asexuality was also jimmy savile's cover btw

There *was* a kind of gentleness about him that doesn’t square with the image of a predator. However the evidence is what it is—it mostly points to his guilt

― Trϵϵship, Monday, 28 January 2019 15:45 (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pls dont have an image of a predator

https://www.sideshowtoy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/predator-jungle-hunter-maquette-sideshow-thumb-300158-2.jpg

Yeah, you can see where the nose job caved in there.

Definitely asexual though.

Michael Jackson was probably the biggest celebrity of our lifetime!

can't really argue with this. he was like the Beatles if they fucked little kids and only had about one album's worth of classic material

My experiences were similar to others here born in the early '70s, though I never heard of that pledge of allegiance variant until just now. I also didn't know about the "Mony Mony" chant until maybe 4-5 years ago.

I didn't seriously get into MJ's work until my late teens. I heard Thriller in full for the first time the same week I first heard John Coltrane's "Live" At The Village Vanguard and Cheap Trick's debut. That was a good week (though I was already intimately familiar with 7 of the album's 9 songs, inescapable as they were in '82-'84). I never liked Bad much, and Quincy needed MJ far more than MJ needed Quincy, as Destiny, Triumph, and MJ's home demos make abundantly clear.

I went back and forth on his innocence/guilt at the time, probably steered too much by an Ishmael Reed column which seemed to lay out a convincing case for his innocence...but then, Reed also repeatedly called Anita Hill a liar, so I should've known better than to take him seriously on MJ.

Reed has some p odd opinions (altho I love a bunch of his books)

Mumbo Jumbo and The Last Days of Louisiana Red are absolutely all-time for me, but...yeah, he's fucked up on some things.

yeah those two are incredible

Reed is both a crank and a treasure it’s true

the one I remember is "What's the difference between Michael Jackson and a plastic bag? One is white and harmful to children, and the other holds groceries"

― frogbs, Monday, January 28, 2019 6:55 AM (two hours ago)

ooh damn! that's a good one!

Another one I remember: "Why did Michael Jackson get a speeding ticket on the way to Sears? Because there was a huge sale: boys pants, half off"

Michael Jackson was probably the biggest celebrity of our lifetime!
can't really argue with this. he was like the Beatles if they fucked little kids and only had about one album's worth of classic material
― Οὖτις, Monday, 28 January 2019 16:13 (one hour ago) Permalink

off the wall and thriller, my dude.

the common thread might be that reed is kind of an old-school misogynist, no? or at least sexist.

how do we know the Beatles didn't fuck little kids -- i mean, there were 4 of them, coulda done more damage

this is a weird line of discussion i have to say.

first song on the first Beatles album is about that, iirc

xp - i applaud this exciting new line of discussion

one thing that is interesting is how people reluctant to give Michael his due (often for very meritorious reasons) are quick to credit quincy jones w/ the sleek power of his best records. but for all QJ's talents, if you look at what he was working on in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, pretty much none of it is anywhere near as memorable as his work w/ MJ. a late period Lena Horne record? Patti Austin? some of the more mediocre Rufus and Donna Summer LPs? the only classic among QJ's productions of that era, other than MJ, is George Benson's "Give Me the Night" (single, not full LP). so whatever MJ brought to the table and/or brought out in QJ is immense. it doesn't hurt that they probably had songwriters lining up to place their best songs w/ MJ.

anyway.

QJ's best album is a Sinatra record imo

https://pitchfork.com/news/michael-jackson-estate-denounces-ILX-rehashing-Michael-Jackson-jokes/

off the wall and thriller, my dude.

yeah strip out the crap from those records and there's one really good one

the worthiness of mj's catalog seems beside the fucking point

i mean, the "point" is whatever we feel like talking about here, no?

speaking of which: i'm not sure what QJ's reputation ca. 1978 was, but i get the sense that he was already considered slightly washed up or at least not on his top game. his Aretha LP, for instance, which is actually pretty damn good, didn't get great reviews IIRC. so MJ did at least as much for his standing and reputation as vice-versa.

i mean, the "point" is whatever we feel like talking about here, no

ok sure

NB i have a reflex that whenever i hear the words "Quincy Jones" i hear "in the heeeeeaaaatttt of the night" in my head.

let's focus on our highest priority people, updating this thread: The Tragedie of Michael Jackson, King of Pop

can i just say that i hate qualitative denunciations of artists when coupled with allegations of sexual abuse especially of minors, i.e. "i knew this person was bad all along, also their music has been bad!!!!"

cosign

i also hate child rape jokes though so this thread is not for me lol

I knew Carlo Gesualdo was an entitled murderous Venosan nobleman all along! His music suxxx!

going to go out on a limb here and lay out my controversial opinion that MJ was a very talented musician and also a child abuser.

the common thread might be that reed is kind of an old-school misogynist, no? or at least sexist.

I checked out Quincy's production discography last night when he got brought up on this thread and was pretty baffled. Before that, the only things I associated him with were MJ, We Are the World, that last Miles Davis concert, and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. I had just presumed that in between MJ records he was doing a bunch of other funk/soul/pop.

can i just say that i hate qualitative denunciations of artists when coupled with allegations of sexual abuse especially of minors, i.e. "i knew this person was bad all along, also their music has been bad!!!!"

happy to separate the two if you like, both are true imo

you know it iirc

lol

you listen to father john misty xxp

father john misty sounds like a paedo name tbh

strange thread to click on rly tho

i was talking a bit about quality of work that on the Weinstein thread w/the Bryan "Mediocre" Singer conversation, mostly vis-à-vis his continued employment in Hollywood. it's odd and strange in the sense that he's protected by others for mysterious reasons, because what's the motive behind giving him more work? However if he was exceptionally skilled it wouldn't diminish his earlier films (though it might diminish the desire to watch them).

I can understand not wanting to listen to MJ after all this, of course. But prior dislike for his albums is not a signifier that you were right all along, as it were. His early high level creativity or lack thereof isn't really an issue now.

So am I the only one who disliked his music while thinking that he was probably innocent up until recently?

While it's true that MJ roughened up Q's ethos, it's wrong to say the early '80s were blah for Q. Have you heard The Dude? As good as sleek post-disco R&B gets.

But prior dislike for his albums is not a signifier that you were right all along, as it were.

idk if it's about being right, and more about not having to deal with cognitive dissonance, being upset about liking the music but loathing the person who made it

or ... maybe more accurate ... the dislike or apathy towards his music makes you "more objective" in terms of determining the truth about him as a person

Didn't work for me, because I didn't care enough to delve further into his persona. I mostly just mimicked whatever the people around me (most of whom were fans) said about him.

alfred, I forgot to look into his own music. I was just looking at the production discography. I'll have to check out the Dude.

my mom listened to The Dude a lot when she was cleaning house when I was a kid -- i probably heard that record as much as I heard Michael Jackson songs

or ... maybe more accurate ... the dislike or apathy towards his music makes you "more objective" in terms of determining the truth about him as a person

― sarahell, Monday, January 28, 2019 10:02 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i get that yeah. i guess though despite the fact i really love OTW and Thriller, i don't think i ever really had a "scales fall from my eyes" moment. my view of him was just a slow descent over a couple decades til he died. i wouldn't say i was in denial about what he did, i leaned towards believing it at first. but in my passive awareness and lack of research kinda thought after the lack of prosecution and lack of something even as tangible as the R. Kelly stuff, it was just a misunderstanding of a tragically fucked up and twisted dude.

The first time I heard about anything ewwww was from an LA-based gay writer whose friends were hired to do the floors at Neverland, who in the course of the job found a lot of NAMBLAish porn in a closet. 1992/93, maybe?

I was pretty much done with MJ around the point of Thriller going mega (through moving on/liking other artists) but I still love old Jackson 5.

off the wall and thriller, my dude.

― affects breves telnet (Gummy Gummy), Monday, January 28, 2019 12:30 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and Destiny and Triumph. Michael co-wrote, and sang lead on, the bulk of those, in addition to co-producing.

one thing that is interesting is how people reluctant to give Michael his due (often for very meritorious reasons) are quick to credit quincy jones w/ the sleek power of his best records.

I remember lot of the "oh, Quincy's the REAL genius behind those records!" stuff coming from insufferable jazz snobs (usually along the lines of, "See?! Jazz musicians can make hit records any time we want! We just don't want to because it's, like, squaresville, daddy-o!").

something like that don't stop til you get enough home recording demo kind of prove that it's not all about the production

I remember lot of the "oh, Quincy's the REAL genius behind those records!" stuff coming from insufferable jazz snobs (usually along the lines of, "See?! Jazz musicians can make hit records any time we want! We just don't want to because it's, like, squaresville, daddy-o!").

