I don’t generally care much about celebrity culture, but an icon from my youth has died: Farrah Fawcett, RIP.
Also, Michael Jackson is dead. About that one, I literally cannot think of anything to say, because there’s so much good, bad and indifferent to say. But I hope if there’s any commentary on Dean’s World, it’s at least respectful of the guy’s family and especially his children.
Weird day.
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For all you sophisticated, IPod listening, blogging, latte drinking 30 year old, metrosexuals — I proclaim that there was no greater joy than staying up to 10:00 on Wednesday nights, watching Farrah Fawcett, Jacklyn Smith and that other dame, on Charlie’s Angels.
Rest in Peace.
–HB
p.s. Also, Michael Jackson as a boy and young man, was quite a talented soul. A shame that he got so wierded-out and self-destructive. A tough article on him from 3 weeks ago.
I bet he died from prescription drugs.
I honestly see him as the person most fucked up by the poison of fame that I’ve ever witnessed.
If guilty of some of the things he was accused of, it’s hard to be sympathetic, but I also know I’m not God and I can’t know for sure of his guilt on some of those things. In any case, there’s just no doubt to me that a bright, incredibly talented little boy was utterly destroyed by fame and fortune. When I watch videos like this one, I feel just a little sad.
Here’s to that little boy Michael, and to his grieving children.
I hope that this isn’t disrespectful, but I wonder how long it will be until we have the “Michael faked his own death and is living in New Mexico” conspiracies begin.
On my ride home from work the local radio “personalities” were talking about Jackson (not so much about Farrah). The male “personality” just couldn’t help but attack Jackson’s music while waxing poetic about the music of HIS generation (mostly Beatles and Stones).
Now I’m a big fan of the Beatles, and not so much a fan of Michael Jackson, but I sure hope I don’t sound like a pseudo-intellectual music snob when I talk about music. I had to turn them off.
It’s a sad day regardless of what you think of either of these. Of the two I had far more respect for Farrah in the past few years. But even though I’m no fan of MJ, I can’t ignore a body of work that is as impressive as any pop/rock star I can think of.
Hank, her name is Kate Jackson, and she was my absolute favorite angel…
And Michael, well, he was extremely talented, and for the first 25-30 years of his career (starting at age 4) he was fricken awesome. But then, well, he went off the deep end. In many respects, he truly deserves to be compared to Elvis.
Where Elvis merged rock and roll into pop and introduced it to America, Michael took it to the next level, added some funk, and introduced it to the entire world. I have no doubt the parallels in their lives will be bandied about for decades, if not centuries. And the fact that Michael married Elvis’s daughter will only add to the mystique.
But at the end of the day, I’m left wondering why such celebrities mean so much to us…
jay:
I have wondered why celebrities mean so much to us from the day I realized there was such a thing as a celebrity.
Probably the closest I ever came to being a “fan” of any “celebrity” was when I got a horrible TV crush on Valerie Bertinelli. But that wore off when I was about 15 and realized there were REAL GIRLS around that I could date.
Liberals love to hate Fox News. I’m no big fan of Fox News myself. But the main reason why is because of their wall-to-wall saturation of their website with breathless celebrity “reporting”. I’m pretty sure the editorial staff at Fox News has the attention span and the general hormone-crazed interests of a typical 15 year old boy.
CC,
Maybe the Fox News editorial staff understands what the majority of their audience wants to watch?
jay:
To clarify, I don’t “watch” any news. I hardly ever watch TV at all. I’m talking about their WEBSITE.
CNN isn’t much better. What CNN lacks in celebrity coverage, they more than make up for in coverage of grisly murders, child porn allegations and sensational missing kid/teenager stories.
I guess by your logic that’s what their audience wants to see.
Here’s a sampling of CNN’s “above the fold” main page links as I type this:
Jon and Kate breakup (who the hell are Jon and Kate?)
Jon hurt by Kate’s accusations (TWO friggin stories on these nutcakes?)
