Who would’ve thought that I’d be sitting here on June 25, 2009, drinking to the memory of Michael Jackson?
Not me, that’s for goddamned sure. I’d been following the various stories about his upcoming residency at London’s O2 Arena, idly wondering if perhaps the outrageous number of sold-out shows might well inspire Michael to tour the States again. As it happens, my wife was pondering the very same possibility. She and I have our own informal lists of artists we’ve never caught in concert but hope to see someday, and he was a lock for both of us. That’d probably explain why, when I told her the news of Michael’s death earlier today, she burst into tears.
We have seen the Elvis Presley of our generation, and he was Michael Jackson.
You can’t overstate Michael’s importance to people who grew up in the ‘80s. Sure, his time with his brothers in the Jackson 5 during the ‘70s resulted in some damned fine music, and I’ll gladly trumpet the merits of his 1979 album, Off the Wall, as the second best thing he released in his career, but you know it and I know it: Thriller was the shit. It sold 26 million copies, it produced an unprecedented seven Top 10 singles, and it was the soundtrack to my teen years. No matter how “alternative” my tastes in music may have gotten, from the Sex Pistols to the Velvet Underground, Robyn Hitchcock to Social Distortion, I have never hesitated to acknowledge that Thriller is one of my favorite albums of all time. I get how people who didn’t live through the astronomical success of the record can’t conceive how you can know that Michael was accused of pedophilia and yet still declare that he was and, to a certain extent, always will be the King of Pop.
But it’s true. He is.
That’s not to say that his reign hadn’t been without its problems, obviously, and the problem with an album like Thriller is that, after the dust has settled, there’s only one question left to be asked: how the hell do you follow it up? It’s easy to say that Michael never came anywhere near matching that record, but, hey, I just listened to “Dirty Diana” and followed it up with “Smooth Criminal,” so don’t tell me that Bad doesn’t have some kick-ass moments on it, too. I don’t necessarily have the same level of love for Dangerous (although “Remember the Time” has definitely withstood the test of time quite well), but I do think that, had he opted to release the new-material disc of HIStory - known as HIStory Continues - separately rather than couple it with a best-of disc, a lot more people would be praising it today. I still think “Stranger in Moscow” is one of the best songs the guy ever did, and if you’ve ever been sympathetic to the plight of a young boy growing up in the spotlight and never getting a chance to be a kid, then the song and video for “Childhood” just might make you tear up…like it’s doing to me right now.
But I’ve got to be honest: Michael’s last studio album, 2001’s Invincible, didn’t do a whole lot for me (”You Rock My World” and “Butterflies” excepted), and I’ve spent most of the last five years doing nothing but criticizing the guy for not doing everything in his power to mount a comeback.
Back in 2004, Michael released his poorly named Ultimate Collection - a seemingly random selection of singles, album tracks, rarities, demos, and previously unreleased material from the vaults - and I took him to task for it. “With everything he’s gone through in his personal life in recent years,” I said, “what he really needs far more than anything else is to kick-start his musical credibility. The perfect way to do that would’ve been to put together a definitive collection of all of his hits, spread out across as many discs as it takes to do the job properly…and I’m talking somebody-shake-the-cobwebs-off-‘Farewell My Summer Love’ definitive.”
But he didn’t.
In 2005, he announced that he was busy producing an all-star charity single called “I Have A Dream” to help raise relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But he never released it.
And when the 25th anniversary of his most iconic album rolled around, he celebrated the event not by taking the opportunity to release a new album but, rather, to drag a bunch of newer artists into the studio to either remix or re-record songs from Thriller.
At the time, I said…
It’s clear that Michael Jackson has brought in these younger and – let’s face it – hipper artists in order to make the statement, “Hey, world, I’m still relevant,” but, as ever, he just doesn’t get it. Nowhere is this more evident than on the DVD that’s included in this package, which provides the album’s three iconic videos (“Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”), along with the performance of “Billie Jean” from the “Motown 25” television special that serves as the 1980s version of the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He didn’t need to bring in a bunch of young upstarts; all he had to do was take this DVD and the original nine-song CD version of Thriller, hold them aloft, and say, “This is why you should respect me!”
But he didn’t.
What hurts the most about Michael dying now is that, finally, it looked like he was going to get off his arse and do something about reclaiming his legacy as a superstar of pop. He had these sold-out dates in the UK, and for once, despite all of the false starts he’d offered over the course of the last half-decade, it looked like he was actually going to come back.