Meanwhile when I listen to Jones' big band arrangements, they sound like too-slick finger-popping wallpaper music for coffee commercials.

I think his real gift was as an arranger, not as a producer.

i like coffee

Quincy Jones's real gift is living. See his Netflix doc.

Meanwhile when I listen to Jones' big band arrangements, they sound like too-slick finger-popping wallpaper music for coffee commercials.

― grawlix (unperson), Monday, January 28, 2019 2:26 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Some of his small-group arrangements are ok, but when an orchestra or big band gets involved, the results are usually unimaginative at best, and frequently dull. And some of his '50s arrangements -- particularly something like Art Farmer's Last Night When We Were Young -- are instantly-dated slushy harp-fests.

re MJ - without in any way wishing to condone or minimise the atrocity of his actions, it is so painfully clear that this is what must have happened to him as a boy.

one thing that is interesting is how people reluctant to give Michael his due (often for very meritorious reasons) are quick to credit quincy jones w/ the sleek power of his best records. but for all QJ's talents, if you look at what he was working on in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, pretty much none of it is anywhere near as memorable as his work w/ MJ. a late period Lena Horne record? Patti Austin? some of the more mediocre Rufus and Donna Summer LPs? the only classic among QJ's productions of that era, other than MJ, is George Benson's "Give Me the Night" (single, not full LP). so whatever MJ brought to the table and/or brought out in QJ is immense. it doesn't hurt that they probably had songwriters lining up to place their best songs w/ MJ.

I still marvel at the fact that "The Girl is Mine" not only made Thriller but was the first single off it

thanks for stanning for Donna Summer and Brothers Johnson.

Jones' "Summer in the city" is amazing of course

thanks for stanning for /Donna Summer/ and Brothers Johnson.

:)

i was too hasty in my dismissal of some of those other albums. i still don't think they measure up to the MJ stuff, esp. in their songwriting.

btw i am trying to make some sort of pun inverting the whole shangri-las "he's good-bad, but he's not evil" to say something like "michael jackson's not bad, he's evil," with reference to his hit record bad (get it??) but i just can't seem to form it correctly. any assistance is much appreciated, thanks in advance.

xp Right on Time rules

I think this broader conversation to some extent exposes how much of the r Kelly convo was enabled by the fact that in some circles he was *never* taken seriously whereas mj was universally so, and we will see ppl flip. Ie Questlove is apparently an MJ truther?

I think a lot of the convos I’d hear about mj’s strange appearance were that he was like a more extreme version of a baseball player risking his health using steroids: the world’s most competitive, driven musician doing everything he could to become the most popular artist in the world—in a world that’s fundamentally anti black. He was driven to the point of self mutilation.

Except wasn't Michael the most popular, successful artist *before* he did all that?

Not really, the transformation work between his first solo record and his second pales compared to what subsequently happened but people were shocked at the time of the Mowtown 25 gig not just by Billie Jean and the moonwalk but by the radical transformation in MJs appearance.

I dunno, I just did some googling and he generally looks the same to me up to 1983 or so. The big changes came after the Pepsi fire.

https://spinditty.com/artists-bands/The-Changing-Face-of-Michael-Jackson

He had some work on his nose it seems before 85 but nothing that fundamentally changed his appearance. Around 87 he starts to look like a different person.

nose job plus losing the afro was a pretty big shift

Losing the afro is a change of hairstyle. Everyone does that. If you look at his face he is obviously still the guy on the cover of off the wall. By the late 80s the whole gestalt is different

By 93 there is like no trace of him left. That’s when plastic surgery gets eerie

the point is that people were shocked at the time. the differences seem minimal in hindsight, obviously, jesus.

I remember seeing the Bad album cover and being like wuuuut is going on here

He tried to throw people off the scent by dressing in military couture, but for some reason that only attracted *more* attention.

the transformation work between his first solo record and his second

(Off The Wall was his fifth solo LP! though the previous two weren’t hits, he’d had a #1 single off the second, top tens off the first, and Motown cranked out a best-of just months after the second, padded with Jackson 5 material.)

Jermaine this morning on U.K. tv;

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/jermaine-jackson-leaving-neverland-michael-children-allegations-good-morning-britain-a8753851.html

xxp I remember a good thread somewhere about the Jacksons' use of fascist imagery, cannot find it anywhere though

treesh i lived through it! his look on thriller caused waves! it's true that at that point it wasn't seen as pathological

But he doesn't look that different on the Thriller jacket! His hair, yes, but that's about it!

*throws hands in air*

*segues into thriller dance*

I think a lot of the convos I’d hear about mj’s strange appearance were that he was like a more extreme version of a baseball player risking his health using steroids: the world’s most competitive, driven musician doing everything he could to become the most popular artist in the world—in a world that’s fundamentally anti black. He was driven to the point of self mutilation.

yea I remember hearing that he'd heard something about Rolling Stone not featuring a lot of black artists b/c they sold less magazines, and concluded he couldn't be the biggest in the world as a black man. makes a lot of sense, especially considering his "100 million" sales goal for Bad which is pretty lol in retrospect

His hair, yes, but that's about it!

If you don’t count his nose and his chin, sure.

and his cheeks

jfc the pics from '85-'95. I forgot about that weird ass chin implant

can't wait to see one of these on Elon Musk in about 10 years

"dating grimes was elon musk's thriller" would be a good display name

iirc the weirdest thing about his look circa thriller was that wrist thing

http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/michael-jackson-bone-protruding-thriller-album-fold-out.jpg

what the fuck

i’ve never noticed that before
what is it?

i can't explain the wrist, but it's from the inside foldout image on the thriller lp

lol first I thought you were talking about the tiger.

Anyway, those are his web shooters iirc.

There's the matter of makeup, lighting, photography, etc., but if you look at his face on the cover of Thriller (the album) and Thriller (the song), yeah, he's starting to look different. But I still think it's not radical until a few years later.

Just looks like he has a firm grip on the tiger trying to keep it in place.

specially devised tubes for sucking out the baby tiger's life essence iirc

this historical debate over his shifting looks is a little odd - his look for Thriller was definitely shocking at the time, there were playground jokes about his nosejob/skin lightening among my world of young ppl. What came after is beside the point, ppl had no idea how weird he was going to get.

yea I mean as someone whose first memory of Michael Jackson was the "Black or White" video it was really stunning to see what he *used* to look like

My band is finally finishing our magnum opus of New Orleans brass band versions of MJ songs, which we've been slowly working on for like...7 years. Cool timing. :/

yikes bad timing

jordan :(

let's not forget mj's amazing dancing skills
he put them to some pretty weird use over the years but his natural skill was undeniable
i remember the abundant crotch-grabbing being scandalous at the time

yea when I saw This Is It I was pretty amazed, he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man. for all the strangeness with his face he actually looked kinda decent those last couple years (I mean, comparatively).

his impact on dance styles is pretty undeniable, he's a key figure in that period where things became stiffer and more robotic (obviously he cribbed a lot from hip hop dance crews in this respect). the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

like this whole thing where you have a gang of backup dancers all doing these super-stiff synchronized robotic movements, that just became standard. personally I find it really boring to watch 40 years on when every pop act does it but whatever, I guess other people found musicians making music too boring too look at after awhile.

I think this broader conversation to some extent exposes how much of the r Kelly convo was enabled by the fact that in some circles he was *never* taken seriously whereas mj was universally so, and we will see ppl flip.

this seems OTM. there have been far fewer calls for "cancelling" MJ so far which feels like a double standard to me.

the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

even MJ acknowledged that the moonwalk was an extension/revision of one of James Brown's dance moves (which itself JB had no particular copyright on)

nothing is ever completely new!

MJ was doing a version of the moonwalk as part of the J5 and he was widely understood to be a prodigy incorporating the dance moves of many of that period's top black stars.

the saddest thing of all is watching clips of the j5 and knowing what time had in store for all of them, but particularly MJ. what a mess.

I ... guess? Not denying MJ learned a lot from Brown but I've never seen JB slide across the stage backwards like that, when he did the sliding thing he was constantly twitching his feet around. idk

sure, it's not identical. but it was hardly "unprecedented" (or should we say "unpresidented"?)

MJ feels too deeply embedded in culture to cancel entirely. Like, no one has gotten married in the last few decades without dancing to at least one song at the wedding, where would you even start.

I remember that moonwalk being really jaw-dropping when he did it at the Motown 25th, like this superhuman moment where ppl were amazed that a person could do that. it was shocking.

i mean JB is obviously super influential on everyone but MJ was so opposite in many ways, James is fundamentally very manly and effortful, sweating his ass off, grunting collapsing then forcing himself to go on through sheer force of will....