Child being eaten alive by lake bacteria
Miley Cyrus pic in child porn case
Baby sitter high when baby vanished..
Yeah, CNN is real high-brow compared to Foxnews.
Sheesh.
In general I think there are two kinds of music fans: those who like music purely by whatever impresses them when they’re at a certain age and based on their cultural or sub-cultural backgrounds as they grow up, and, those who love music as a craft and are fascinated by it in all its facets.
If you’re of the former type–which is, by the way, NOT “inferior,” it’s just different–then of course you’re going to have nothing much good to say about any popular music that wasn’t part of your youth and that you also don’t relate to as part of your particular culture or sub-culture.
If you’re of the latter type, then I contend that it’s very nearly impossible to look at Michael Jackson’s body of work and not conclude that he was fricking brilliant. I will not use the word “genius,” as I think that needs to be applied to people who are not just brilliant, but innovative in ways that literally change a field and whose body of work continues to exert a noticeable impact for generations. I don’t think Michael will be remembered generations hence like an Elvis (of whom I am also not a big fan, by the way, although I am definitely An Appreciator) or a Beatles, or can be said to have spawned a generation or generations of musicians who wish to emulate him and be in his mold musically. He crafted brilliant pop songs and performed them very, very well, and was a brilliant talent–and that should be enough for any person.
In short, I’m with Cosmic on this one. Indeed, when I read your comment, Cosmic, I was brought back to an argument I had with a rabid Jimi Hendrix fan some 20 years ago, who utterly scoffed at all modern guitarists, and could think of absolutely nothing but contemptuous things to say about meaningless talents like Eddie Van Halen. I found this just stunning; I was not then, and am not now, a Van Halen fan, but I think anyone who can look at Eddie Van Halen’s body of work as a guitarist, or has actually SEEN the man perform, and NOT see a simply stellar talent there has got blinders on so thick and heavy I’m not sure how their necks can even stand the strain.
Was Michael Jackson the King of Pop? In the world of Pop music, he was indeed, for a few years there back in the 1980s. Which is more than I’ll ever do musically, of that we can all be sure…
Probably true, but sadly it is mostly a matter of scale (either fame or messed up ness ) or length of time to degenerate that separate him from Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Mike Tyson, Dennis Rodman, and other.
I can see wanting to be rich. I CANNOT understand wanting to be famous.
I live near Philly. One day a lunch, I went to the local mall (pretty upscale one, The King of Prussia Mall). Keith Van Horn, then of the 76er’s was pushing a stroller and walking with a young girl (I am assuming it was his daughter). They were shopping, not a public appearance. He couldn’t walk 10 feet without any stopping him. He took it well enough, but he couldn’t even take his children out shopping…
I cannot imagine what living a life where you can’t go to the mall would be like. How the hell do people like Michael Jackson, Michael Jordon, etc. not get warped by the prisons they live in?
And don’t even get me started on the hyenas and jackals like TMZ and Perez Hilton…
Please, Hyena’s and Jackals actually serve a purpose in the wild.
Okay, how about influenza and dysentery?
Well, considering what comes out of Hilton’s pie-hole, yeah, dysentery sounds about right.
RIP, Michael
I never spent much time if any in my long life becoming a fan of modern musicians. After turning my attentions for extended periods to the work of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and some relatively modern composers such as George Gershwin, how could I be expected to give even a remote shit about the life and times of Michael Jackson?
And from what I have seen about him in the modern media, I could judge him by no other standard than that of a mis-wired freak who somehow managed — with whatever chemical injections and surgical makeovers are necessary for such grotesque physiognomical outcomes — to convert himself from a normal-appearing and handsome young black man, into what came to resemble an abnormal and aging white female hag.
So how could I ever venture to take his music seriously?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold, this isn’t really intended as a critique of your comment, but your comment was what led me to respond.
I frequently hear fans of “classical” music take a sneering attitude towards popular music. I’ve heard the same thing from jazz or opera fans.
