What do we say that hasn’t been said or won’t have been said in hours, day, years, and so on and so on?
When I was 11 years old I got as a birthday or some holiday present, or now thinking back I believe it was a gift for having survived the harrowing life & death experience only done at St.Elsewhere, they removed my tonsils and adenoids. After I came to in a haze, where the oxygen smelled a lot like napalm in the morning they let me go, deeming I was too tough to keep tied down to this hospital bed for very long.
For surviving this paramount hospital procedure I received gifts in the form of three tape cassettes for pulling through, winning one “like the Gipper“. In case you doubt the severity of this surgery, remember the board game “Operation”? The tonsils were like the most difficult to remove, if you could master that, one day you might wind up a ninja/Doctor working with other Doctors named after McDonalds Happy Meal at some local hospital, but I digress…
- The a Beastie Boys – Licensed to Ill
- Run DMC’s – Raising Hell (Son of Byford I used to sing in public way too much for my sister’s liking)
- Michael Jackson’s – Bad
Not a bad collection of cassette tapes if I must say myself (and I must). Anyhow I guess this here is my little homage in memory Michael Jackson, whose life seemed towards the end to be more of a horror show than an amusement park, at least that is how the media portrayed him. Now that he is gone they weep for him like they lost the Pope. Sometime I do not get the media and I work in it, but honestly the media doesn’t dictate who we like, what we like and who we are when no one is looking. We decide that and if we want to hold some shred of our gone childhood innocence, the kind that Michael supposedly lost because he wasn’t toeing the line the “they” want, well too bad. Gone is the Jackson 5, the white glove, the moonwalk, duets with Paul McCarney, marriages to the daughter of none other than the original King’s (see below).
I have to tell you, I hate writing obituaries. One summer working at the Athens Banner-Herald in Athens, Georgia, they had me sift through and find out who died and write these small, character limited blurbs about the people who had recently died.
I lasted about a day and a half before I couldn’t take it no more. I decided better no words was a whole lot better than some 19 year old kid dressed in flannel shirts who knew nothing about the man or woman, had zero connection with them whatsoever, maybe on occasion would recognize a last name, but other than what the “pre-google” days of info gave me and trust me that was not much that is what I had to some up a life of 80 years of living in some cases.
No sir, not I, I was the LEAST qualified person for that job.
So I quit, told them, “This isn’t for me and please listen you need to fix your A/C because it’s hotter than Hades up on this 3rd floor and everyone up here is croaking.”
So I left, quit, that sad excuse for a work desk where I had been typing with an old typewriter the life stories of people who had just died on notecards.
NOTECARDS!
I went down the calcium carbonate marble slate stairs, sans elevator, not by choice, but because they did not have one that worked. I walked about 5 blocks in the Georgia heat, the kind that makes your belly hurt and bee lining to the Taco Stand and had a couple of beers. Maybe even more than a couple until the sun went down and I could relax correct. I didn’t want to feel responsible for writing on someone’s life, mentioning their kids, their cousins, when the burial was and all of that “stuff” for someone I cannot even say I barely knew because in earnest, I did not know them at all let alone posthumously.
And see this is where it ties in – I guess the same is true here with Michael Jackson.
At least with him I know his music, I have seen him talk, seen him moonwalk, seen him shed tears and yet I still do not know him. There is so much that I could say personally, but most of it would be about me. So much that has already been said about Mr. Jackson, that the best respects I feel I can pay is musically. As I look back into my mailbox files I remembered that a friend at Sacks and Company had given me a copy of “Billie Jean” by Chris Cornell Live Acoustic in Sweden. What a wonderful gift, Cornell does Jackson proud.
It has a totally different feel, oddly, with a certain spookiness that came when Johnny Cash covered Rusty Cage off of his album ~ listen here to the the entire album ~ “Unchained”, which was the first of the rebirth of Johnny Cash. The Cash rebirth to my generation, the Gen Xer who knew about as much about Johnny Cash as to discuss him and not sound stupid while drinking coffee at 2A.M. and not trying to sound stupid, just trying to fit in with a little knowledge about a lot of everything.
(Rusty Cage – Johnny Cash – 1996)
And so with Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and now Michael Jackson all having moved along, always seemingly too brief, too much we could dwell on and speculate about, that I say the heck with it, let’ move and let the music carry the day. Let the voice for the people, be heard and in turn the voice by the people with turn us yet again and in that respect these greats, they never really “die” so to speak…shards of them, often large and deep cutting carry on for many years to come.
As promised here is the Chris Cornell (Soundgarden, Audioslave, Temple of the Dog and Solo artist whose new album SCREAM and subsequent tour has been running worldwide all Spring and Summer) version Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean:
And now for real deal, HD quality, Micheal Jackson doing “Billie Jean” live from Motown 25…Enjoy!
And lastly this is the ABSOLUTE BEST HD VIDEO of the many tributes made in honor of Michael Jackson as the info says “This is my video about Michael Jackson with Billie Jean, Beat it, Bad, Thriller, Dirty Diana, Who is it…Michael Jackson is for me, the King of Music. -RIP
Indeed.
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