MJ thriller an on seemed like this weird alien creature, the moon walk was so striking because it really seemed like some strange unnatural magic like he just floated on the Earth

Delighted to see they are so many devotees of the terpsichorean arts on ILX all of a sudden.

ctrl-F "fosse"

no hits

I mean, if we're going to play the "where did those moves come from" game, let's at least cover the known sources

In a November 1969 episode of H.R. Pufnstuf, Judy the Frog teaches everyone a new dance called "The Moonwalk", which includes two instances of a stationary moonwalk.[10]

https://youtu.be/eUTEhEPONgc?t=70 for those who don't know what I'm referencing

would never deny Fosse, personally

i remember that Pufnstuf episode

Oh damn, that is insane (the Fosse clip)

I don't know shit about dancing!

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

Thanks for that link, DJP. Wow!

alas for Fosse cred, The Little Prince was a huge bomb at the b.o.

re: the Smooth Criminal lean

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/MichaelJackson/story?id=7941951&page=1

aha! I knew it was a magic trick

he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man.

Fosse is 47 ish in that clip. 50 years isn't that old if you keep in shape.

reminds me of people being surprised that "Jordan can still dunk at 50!!"

this is a really weird conversation

tony hawk last did the 900 at 48

maybe I should clarify that, I guess it wasn't so much that he was 50 but rather that he was apparently in very poor health and was just counting down the days until his tragic death

Michael Jackson was the Ken Stabler if dancing

well yeah Fosse was a chainsmoker and pillpopper, and an epileptic as well.

so, that's how he did it.

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

It was shoes that clicked to the ground.

i was thinking about his dancing skills because no matter how grotesque his face began to look, his dancing skills were unscathed, like a reminder of who he used to be (even if the styles of dancing changed a lot)

i am of that age that by the time Bad came out, I thought MJ was pretty corny/someone I liked as a little kid (and by that time I was no longer a little kid, i was a pre-teen...so matoor)

Same. My dad bght me the rec cause he knew I was a fan. Well, yeah, was.

Thanks Dan! I thght I made that up. Haha

http://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6727091.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Michael-Jackson-shoes-2.jpg
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/05/22/613306407/michael-jacksons-gravity-defying-lean-continues-to-fascinate
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5742939

I think dangerous might have been the first tape i ever bought

First Music You Ever Bought

hey this turned into an ILM thread, what a surprise

Those smooth criminal shoes look really painful

Cruel shoes, you might say

that song from 'Little Prince' goes hard

LL otm about his dancing. i still love watching choreo rehearsal footage of MJ. like, there’s hours of Dangerous tour rehearsal but thats more saddo territory lol

i like this Thriller one - https://youtu.be/3Y9jwxE0TJA

born in 83. i was just getting into music right at the moment when MJ and Prince had become kinda outdated -- hip hop totally twisted the world upside-down. vanilla ice & mc hammer, and i remember reading a kris kross interview or something i think where they mentioned liking michael jackson?? but then really the chronic, and finally doggystyle ... snoop dogg was my michael jackson at age ten. MJ and Prince felt like they were from another era, he seemed weird and creepy, and the new or recent music never lived up to the reputation. there was a whole aesthetic shift at that moment. i did like one prince song ('lovesign') but it almost felt like prince doing G Funk! ALso I should mention aside from "Cream" by wu tang which spoke to me as a kid somehow lol I really associated this shift with west coast rap and derivatives like da brat, new york rap got hot again for me as a teenager more, and in the late 90s

obviously loved mj & prince when i got into them as a 'music nerd' in my late teens & of course there were certain songs (thriller) (human nature cuz of the nas sample, lol) that I knew already as part of the ambiance but yeah there was a definite generational shift at one specific moment

oh and i DEFINITELY learned the "whats the difference between neil armstrong and michael jackson? Neil Armstrong WALKED on the moon ... and Michael jackson [child rape joke]" on the playground in like, elementary school. there was always some 'question' about it ... but it was more an aura around it

i actually do kind of remember the Pledge of Allegiance thing that Whiney mentioned

people really love that fucking forbes article

https://t.co/GJ2j7TlEsK An informed and well argued piece about the huge absence of context in the new doc on Jackson.

— Nelson George (@nelsongeorge) January 29, 2019

questlove too

its interesting that it's all posed in the language of "real journalism" like ppl want to rely on Authoritativeness to bolster their intuited feelings about the situation So Bad

This forbes piece on on #MichaelJackson should be read. That’s all. https://t.co/fTOrmCOKOu

— Questlove (In E flat) (@questlove) January 30, 2019

Disclaimer: this article is not intended as a review of Leaving Neverland, which I have not seen,

okay

huh. i wasn't really aware of the details regarding these new witnesses.

i don't know. there as something profoundly inappropriate with his relationship with children and occam's razor says he it was what it looked like. but if he was actually some extremely gentle and naive person who everyone thought was a monster than that is really, really sad.

There is no non-sad interpretation possible

very true

Nelson George goin after Kamala Harris and defending MJ in the space of a week, cool agenda he’s got there

Don't find the Forbes piece particularly convincing. Wade Robson changed his story and Michael Jackson was kind and generous towards some children is all it says. Those two things are hardly inconsistent with MJ being a molester.

thread is a handy reminder that middle-agedness isn't quite the flattener it seems. i'm in my mid 40s and five years either way doesn't seem like a big deal now . . . except for enormous things like 'your age when you encountered hip-hop'

Wade Robson changed his story

This is a very strained reading of the forbes article.

Is it? The article says he testified in court that nothing sexual had happened between him and MJ, and then later said it did.

ok, I'm not sure which side you're on, but this stuff from the forbes article:

In 2011, Robson approached John Branca, co-executor of the Michael Jackson Estate, about directing the new Michael Jackson/Cirque du Soleil production, ONE. Robson admitted he wanted the job “badly,” but the Estate ultimately chose someone else for the position.

In 2012, Robson had a nervous breakdown, triggered, he said, by an obsessive quest for success. His career, in his own words, began to “crumble.”

That same year, with Robson’s career, finances, and marriage in peril, he began shopping a book that claimed he was sexually abused by Michael Jackson. No publisher picked it up.

In 2013, Robson filed a $1.5 billion dollar civil lawsuit/creditor’s claim, along with James Safechuck, who also spent time with Jackson in the late ‘80s. Safechuck claimed he only realized he may have been abused when Robson filed his lawsuit. That lawsuit was dismissed by a probate court in 2017.

In 2019, the Sundance Film Festival premiered a documentary based entirely on Robson and Safechuck's allegations. While the documentary is obviously emotionally disturbing given the content, it presents no new evidence or witnesses. The film's director, Dan Reed, acknowledged not wanting to interview other key figures because it might complicate or compromise the story he wanted to tell.

say there's more investigation into Robson's charges needed before we conclude that MJ definitely molested them.

The above is evidence of nothing. It's implied there that as Robson's life and finances were falling apart, he eyed up a sexual abuse accusation as his next paycheck. Just as likely (and I'd say a whole lot more likely) is that his initial denial was about Stockholm syndrome, about confusion about what happened, about a desire to be associated with MJ's fame and glamour and to parlay that into a career in the entertainment industry etc. And when all that waned, he went public.

True enough, but the "reasonable doubt" factor (in the court of ILX) comes into play. I haven't seen the movie either, but I will watch it when it's on HBO.

Max Wall invented the moonwalk, as any fule kno.