And, then, he was gone.
I found out about Michael’s death just as I was walking out the door to take my three-year-old daughter along with me to the grocery store. She was already in the car, in fact, so when I went outside and got behind the wheel, I felt obliged to tell her why I’d taken so long.
I said, “Michael Jackson died, sweetie. That’s why I’m a little upset.”
“You liked him?” she asked.
“I did,” I replied. “He was one of Daddy’s favorite singers.” Then I hesitated for a second and clarified, “Well, maybe he wasn’t one of my favorite singers. But he was very, very important to me and Mama. We listened to him all the time when we were growing up. And that’s why we’re sad.”
And, then, my daughter - God bless her - put the whole thing in perspective by asking a single question: “But you can still listen to his music, right?”
Absolutely right. And that’s why, when we sat down to dinner at the Harris household tonight, we did so listening to Thriller.
Goodbye, Michael. Thanks for the memories…and the music.
We were stoked to see that the Pet Shop Boys, in support of their awesome album Yes, were launching a North American tour in the fall (musical director: Stuart Price, thank you very much), and then as we scrolled down to the bottom of the press release, we saw something that really got us excited: a Pong game featuring the band’s single “Love Etc.” playing in the background. Yes, indeed.
We had to pinch the width a bit to get it to fit, so if you’d like to play the official version, click here. Get yer Pong on, kids.
New singing sensation Susan Boyle is back with another great performance. It probably doesn’t match her initial performance that made her into an international sensation, but it was pretty damn good considering the pressure.
Five years after releasing 2004’s career-defining American Idiot, Green Day is back with their follow-up, 21st Century Breakdown, hitting stores today. Does it live up to the considerable hype?
According to Bullz-Eye’s David Medsker, Breakdown is a solid 3.5-star affair — perhaps not the towering achievement that Idiot was, but as he says, you have to “give the band credit … for not shying away from the impossible expectations that have been thrust upon them, and trying their damndest to make an album every bit as massive” as their last outing, even if their reach exceeds their grasp a bit:
The problem is that this time around, that whole reach-exceeds-their-grasp thing comes back to haunt them. The band simply bit off more than they could chew, and had they been willing to pare down the track listing to a more reasonable length (18 songs! 69 minutes!), we could be talking about Breakdown and Idiot the same way that people compare and contrast The Bends and OK Computer.
These sentiments are more or less in line with the qualified praise doled out in reviews from a number of outlets, including the UK’s Guardian (”a little less bold, a little less surprising than its predecessor”), Entertainment Weekly (”The band seem oddly immune to the fact that success … has rendered Berkeley’s gutter-boys-done-good accidental targets of their own ire”), and Popdose (”bucks the current trend of churning out singles in favor of creating deep tracks that beg for repeated listens — and may the gods bless ‘em for it!”)
And what does the band say? Well, watch this Total Assault interview clip to hear directly from the boys themselves:
Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) says that Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” sounds an awful lot like one of his songs, “Foreigner Suite.” So much so that he might actually sue the band.
“The song definitely sounds like it,” he said of his song. “It has such logical chords and the melody has to be what it is…”
Asked during a telephone interview from London whether he would pursue the issue legally, Islam, 60, said “it depends on how well Satriani does.”
U.S. guitarist Joe Satriani has sued Coldplay, accusing the British band of copyright infringement. He claims substantial original portions of his song “If I Could Fly” are recycled in “Viva La Vida” and is seeking damages.
I’m not familiar with the song that Islam is referring to. Does anyone think he has a point, or is he reaching at straws?
If you’re a fan of Fleetwood Mac, then you no doubt got more than a little bit giddy at the tail end of 2008 when the band - still holding strong with the fab foursome of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie - announced that they’d be touring in 2009. Word on the street is that things have been going swimmingly thus far, and the tour will continue to roll on into June; you can check out the current dates rather easily, as they’re right on the homepage of FleetwoodMac.com.
In the meantime, however, if you’re on the fence about whether to go see them or not, take a gander at this clip of Lindsey Buckingham - recorded during a solo performance at Bass Performance Hall, which is available as a CD/DVD combo - as he takes “Big Love” and either makes you wish you could play guitar or makes you never want to pick one up again because you’ll never, ever be able to play it as well as he can.