To this day I remain haunted by his enunciation @ 0:29:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyPbeFDS-y0

rivelinho iirc

Put your hand flat on a surface and touch your pinky to your thumb. Do you see a raised band in your wrist? That there’s a vestigial muscle called the palmaris longus. It used to help you move around the trees. About 14% of us don't even have this muscle anymore. (2/8) pic.twitter.com/ZF3Ta91IGy

— Dorsa Amir (@DorsaAmir) January 15, 2019

To this day I remain haunted by his enunciation @ 0:29:

jfc are all the people commenting on that video suggesting that jackson was just too pure or naïve to realize that sleeping in the same bed w/ a young boy would have "sexual connotations" to most people, aware that when he died they found mountains of pornography in his home, including some that essentially represented or simulated man/boy sex? (he also had heterosexual pornography and "adult" male pornography fwiw.)

there's really nothing exculpatory that holds up.

as for the supposed unreliability of the witnesses, i mean, sure, we'll never be 100% certain. but the fact that the motives of one of the witnesses may not have been entirely pure is... not really surprising at all? or damning? anyway, his account would hold less water if it weren't congruent with those of several other boys.

people really want to think MJ was innocent. i guess i kind of understand why and yet, ... why?

following is presented on not the firmest footing, being that its coming from a white guy awash in privilege, but offered in good faith…

Why do Nelson George, Questlove and other african americans stand up for MJ year after year, when it is self evident that he did everything he possibly could, using his vast resources, to eliminate his physical connection to the african american community? over and over again over at least 25 years, he tried to resemble a confluence of Joan Collins and a white boy, ostensibly because his father made fund of his nose when he was a kid, among other hideous depredations? It seems to me that his mental illness/working through childhood trauma should not excuse what appears to be a visceral insult.

similar to a post upthread, when he says "why can't you share your bed?" it has stayed with me…chilling…1:14:24…the whole thing is mesmerizing…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z34BKlCr9o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9e_EmoB83Y

can't find unedited clip of Katt Williams talking about MJ onstage, but this is the audio…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZKTfaYwmFY&t=269s

was listening to the Breakfast Club this morning and yeah w/that and Questlove the official hip hop position is that this documentary is irresponsible and they should have never made it, Charlamagne the God was going but Angela Yee and Envy were agreeing w/him

Race is not about appearance, vm

Xp

I hear you…it is super presumptuous of me to ask such a question…

i think people recognize he was obviously suffering from body dysmorphia and it felt cruel to lay into him over that

It's not just that though, it's also that the black community tends to bristle (rightly so) at being told by white people who gets to be considered black.

I think the broader point with the hip hop community though is that it is really really rare for the black community to outright reject a previously successful one of their own for transgressions that make their way into the spotlight of white, mainstream media. Really the only instance I can think of is Cosby, and that was really recent and sort of unprecedented. Maybe I'm forgetting other examples, but I can think of lots of high profile examples where the "circle the wagons" mentality has prevailed. The black community tends to give a loooot of leeway and room for forgiveness, for obvious historical reasons that I hope I don't have to go into.

Is this the thread where white people opine about the thoughts of the black community's opinions on body dysmorphia. Just wanna pop in and say hi

"the black community"

I wasn’t speaking for anyone in particular. But if i were to guess why anyone at all would be hesitant to condemn jackson for the plastic surgery stuff, i’d say it had to do with feeling bad for him

yes WGW yes it is

had never seen this non-video video for ""Liberian Girl;" it's a sort of late 80's rosetta stone

Three dozen actors, musicians and celebrities can be seen in the short film, including Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Paula Abdul, Whoopi Goldberg, Bad producer Quincy Jones, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John (making their first on-screen appearance together since 1978's Grease), Steven Spielberg, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Suzanne Somers, Lou Ferrigno, Don King, illusionist David Copperfield, Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover and Dan Aykroyd. During the video, a mysterious person wearing bandages can be spotted; in the short film's end credits, he is credited simply as "?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3V-7DEAgdc

John Travolta, Jackie Collins, Lou Diamond Phillips, Billy Dee, Rosanna Arquette...

birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again

...Pepsi didn't start the fire...

eg from Skase to Pell

hey I got this one in under the wire

and in other "kept going to court very late in wheelchairs and oxygen tanks in order to somehow prove they couldn't be child molesters" news, Dragoncon founder Ed Kramer lasted two months out of his 5-year house arrest before getting caught photographing a child in a doctor's office

the first part of this is on channel4 next wednesday.

I was just reading this:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/01/leaving-neverland-is-it-still-ok-to-listen-to-michael-jackson

I have never really associated Jackson with his music. I was born in 1989, and grew up in a pop landscape where he was decreasingly visible. His songs remained totemic, but so much so that it rarely occurred to me that they had been made by humans, the same way that I never wondered who designed the McDonald’s logo, or what’s really in a can of Coke.

Lol this is totally off to me surely most kids wonder what is in a can of Coke (apart from mountains of sugar).

Whaaaaat? No. Most kids are definitely not thinking about the ingredients of Coke. In your teens, you might be like "why does mtn dew have something called yellow #5 in it?" if you are an observant and reflective person.

Yeah, a very musically aware millennial friend of mine, after Jackson's death, posted saying "Oh wow, I've been listening to MJ's work, and I know you all said that he invented Pop, but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

ah ok I remember a period where I was thinking about the formula of coke. Guess I somehow heard that it wasn't something you could look up + it tasted different to Pepsi. Snapes saying she didn't wonder maybe me think it was a thing to perhaps wonder about it. xp

OK, maybe something like that would pique my interest if I had heard it, but I don't think I'd ever thought about it as a kid myself.

In middle school the rumor was that yellow #5 made your dick shrink. I’d like to say I was savvy enough them to not believe that, but I wasn’t.

lol

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

Only when they’re 89ers. Can’t relate to writers born in different years.

"but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

yeah, another disgrace of a kind...

i love it when writers tell me when they were born

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Friday, March 1, 2019 9:00 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Only Real 90s Kids Will Remember This Trick for Shrinking Your Dong"

twitter gonna be interesting on monday

Yeah, a very musically aware millennial friend of mine, after Jackson's death, posted saying "Oh wow, I've been listening to MJ's work, and I know you all said that he invented Pop, but I didn't realise that he you meant that he actually invented Pop"

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

I wonder if the Jackson clan had Spike Lee make those recent documentaries because they knew what was coming?

Her social circle is a lot of pop-friendly older music journalists (many ex-ILXoRs, naturally) who had, in the wake of his death, pointed out that a lot of the template of modern pop had been laid down by Michael Jackson (or "Michael Jackson" if you're feeling less auteurist), would be the context there. I don't think that's a particularly controversial statement?

CNN: Corey Feldman defends Michael Jackson.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/05/entertainment/corey-feldman-michael-jackson/index.html

in a lifetime of brilliant career moves, this might take the cake

China rages continue....Fans in Chongqing city rally for #MichaelJackson , KEEP FIGHTING AND WE SHALL WIN #MJInnocent pic.twitter.com/zx3B1MGm87

— Keen Zhang (@mkgenie) March 2, 2019

small show of MJ support in Chongqing "lies runs sprints but the truth runs marathons".

I believe James and Wade. I also believe that Oprah is a terrible, terrible interviewer. "So, James, why are you so much more fucked up than Wade? Is it because you're not famous?" Wade jumping in and suggesting that evaluating their relative rates of recovery was maybe not such a good idea was a huge relief.

Watched this but didn't see the Oprah thing.

We only see it through the eyes of these two guys and their families, which is maybe a necessary corrective considering the fierceness of the MJ machine, but I found it utterly convincing. Gruesome stuff.

There are plenty of issues with the azo dye tartrazine (yellow #5). Shrinking dicks isn't one of them.

For some unknown reason I stumbled upon a video interview with MJ maid Adrian McManus. "Vaseline everywhere" would be a good addition to crime scene depictions: "Muddy boot prints, evidence of struggle, broken lamps, vaseline everywhere, blood spatter on walls..."

Thing is, even if you take for granted that some Michael Jackson is now beyond the pale - and there's never going to be consensus on that - people haven't started to get their heads around what's inadmissible and what isn't. Even if you draw the line at Bad or Thriller, or even Off The Wall, is the Jackson 5 now beyond the pale?

I'm not sure we as a culture have even begun to process how to deal with the voice of a child who grew up to be a serial paedophile and predator. And that's before you consider the child was an abuse victim himself and that the Motown-era records still contain some of the most joyous vocal performances ever committed to tape.

For all the debate about separating the art from the man, we're never asked to do that when the artist in question is seen as generally righteous. No one asks you to separate the art from the man when it's Curtis Mayfield or Stevie Wonder or Kurt Cobain - if anything we're invited to conflate them.

people seem to be down on baby hitler though

you gotta step up, man

baby hitler do do do do do

and yeah I have no clue what this is going to do for MJ's legacy. it's certainly going to hurt to some degree, his music is gonna get pulled from some stations and studios are gonna think twice about licensing any of it right now. but there are definitely a few key differences between MJ and say, R. Kelly, Louie CK, Woody Allen, or Bill Cosby - obviously, MJ was a much bigger celebrity than any of those guys, and he's dead now so there will be no trial, no 'discovery' process or anything. more than that I think MJ is a lot easier to separate from his actions, because his songs were so much more ubiquitous and woven into the DNA of pop music today, and I think it's possible to listen to them without necessarily being reminded of it. Like - it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did, and I can't imagine watching The Cosby Show without thinking of how he used that persona to take advantage of women. They were all doing it at the time. With MJ, it's like...when did this start? Was it around the time of Bad, when things really started going haywire? Like, I can't hear Jackson 5 stuff or "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and think, this dude's evil. Late 80s and beyond, sure, but the classic stuff.... :/

Mad respect to you frogbs but I have a tough time relating to what you have written. I am no closer to solving the "can you love the art while repudiating the artist" question than anyone here.

But! I am pretty sure the answer is not to decide at which album the person became "Bad" (pun intended) and then only liking the albums before that point.

Would anyone suggest that type of divide about another criminal/villain/badguy? "Yeah Vader blew up that defenseless planet, sure, but his early folk-punk singles were seminal. So I just won't listen to his later work."

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

or: just edit yr ID3 tags to say Rod Temperton & Quincy Jones & carry on

different people process art differently, there's never going to be a transferrable standard of how to keep checking a #cancelled person's work

this is a good point that bears repeating here and elsewhere

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/arts/music/michael-jackson-leaving-neverland-fans.html

“If you’ve been a fan for a long time, you’ve seen this over and over again,” said Casey Rain, 30, a musician and YouTuber living in Birmingham, England. He called “Leaving Neverland” a “sick attempt at hijacking the Me-Too moment.”

“There’s nothing about Michael that the fan community doesn’t know,” said Rain, whose blog post about “Leaving Neverland” became a go-to text even before the documentary aired. “I really don’t think that we lack objectivity on him.” (Rain and others who had not yet seen the film said their information came from a few Jackson fans who attended the Sundance premiere and took “very, very detailed notes.”)

michael jackson diehards are some of the worst people and have always been some of the worst people.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

oh I realize it's different for everybody and I think it's hard to "figure out" because there's sort of a gut reaction to it. For example I wouldn't willingly listen to R. Kelly anymore because the knowledge that he's singing about stuff he's literally doing to the underage girls in his dungeon overrides everything, I can't separate it out, and when they come up on the playlists I have I skip them immediately. But I can see still maybe liking "I Believe I Can Fly", the one song of his that isn't totally gross, because personally I don't really think of R. Kelly with that song, I think about Space Jam. At least, I don't have the same visceral reaction to it.

When it comes to Michael Jackson there was definitely a point where his music suddenly got a lot more aggressive and paranoid, where every other song was about the rumors about him and wanting to be left alone, and to me that stuff is pretty inexorable from his "Wacko Jacko" persona, for which these accusations played a major part. Anyway, I'm not trying to say that "This stuff is okay, this stuff isn't", just that this is the reaction I personally have to it.

"i believe i can fly" was always kind of gross to me, b/c
1) allegations about r. kelly were already out there (not least his marriage to a teenage aaliyah)
2) the self-empowerment clichés in that song always struck me as kind of ridiculous and gross (even if, yes i know, many people find them inspirational)
3) the contradiction between (1) and (2) was always a bit too much for me. here's a predatory asshole telling me to just believe in myself and i can be like him? fuck off.
4) the lyrics are dead terrible.

that said, the song is now stuck in my head, so... thanks?

"it's impossible to get into the work of R. Kelly, Louie CK, and Woody Allen without being reminded of what they did"

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies. Polanski too. Sure they became terrible people later (maybe Polanski even then) but it's hard for me to write those off. I'm still going to enjoy MJ through Thriller (which I do think predated his worst proclivities); shit he did after that wasn't nearly as good anyway so go ahead, erase Dangerous from musical history, it matters not to me.

unfathomable that there's any michael jackson diehards my age, I think my only natural exposure to the music of michael jackson was people in middle school doing the billie jean dance for talent shows

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

granted someone must have exposed them to michael jackson, but like ???

― moose; squirrel (silby), Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:22 PM

what year?

Would’ve been 2003 that I saw a 14-year-old did Billie Jean in the 8th grade lock-in talent show.

my friend's 11 year old has been a huge MJ fan for years.

I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird.

Or, alternately, they are.

I've had a 7yo and 12yo ask to learn to play MJ songs in the last few months.

Probably not diehards tbf

someone must have exposed them to michael jackson

phrasing

"I should note that I was exposed to essentially no popular music of any era by my boomer parents so I may just be weird"

wait, how old are you? I'm 47 and had boomer parents. MJ was completely ubiquitous in my childhood in the 80's.

I’m 30

(I'm all for separating Nirvana's music from Kurt Cobain as a person btw.)

you may be misclassifying the generation of your parents (unless they were very old when they had you)

Or at the least don't favour conflating them.xp

I mean my parents were born in 1950 and 1951, they are canonically baby boomers

38 isn’t very old

I was born in '81, the only MJ songs I remember hearing as a kid were "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" on the radio every so often. By the time I was 10-11 he seemed like an uncool weirdo, no one at school cared, I didn't care.

michael jackson was popular

in your opinion

my grandpappy never heard of him

I wonder if this conflating with artist and his/her art is more of an issue in music than in other art forms. I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi. In fact, so many writers I like had very nasty streaks, but it never occurs to me to avoid their works because of it.

MJ not really a problem for me as I was never invested in him. Don't Stop Til You Get Enough is sublime, as is some of the Jackson 5 stuff, but 80s and 90s Jackson really isn't my cup of tea.

I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi.

Maybe people have more of a problem with paedophiles than Nazis?

I dunno, I still enjoy Allen's earlier movies.

I assume this is literally the early funny stuff, as soon as he starts making serious films, things turn pretty icky pretty quickly.

maybe nobody ever heard of knut hamsun

gogol was just as much an anti-Semite, albeit the 19th century model of one, but hamsun was an unapologetic hitler apologist - which makes him as beyond the pale as gary glitter. rules are rules!

The only MJ song I really rate is "Dirty Diana" but surely we can all agree on one thing: pederasty is bad (as it were)

I read Hamsun, listen to Gary Glitter and, worst of all, voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the last General Election. I Am Monster.

as long as you don't listen to gary glinner - you'll get away with it!

My general rules are
1. If the abuser / bad guy is alive then giving financial and moral support to their work isn't on
2. If they are dead then much of their work (like MJ's weird raunchy stuff in the 90s) may become tainted, your choice to consume or not but there's a red flag about sharing with people.
3. If the work isn't tainted ('Hunger' is a work of genius without a hint of hitler, 'Take The Money & Run'* is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen, have you heard the demo version of 'Don't Stop Til You Get Enough'?) then it's your choice if you want to watch/listen/read & nobody should be judged for choosing to/not to.
*I know he isn't dead, but anyway

I can't imagine someone really loving Woody Allen's films without finding the "Woody Allen" character/persona likeable/charming to some extent, given that he's the centre-point of almost all those films, a thinly-veiled Woody analogue if not Woody himself (cf that joke from the simpsons - "I like Woody Allen movies, except for that nervous fella who's always in 'em") (maybe the pre-Annie Hall stuff just in terms of the number of quick-fire gags?) I guess it's possible to separate the "Woody Allen" character from Woody Allen the actual real-world human being, but it seems like it would be difficult

I play disco on vinyl every Friday night at the bar up the road, to a crowd whose regulars range (rather wonderfully) from late teens to mid-sixties; the small dancefloor mostly skews to early twenties. Since the first night, just over a year ago, most sets have featured at least one MJ vocal: solo or with his brothers, mostly from 1978 to 1981, but with the occasional Thriller track too. Three weeks ago, it was "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough". Two weeks ago, it was "Walk Right Now", with that fantastic instrumental section towards the end that lifts the whole track; I was planning to playlist it more regularly. Last week, I held off, but kept the records in my boxes. This week, I suppose I might as well remove them altogether.

I'll miss the Thriller tracks the least; they've never fully fitted the remit of the night, but you get the odd request. This now seems a lot less likely. But, oh God, "Rock With You", a transcendentally beautiful piece of music, which I've loved for nearly forty years; can it never work its magic again in a public space? That thought hasn't yet fully landed.

But then, there are still three Rick James records in my boxes. I've been hammering "Big Time" for weeks. Hmmm.

assume this is literally the early funny stuff, as soon as he starts making serious films, things turn pretty icky pretty quickly.

Father Andre: I have lived for 87 years, and the best thing in the World is... Blonde 12 year-old girls!

Sonja: Father!

Father Andre: Two of them, whenever possible.

I'm finding the trickiest thing to deal with is all the classic rock from the '60s and '70s. There hasn't been a high-profile documentary about rock groups making their way through classrooms of 14yo groupies, but that happened, a lot. So does my ignorance of the details allow my conscience to allow me to still listen to Zepplin without feeling vommy? Do I have a duty to inform myself of the details?

Or is it (as WA quote above demonstrates, and I can recall a similar joke in Annie Hall) that actually, awful patriarchy was more of a thing over 20 years ago, and cultural items, outside of the context they were made, shouldn't really be parsed in the same way?

so you're saying..... don't stop?