By now you may have heard about Thornton’s interview (along with his band, The Boxmasters) with a Canada’s QTV where he takes exception to the host mentioning his acting career in the introduction. If you watch Thornton during the intro, you can see him shake his head a couple of times. For the first six or seven minutes of the interview, Thornton acts like a petulant child, giving short, ambiguous answers to direct questions. Then he goes off on a tangent talking about a monster magazine contest that he entered as a kid. Finally, around the seven-minute mark, he tells the host why he’s acting the way he is.
Thornton keeps asking the host, “Would you ask Tom Petty that?” The thing is — Billy Bob Thornton is no Tom Petty. Thornton is best-known as an actor who sees himself as a musician. Tom Petty is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
I feel for the host — he simply introduced Thornton and the rest of the band, and has to deal with pissy Billy Bob for the rest of the interview. He didn’t ask him any questions about his acting career and it’s completely understandable why he would mention Thornton’s history as an actor in the intro to give the interview context. It would be really odd if he just started the interview without mentioning it at all.
Dhani Harrison…yes, you may know him as George’s son…has been making the press rounds, talking up You Are Here, the album by his band, thenewno2. While doing so, however, it hasn’t exactly required a great deal of arm-twisting to get him to chat about how he had more than a little bit to do with the folks at Apple Corps agreeing to license the Beatles’ music for their very own volume of “Rock Band.” But that’s fair enough, since “Yomp,” a song by thenewno2, was released as downloadable content for “Rock Band” on July 29, 2008, and another track, “Crazy Tuesday,” was released as one of 20 free songs for “Rock Band 2.”
“I basically did that for Apple,” admitted Harrison, “so that they could see it and say, ‘Oh, look, there’s Dhani, he’s a new media kind of person, and this is how he’s selling his stuff. Maybe we should consider doing that with the Beatles, seeing as we don’t have any digital deal or anything.’”
The Beatles’ “Rock Band” evolved out of several meetings Harrison had with Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, the developers of “Rock Band.”
“He’s a genius,” said Harrison, “just the loveliest, loveliest guy. We were sitting around one day, and he just said to me, ‘Do you think they would ever go for a Beatle game?’ And I was thinking the same thing to talk to him about! ‘It would be amazing, wouldn’t it?’ I said to him. Actually, I think I said, ‘It would be amazing because I could kick your ass at ‘I Am the Walrus’ while dressed as a wizard in Shea Stadium.’
“Do you know what I mean? Or I could put on the ice skating outfit from ‘Help!’ and then beat you at ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in the universe somewhere. I don’t know. Just make up whatever you can; ‘I Am the Walrus’ at the Cavern Club, even. Wouldn’t that be fun? And we both just started riffing on that kind of stuff until we both just were in hysterics, and it was obviously a brilliant idea, but I said, ‘Well, that’s never going to happen, is it?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s never going to happen.’ I said, ‘But I should talk to the guys from Apple, anyway. Because it is actually a no-brainer. It is the biggest no-brainer that I’ve ever, ever thought about, and if Apple don’t go for it, then they are shooting themselves in the foot, because someone else is going to do it. Someone else is going to get their own game.
“In the way the media works these days, in the way that music delivery systems work these days, I find it quite often best to be first,” Harrison explained. “If you were the first person ever to design an application for the iPhone and you patented it, you would be very, very better off than we are right now, you know? But you’ve got to be the first one to do it. So I figured that Led Zeppelin or The Stones were going to do it unless we just got on to it. So I got cracking with the guys from Apple. I kind of almost bullied them into believing how amazing it was. They really didn’t need much convincing if you looked to the fourth quarter, the month of December 2007, I think they sold something like 10,000,000 units of ‘Guitar Hero 2′ in just one month, and they are $50.00 each. I said, ‘If you do the math, if you go 50/50 with ‘Rock Band’ and you sell a Beatles ‘Rock Band’ game, that’s a big deal’ you know. And not to mention that, once the game is made, you can just keep adding songs to it. You could do the Bangladesh pack, you could do the ‘Live and Let Die’ pack, you could do the ‘Imagine’ pack…”
Are you salivating yet? Better clean yourself up. You’ve got ’til September 9th until the Beatles’ “Rock Band” hits stores.
Beatles fans and Rock Band fans can celebrate - The Beatles version of the popular game will be released in September 2009.
Here are the highlights from the press release:
• The game takes players through an “unprecendented experiential progression” of the musical career of the band.