I mean, there is Allen's standup and writing, which is some of the funniest stuff I've ever seen/read, and there is "I will make a serious film about a 42-year-old man fucking a 17-year-old, drawing on my life experience as a 41-year-old man fucking a 16-year-old" - there seems to be a pretty clear line there, the vast majority of his films from then on are either "Allen stand-in scores younger girls", "Allen stand-in is creatively frustrated and then some stuff happens and he can create again, and that's what's important" pre-defences, or both.

xp yeah there are creepy jokes, but they don't seem the point in the same way as afterward

Getting into the work of Mexican director Emilio Fernandez, found a book chapter on him filled with screenshots, and they are so amazingly good looking, and then I get to the story of his decline, and the guy straight up murdered two people as he turned into an angry alcoholic.

I'm finding the trickiest thing to deal with is all the classic rock from the '60s and '70s. There hasn't been a high-profile documentary about rock groups making their way through classrooms of 14yo groupies, but that happened, a lot. So does my ignorance of the details allow my conscience to allow me to still listen to Zepplin without feeling vommy? Do I have a duty to inform myself of the details?

I am still wondering why the music industry hasn't blown up more. I've read quite a few rock star autobiographies in which the authors openly admit to banging high school girls. Nikki Sixx and Anthony Keidis, off the top of my head - both of whom actually have songs about banging high school girls as well.

i'm all for the cancellation of Keidis.

there was a blow up about the guy from Tool last year, I can't remember where it surfaced; Reddit maybe. But it didn't seem to hold.

the hamsun analogy itt thread is so weird. wagner is right there

wagner wouldn't illustrate the point abt the difference in how bad characters are treated in lit vs music tho

ah ok i missed the point!

I just read the story of Jerry Lee Lewis all but certainly murdering his wife in the early '80s. And "The Killer" is still loose.

Yes well Hamsun's work wasn't a cultural cornerstone beloved by tens of millions of people, including children, and used as a means to get access to them.

This would be more like finding out that Roald Dahl was a paedophile. Although his having been a bully, misogynist and raging antisemite doesn't seem to have put his work beyond the pale.

really good article about producer Mark Leander and the Glitter Band

as it turns out Gary Glitter had very little to do with the making of those records

https://thequietus.com/articles/00709-rock-roll-part-3-stepping-out-of-gary-glitter-s-shadow

lit and classical music = "high art", more intellectual, discerning readers/listeners can separate the art from the artist
popular music = "low art", more emotional, no way of disentangling art and artist

Bowie is even more revered now than ever (maybe). Iggy Pop? Spectre's stuff is still played all the time.

Ha, "Spector"

I posted a bunch of well documented stuff about Prince and everyone acted like it was invisible

I mean you don't hear people saying that they'll never read Knut Hamsun's Hunger because the guy turned out to be a Nazi.

you absolutely do hear this

I’d be surprised if we ever see a full Me Too era reckoning with the sexual misconduct in the early rock era. Fully half of the inaugural class in the RnRHOF has at one point or another been accused of sexually assaulting minors, domestic abuse, or both. So many “classic” rock and roll songs of the 50s and 60s are just completely about adult men sexualizing teenage girls, too - a theme that didn’t totally disappear from rock lyrics until like the mid nineties or maybe even later. Where do you even begin? OTOH a reckoning is already underway in a lot of respects - even old school rock critics like Christgau felt compelled to address Chuck Berry’s predations in their obits, and that was 2017. It’d be interesting to see what a wholesale re-evaluation might look like. Are there any extensive rock histories written from a feminist perspective that are already out there? I’m embarrassed that I don’t know.

tootin my horn here - i commissioned this show, which is p relevant to this thread's interests!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0605sx6

Well she was just 17, you know what I mean

^^^ half his age plus seven when it was written

Chantilly Lace sounds so psycho now

that witch wanted to eat hansel and gretel i mean holy shit

it's unfortunate, but classic rock is tainted forever for me -- with a few exceptions, it sounds like angry gross pervy old man music. the commercials they play on the station confirm this. i recently heard one with a man screaming about a "truck show" boasting the following treats: memorabilia from Smokey and the Bandit, "gorgeous fashion models" /vom

i doubt we are going to get any sort of "reckoning" for men in music in a world where spade cooley, brutal wife murderer and child abuser, is pardoned for the brutal murder of his wife by US president ronald reagan. the current president counts, i think, 5 pedophiles among his associates? i mean. i'm not shrugging it off but i don't have energy to get riled up about it and also go about my life.

Knew nothing about this stuff, but the first paragraph in wiki:

While the general age of consent is now set between 16 and 18 in all U.S. states, the age of consent has widely varied across the country in the past. In 1880, the age of consent was set at 10 or 12 in most states, with the exception of Delaware where it was 7. The ages of consent were raised across the U.S. during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. By 1920 ages of consent generally rose to 16–18 and small adjustments to these laws occurred after 1920. The final state to raise its age of general consent was Hawaii, which changed it from 14 to 16 in 2001.

7 in Deleware in 1880! 14 in Hawaii until 2001!

count yourself fortunate for not knowing that. i knew that. i remember asking my mom about what the age of consent is.
child marriage with the consent of only one parent is still legal in several states

Iggy Pop?

I don't know anything about Iggy and teenage girls. What's the story?

More like "Iggy and anything that moves."

14 in Canada until 2008 iirc

I guess it's possible to separate the "Woody Allen" character from Woody Allen the actual real-world human being, but it seems like it would be difficult

You don't have to "separate" to laugh at jokes, not always.

re turning icky, check out some of the lines in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972, third film directed) sometime.

I don't know anything about Iggy and teenage girls. What's the story?

https://genius.com/amp/Iggy-pop-look-away-lyrics

https://goo.gl/images/xiAQbu

has iggy ever addressed the terrible racism of this song?
https://genius.com/Iggy-pop-african-man-lyrics

most people are horrible to one degree or another, i don't have this desire to eliminate their art from my life because they are horrible. seems like a dead end. horrible people are capable of art worth appreciating. not complicated.

but i don't have any desire, either, to police what people chose to read or listen to or whatever.

Is the 'parents should have known better' the new 'she shouldn't wear a sexy dress' ? I have not seen the documentary, don't know if I can't stomach it, so I have no idea how Reed treats the parental situation of the two victims. Regardless, I'm seeing so much shit thrown at them and I don't know how this is not a form victim blaming.

what about the art is so troublesome to people that they don't want to think about it? is the idea of what they did just too horrible to contemplate? that stuff goes on every day. it's in the news every day. compared to that it isn't hard (for me) to listen to billie jean w/o thinking of MJ fucking little kids. and if i read hunger and think, wow, knut hamsun became a nazi, so what? i get out of the book what i get out of it. his becoming a nazi is a piece of that.

xpost, sorry van horn!

(and i agree w/ you)

Gummy OTM + the ethics of consuming a living person's art without supporting them seem dicier to me than the ethics of supporting them.

Or is it (as WA quote above demonstrates, and I can recall a similar joke in Annie Hall) that actually, awful patriarchy was more of a thing over 20 years ago, and cultural items, outside of the context they were made, shouldn't really be parsed in the same way?

― closed beta (NotEnough), Wednesday, March 6, 2019 5:53 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have two major problems with that notion. What happened in the 70s has an impact on people living today. Really one of the hope around the #metoo discussion is to break cycles of abuse that can trap families or other types of groups over generations. Jackson being a chief example of that. Perhaps if Jackson could have healed from his abuse we wouldn't be in this situation, which is an obvious thought.

I think to understand the peculiar microcosm of 60s/70s celebrity culture can only gives us clue as to better prevent predatory behavior. Considering how that kind of culture seeped deep into our consciousness, any fight against awful patriarchy has to take stock of what happened in that era, among other things like the church's behavior or more silent environments. Plus, for the healing of trauma, abuse or not, going in back in time is healthy.

Second, I will always have some sort of bad taste in the mouth when radio cancels R. Kelly and Jackson and the deification of Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones continues unabated.

What did the Stones do?

lotsa sex with lotsa groupies, surely many of them underage

Meh. The Jimmy Page / Lori Mattix story is far more disturbing as far as I'm concerned.

i think a part of it (more a symptom than anything) is how male rock stars and the stories they had to tell were treated very seriously, and even up until recently female artists turning more introspective in their music was often treated as something to eyeroll at. Not that there were exceptions on both sides but still. i read a wayback machine review in NME recently:

And how would you like your emotion? Raw? Naked? Intense? Brrr. It's a chilly domain in which the multimillion-selling ice queens of self-indulgent Ally McBeal-themed cosmetic angst operate, but you have to hand it to the kooky crew of Tori, Alanis and the troubled Ms Apple - they know their market. Although probably not quite as well as their market knows them.

For these ladies, and LA-based 24-year-old Apple is no exception, leave no emotional stone unturned in their cathartic quest for neo-hippy feminist-lite 'meaning' in their, like, totally crazy lives. And for her second album of Amos-aping MTV-branded Lilith Fair fodder, the barmiest, prettiest pretender to Tori's throne of corporate crackpot chic deals unashamedly in that tired and trusted heavyweight heart-tugging currency: relationships.

So it's been a frantic four years for Fiona since her debut, 'Tidal', poured its bruised musings over a generation of sensitive saps, half of which appear to have been spent writing this record's staggering 75-word-long title (it's poetry, dontcha know), the other half spent playing with the dark might of glossy trip-hop. And surging power ballads. And opaque Plath-U-like platitudes bereft of mirth. Still, that's Fiona Apple. Fruit by name, fruitcake by nature. 5/10

Piers Martin

then think about a lot of the subjects all three of these artists are covering in their music! what each of them went through in their lives! i'm pretty sure this critic is still "respected" afaik.

Is the 'parents should have known better' the new 'she shouldn't wear a sexy dress' ? I have not seen the documentary, don't know if I can't stomach it, so I have no idea how Reed treats the parental situation of the two victims. Regardless, I'm seeing so much shit thrown at them and I don't know how this is not a form victim blaming.

― Van Horn Street,

One of the few subtleties the documentary gets right is showing how even the most compassionate parent can also get so overcome by access and opulence that their early warning systems atrophy.

Idk if the groupie culture of that time was as abusive as some of the things it's being compared to but why is the Page/Maddox story more disturbing than the Bill Wyman/Mandy Smith story?

holy shit at that review, eat shit "Piers Martin"

irta piers morgan at first

also, I'm not really sure this is music-exclusive so much as a kind of dissolution of a person's bad deeds into the neutral air of history, across all fields. alice in wonderland hasn't disappeared from cultural memory either

why is the Page/Maddox story more disturbing than the Bill Wyman/Mandy Smith story?

It isn't. I wasn't aware of the latter until I read your post.

That story is still a jaw dropper. How the fuck did he get away with it?

It was 1983, a time when none of us were even born yet…

it's insane. pretty sure they met when she had just turned 13, they started dating in 1983.

also later her mom married Wyman's son (she was 46, he was 30 i think?)

Someone could make the observation that Bill Wyman probably didn't suddenly find 13 year old girls attractive all of a sudden when he turned 47, if they felt like getting sued.

suddenly and all of sudden in the same sentence, apologies

also later her mom married Wyman's son (she was 46, he was 30 i think?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgpsGmGyG0Q

Mandy Smith was born in July 1970, that's half a year after the release of Sticky Fingers, fucking hell.

Hey, remember when Jerry Lee Lewis's fourth and fifth wives just...died?

Move over, Kelsey Grammer (based on the top photo in that JLL story).

Jerry Lee Lewis also accidentally (?) killed his bass player!

Jerry Lee Lewis also accidentally (?) killed his bass player!

According to the link, the guy lived (and sued).

also later her mom married Wyman's son (she was 46, he was 30 i think?)

what the fuck

"If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-in-law and his own grandpa."

brothers and sisters i have none
but my sons grandmother is boning my son

This week, I suppose I might as well remove them altogether.

Mike, do you mean that you think the recent American documentary will have affected the perceptions of your local audience, or that the internet discussion has now brought you around to believing the accusations, or something else?

autobiographies in which the authors openly admit to banging high school girls. Nikki Sixx and Anthony Keidis, off the top of my head

Sixx came out yesterday, in press for the Netflix adaptation of Crue autobiog The Dirt, to say that one anecdote he tells in there about comically arranging Tommy Lee's swap-in-the-dark rape of a groupie (who was then violently raped by a stranger on her way home, to Sixx's relief) didn't actually happen and idk maybe he exagerrated because he was on heroin and erm actually the author of The Dirt made up loads of stuff, nothing to do with me. (Neil Strauss was contacted for comment, but is contractually not allowed to.)

People definitely thought the Wyman/Smith thing unpleasant at the time. A dirty old man I think Steve Jones called him, no wait that someone else.

Yes, it's not like those were different times, everyone accepted it.

Mike, do you mean that you think the recent American documentary will have affected the perceptions of your local audience, or that the internet discussion has now brought you around to believing the accusations, or something else?

It's on UK Tv tonight and tomorrow (it was a co-production with channel 4) and half an hour ago I heard two middle-aged men on the bus discussing the allegations and wondering whether they had the stomach to watch the documentary. Also, regardless of how you feel personally, I'd think it's best not to play them in public for the time being.

and maybe not ever again, depending on what happens.

UK Tv tonight and tomorrow

ah, ta

i think one problem with talking about this stuff in regard to artists of the 60s and 70s is that it can be hard to find reliable reporting on a lot of it. like i assume that led zeppelin did lots of terrible things even besides the awful story already mentioned here, but i don't know how accurate or fair any of the books on them are supposed to be. or the bowie thing, iirc the only info we have on that is that lori maddox mentioned it in an interview.

I mean this is the Mail obv. so I get your point but I'm pretty sure no-one who knows/knew Bowie has ever denied any of it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6684325/Two-women-reveal-flings-David-Bowie-aged-15.html

The difference these days is the possibility of people notifying each other instantly of their shockhorror and publicly stating their cancelling of a career and that they will no more forever pay for their entertainment content (while continuing to pay only delivery systems). I don't think people are more or less bothered -- I think less change is actually happening than it appears. I heard Man in the Mirror on the canned supermarket pa today.

I almost bought this cool Dennis Wilson shirt, but then I remembered he married his cousin's teenage daughter and impregnated her just to spite him.

https://www.instagram.com/kyledunnigan1/p/BurnNLHjlnZ

hm no thanks

Watched the first half of the documentary tonight. One thing that struck me was how the whole Bad era is precisely what 8-year-old boys think is cool, or what they thought was cool in the late 80s anyway, And I was one at the time, I went to the cinema to see Moonwalker and thought it was the greatest thing ever made, now it seems like kind of driftnet grooming.

The ‘Jew me, sue me’ thing doesn’t get mentioned much nowadays

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/jew-me-sue-me-everybody-do-me-we-are-a-long-way-from-thriller-giles-smith-on-the-new-michael-jackson-1586653.html?amp

seem to recall he argued that he was unaware that "jew" in that context had negative connotations

the "kick me/kike me/don't you black or white me" follow up lyric was the one that kinda scuttled that approach

seem to recall he argued that he was unaware that "jew" in that context had negative connotations

people gave him a pass on things like this because people genuinely believed he was some kind of naïf. i think that was true of a lot of stuff he did.

michael jackson was a horrible person, people. even if he hadn't raped a bunch of kids, which he did.

All hail Conrad the Beastslayer! #LeavingNeverland pic.twitter.com/8gKr7WRPJh

— Autobiography out NOW (@DaftLimmy) March 6, 2019

Mike, do you mean that you think the recent American documentary will have affected the perceptions of your local audience, or that the internet discussion has now brought you around to believing the accusations, or something else?

As jed says above, Part 1 of Leaving Neverland aired on Channel 4 in the UK last night. Part 2 airs tonight (and I'm DJ-ing again tomorrow night). So the issue is at its peak in the UK right now.

Also, regardless of how you feel personally, I'd think it's best not to play them in public for the time being.

I agree. The music I play in public on Friday nights is almost wholly joyful in nature (I barely even play a sad lyric, no Tears On The Dance Floor here), and I'd rather choose records that don't stir up thoughts of child abuse. Not playing records with MJ vocals, of any era, doesn't equate to pronouncing on his guilt - it's more about removing triggers. You don't know people's stories. Choosing to listen to MJ vocals in private is a different matter.

So it is a perception thing - your dancers will have disbelieved the accusers over the last quarter century, but you expected that transmission of these specific claims would change that. Is this because the climate of believing survivors has shifted in the last couple of years, or it’s been long enough since Jackson’s death that the defensiveness of nostalgia has faded, or?

(I’m not remonstrating or setting you up for a sneering! just genuinely curious about the shift in attitude.)

Or the documentary is pretty damning and broadcast on national television, would be my guess.

Previous accounts would not have been restricted to local television or kept out of newspapers, I’d expect. (I know the Bashir doco refrained from specifically claiming that Jackson was molesting the children that shared his bed.)

Right, and this one doesn't.