• The game will be available as standalone software and hardware, as well as a limited edition bundle. The game will be compatible with all Rock Band instrument controllers and other current music-based video game peripherals.
• There will be limited edition hardware modelled on instruments used by John, Paul, George and Ringo.
• The numbers:
- The Beatles: Rock Band Software - Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $59.99 MSRP
- The Beatles: Rock Band Standalone Guitars - Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $99.99 MSRP
- The Beatles: Rock Band Limited Edition Premium Bundle: Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, Wii: $249.99 MSRP
- International pricing to be announced at a later date
• Giles Martin, co-producer of The Beatles innovative LOVE album project, is providing his expertise and serving as Music Producer
• Fans who pre-order the game will get access to exclusive content created by Apple Corps, MTV Games and Harmonix over the next few months.
Legendary outfit the New York Dolls have announced that they are teaming back up with producer/musician Todd Rundgren.
Rundgren helmed the band’s 1973 self-titled debut.
Entitled ‘Cause I Sez So, the album marks the first time the band has worked with Rundgren in over 30 years. The album will be released via ATCO Records on May 5th. It is The New York Dolls fourth studio effort.
They’ve put the wigs in a closet and kept the mini-Stonehenge in storage, but the members of Spinal Tap are back onstage. Not in character as the comical and perpetually washed up metal act, but as themselves: actor-musicians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, together performing an acoustic “Funky Sex Farm,” adding vocal grunts and heavy breathing between lyrics. “Getting out my pitch fork/ Poking your hay …”
It’s part of a medley of tunes at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, California, on Monday to announce what amounts to a busy year in 2009, with a 30-city “Unwigged & Unplugged” tour beginning April 17th in Vancouver. The trio is also finishing a new Spinal Tap album, combining studio re-recordings of songs from the original film and brand new material.
Consequence of Sound is reporting that U2 will be playing a secret show at Fordham University in New York. The articles they are snagging their information from believe that this “secret show” will coincide with their weeklong stretch on Letterman. Consequence is also saying:
The performance will likely be packaged as part of the band’s upcoming performance on Good Morning America, which is also to take place on Friday at a “yet to be announced” location. It will mark U2’s first live U.S. show this year.
The work of U2 is never done. And with all their attempts at saving the world they have managed to record a new album, No Line on the Horizon. It comes out on March 3rd. You can read of a review of the record at Bullz-Eye. Or just go to the secret show, make all your friends jealous and come back with a signed copy and a feeling of having just been inspi(red).
Even though it seems like Barenaked Ladies has run its course, the news that lead singer Steven Page has left the band is still a little surprising.
Singer-guitarist Steven Page said a big reason he decided to leave the Barenaked Ladies was he felt his songwriting voice was occasionally being squeezed out as a result of being in a five-member band.
A day after he announced on the band’s Web site that he was leaving the group, Page said the Barenaked Ladies has so many songwriting voices that he’s looking forward to a future as a solo artist.
“Frankly, the band itself was a five-way democracy and one of the great things about it is that it’s been about the five-way collaboration, but it’s also one of the things that’s made me decide to be a solo artist,” he said Thursday.
BNL just seemed like one of those bands that would be together forever.
With Barack Obama in the White House, we have a president who doesn’t go to bed at 9:30 with a glass of warm milk. President Obama and Michelle Obama like to have fun, and Stevie Wonder rocked the White House the other night.
The East Room of the White House, normally a place for staid presidential news conferences and other Washington happenings, was switched into a nightclub Wednesday night as Stevie Wonder stepped inside and rocked the house.
Wonder was the winner of The Library of Congress’ Gershwin Prize, which was bestowed on him by President Obama.
In a celebration to be broadcast on PBS Thursday night, Wonder serenaded the first couple, kicking things off with a version of “Sir Duke” and later Wonder classics like “Isn’t She Lovely” and “Superstition.”
But the night was also a tribute to Wonder. Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Will.i.am and Martina McBride all paraded though, each with their own rendition of Wonder’s hits.
President Obama and Michelle Obama, in an elegant emerald gown, along with Vice President Biden and his wife Jill, took in the show from the front row.
Five years after releasing 2004’s career-defining American Idiot, Green Day is back with their follow-up, 21st Century Breakdown, hitting stores today. Does it live up to the considerable hype?![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f9e7714e-e7ce-4fbd-98cc-68a9bc1eda52)