Also of course you're right that context is a factor - pre-Saville, there was a narrative that this couldn't really be happening because someone would have spoken up (and if someone spoke up, that they're less believable because no-one else spoke up, etc). That's really not the case now, I think.

True but this is a UK thing only, maybe Cosby or Weinstein has had a similar effect in the US now, but guess paedophiles are a different category of baddie?

I suppose that up to now, it's been possible for many people (myself included) to compartmentalise, but not any more. That's to do with the documentary, which makes its case with heightened visibility and more unsparing force than before, and also the rapidly shifting climate into which it has emerged.

Right, and this one doesn't.

I don't know if the Jordan Chandler accusations / settlement / investigators corroborating the drawings of Jackson's penile vitiligo weren't reported on national news programmes - the matter was never sub judice, even if Santa Barbara had jurisdiction over the BBC - but Genome has this ten-years-later BBC doco airing 12 times on BBC3 and once on BBC1. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(ie the year after Bashir)

Did nobody watch this then?

for what it's worth literally a month ago I had a conversation about the R. Kelly documentary in which I'd said something along the lines of "it didn't hurt Michael Jackson's reputation permanently" and their response was "oh, that's not the same, it wasn't proven that it happened and so on and so forth." this was before the documentary was out, but the timing was strange

this post from some british journo is going around which made me think twice for a second and then i got my head on straight and am back in the fuck mj camp
https://www.facebook.com/CharlesThomsonJournalist/posts/10156642832831998

fwiw, I'd love to go to a mike t-diva dance party.

re: that dude's FB post -- i dunno, it seems plausible to me that MJ did it and that his victims might not have told consistent stories over the years. like, "these guys have changed their stories!" is a good lawyer's defense but in the real world ppl forget stuff and don't remember dates or get details wrong, and that's especially true when you're talking about things that happened when you were a kid.

When you’re talking about extremely confusing and traumatising things that happened when you’re a kid, at a time when you have carefully been removed from normal life including regular markers of the passage of time

jed otm btw

I watched and I believe those boys/now men/still boys. I'll miss the music, I'll miss "I can't help it", but I'm canceling it either indefinitely or forever.

I play at a place, monthly not weekly as Mike does (and not the club, sic, just a bar gig) and I presently cannot imagine playing MJ. As Mike said you don't know people's triggers but also I think you would, frankly, get an angry reaction from some punters and who wants to deal with that for the sake of playing these tracks?

I mentioned sic there because he knows the club. He came to it once and didn't tell me he was there and it's a major regret of mine that I didn't know!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/simpsons-episode-featuring-michael-jacksons-voice-to-be-pulled-11552007802

just realized that's behind the WSJ firewall, but this covers it too:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/simpsons-episode-guest-starring-michael-jackson-pulled-circulation-1193215

I was born in '81, the only MJ songs I remember hearing as a kid were "Thriller" and "Billie Jean" on the radio every so often. By the time I was 10-11 he seemed like an uncool weirdo, no one at school cared, I didn't care.

I mean... Bad and Dangerous were both worldwide #1, multiplatinum albums and the premiere of the "Black and White" video was the most-viewed ever at that time. The amount of hype it generated still stands out in my mind.

i think one problem with talking about this stuff in regard to artists of the 60s and 70s is that it can be hard to find reliable reporting on a lot of it. like i assume that led zeppelin did lots of terrible things even besides the awful story already mentioned here, but i don't know how accurate or fair any of the books on them are supposed to be. or the bowie thing, iirc the only info we have on that is that lori maddox mentioned it in an interview.

Afaik, the band are famously critical of, and claim there are plenty of fabrications in, both Hammer of the Gods and Stairway to Heaven; the former seems like it almost definitely has to contain a good portion of bullshit. (P sure the 'mud shark story' has been debunked, for a start.)

Interesting...

Corey Feldman Changes Stance On Michael Jackson Doc ‘Leaving Neverland’ https://t.co/vChYtUf8CO pic.twitter.com/c4buBbMqVC

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) March 8, 2019

(P sure the 'mud shark story' has been debunked, for a start.)

yes, it was debunked to being a red snapper, not a mud shark

(I share this regret jed but did not know in advance I was going to be able to make it!)

i never heard anything other than "red snapper" because "lol she was a redhead and the carpet matched the drapes"

“I’m going to put this red snapper into your red snapper” was Cole’s quote of himself iirc

”...Let’s see how your red snapper likes this red snapper!” That was it. It was the nose of the fish, and that girl must have come 20 times. But it was nothing malicious or harmful, no way! No one was ever hurt.

As Mike said you don't know people's triggers but also I think you would, frankly, get an angry reaction from some punters and who wants to deal with that for the sake of playing these tracks?

Absolutely, I should have mentioned that too - I've been visualising a good mood turning sour, and who wants that indeed?

Sic, first, even if you take that quote as definitive proof of anything (which uh), it comes from Richard Cole, not from a band member. The story in Hammer of the Gods, which is what I was commenting on, was that the members of the band were responsible and the acts it describes go further than what Cole describes himself doing (and would have probably resulted in injury). Second, Carmine Appice has also claimed that he was the one responsible. Afaik, no women have ever come forward to say they were involved.

I've said before on ilx that I do consider what the band did to Ellen Sander horrifying and defensible, and much worse than any of these groupie stories. (Obv doesn't affect my appreciation of the music.)

that's probably why I said Cole

Why did they have a fish in the hotel room?

*indefensible xps

OK, but, then, even Cole was debunking something more than just the type of marine creature involved.

relative to the story in HOTG

Why did they have a fish in the hotel room?

― Trϵϵship, Friday, March 8, 2019 1:05 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You could fish from your balcony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edgewater

I guess it's not really an ironclad debunking as much as that a story that always sounded like bs has multiple competing versions with afaik no one still defending the original version and no evidence in its favour.

the grossest thing about that was how giddy it made Frank Zappa, who immediately wrote a terrible song about it

Sure, but he did that all the time about everything.

Ha, I went to look it up and realized that I used to own the album it's on but, weirdly, had no clear memory of it.

Lucky you.

I don’t get why it’s even considered a good story and not just gross and weird.

I mean... Bad and Dangerous were both worldwide #1, multiplatinum albums and the premiere of the "Black and White" video was the most-viewed ever at that time. The amount of hype it generated still stands out in my mind.

― All along there is the sound of feedback (Sund4r), Thursday, March 7, 2019 6:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i also remember when the "Scream" video debuted and it was this enormous event, followed of course by You Are Not Alone. "Scream" was his comeback (and a pushback against those who made the initial allegations against him).

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/entertainment/simpsons-michael-jackson/index.html
i recorded this on cassette tape off of the television and listened to it like 8 zillion times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLIUlaJsGwU

seeing that was covered upthread now. everything is terrible.

My wife's name is Lisa and has had a massive hate-on for MJ for years because she has believed that he abused thiae kids. Ever since she got on FB, I have gotten up early on her birthday and pre-emptively scanned her account to eliminate well-meaning posts of that clip.

those

ok can we derail this thread into talking about invasion of privacy and access to the social media accounts of significant others? (｡￫∀￩｡)

but not really tho

This is a mod we are talking about too. He is probably doing this to all of our facebook accounts.

oh shit, let me clarify: by messaging the people and asking them to take down the posts!

phew, lol

I mean, privacy issues notwithstanding, someone could get hurt feelings if they thought my SO was ignoring or deleting their birthday posts off her wall. Everybody involved has been real understanding.

I don’t get why it’s even considered a good story and not just gross and weird.

by whom

i also remember when the "Scream" video debuted and it was this enormous event, followed of course by You Are Not Alone. "Scream" was his comeback (and a pushback against those who made the initial allegations against him).

― omar little,

Comeback from what? His last American hit, "Will You Be There," surpassed expectations and rode the top ten for a while, thanks to Free Willy.

i assume omar doesn't mean commercial comeback but coming back from the first allegations

oh! Makes sense

my recollection was that the legal issues all started up in earnest after Dangerous and Will You Be There? But I could be wrong. Maybe "comeback" should be in "scare quotes", since he was coming back from the accusations of sexual abuse and the single was a pretty clear attempt to confront them angrily.

brad otm -- i think Dangerous was a huge album but the allegations obviously put his career to a halt for a minute before HIStory (which did sell 20 million worldwide, wtf, but it could be argued it was maybe the most New Jersey of all New Jerseys, of which MJ arguably had three perhaps?)

coming down from the extreme Thriller heights required a three-step New Jersey process perhaps.

i recall HIStory being a HUGE deal (and i bought it!) and Dangerous maybe not performing at the level people were hoping for.