It makes me wonder if these people realize that Mozart was the Michael Jackson of his day. In many ways. In fact Mozart was a child prodigy who was showcased across Europe in much the same way that Michael Jackson was by his parents in America. Mozart, at a young age, developed relationships with other famous “classical” (meaning “popular” in that period) composers/performers much as Michael Jackson did.
When Mozart began making a name for himself as a music and opera composer, the “establishment” sneered at him for the simplicity of his work and the appeal he had for the peasantry. To complete the comparison, Mozart also died young.
Of course I don’t know of any bizarre habits or turns Mozart’s life took that would be comparable to Michael Jackson’s oxygen tents, sleeping with young boys and self-mutilation, but I’m only talking about their musical lives here.
Had Mozart been alive in the 20th century, he almost certainly would have written, composed and performed popular music. What he wrote, composed and performed was the popular music of his time.
I am not one who thinks that modern popular music is somehow less sophisticated, less complex and less musically “pure” than classical music. I’ve listened to plenty of classical music myself, and I like it. But I find many compositions by the great popular music artists of my lifetime to be equally compelling, complex and beautiful. “Scarborough Fair” by Simon and Garfunkel is a highly complex, hauntingly beautiful composition which not only soars musically but the lyrics are equally compelling in their own right. I have no doubt that in two hundred years Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Elton John and most likely, Michael Jackson, will be taught in music schools as “past masters” with every bit as much recognition, honor and appreciation as Mozart, Bach and Beethoven.
Perhaps you’re right, CC. Objectively speaking, I would suppose you really are right, in connection with Mozart.
But I was hardened for life in a couple of tough old schools, the streets of Chicago and the United States Army of the Korea War years. So I do not honor self-created freaks of the contemporary era. Nor have I ever followed a multitude to do stupidity.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold:
I sympathize with the first part of your last paragraph, but I don’t agree that appreciating Michael Jackson’s music is “stupidity.”
I personally despise Rap music. There is nothing about it that I find appealing. It comes across to me as vulgar, repetitive, atonal and crude. When I hear it booming from $40,000 cars bought for the driver by their parents, I find it to be downright hilarious.
But I can’t say that people are “stupid” for listening to it without simultaneously hearing my own parents calling the Beatles “stupid.”
Mozart’s music can be said to be more complex than ’80s pop music. Although Mozart’s music is simpler, and modern pop more complex, than most people realize. Especially rhythmically.
It’s not entirely right to think of the likes of Mozart as writing “popular” music of their day because they were writing for a very small elite wealthy audience. Only a tiny fraction of the populace could be exposed with any regularity to his work.
What was “popular” in his day was folk songs. Many of those are now lost because they were never written down or preserved by oral tradition, although there’s been much effort in recent generations to try to preserve a lot of that stuff. But yes, it also tended to be simpler, especially because the number of people who could afford to buy or make musical instruments and learn to play them and actually play them was scarce.
Pop music has come a long way from then, but it seems as if classical afficianados have often never lost the elitist snobbishness that came naturally to all the early Classical music fans–who, after all, were literally the exact elite that many classical music fans make pretense to being today, whether they realize it or not, when they act like such smug superior snobs, and refuse to see the merits in other forms of music or the severe limitations of the classical genre. (I mean, did classical composers even KNOW how to work work with time signatures other than the standard boring Western 3/4 and 4/4? You wouldn’t know it to listen to most of their work. Nor did they appear to know how to work with anything outside the classical 8 tone scale.)
CC, I did not intend to classify Michael Jackson’s music as “stupidity”, an adjectival noun by which I classify his life in general. I have no doubt he was a fine musician for those who appreciate that particular school of music. As I wrote, I join nobody in honoring people who consciously turn themselves into freaks. Viewing photographs of him in the past 15-20 years filled me with mild but definitive disgust.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dean:
Mozart wrote and performed the music that allowed him to make money as a musician. You didn’t make money as a folk singer in his day. You DID make money if you could find a wealthy patron or perform concerts for those with the money to pay for them. Which is exactly what Mozart did.
Mozart wrote songs and sold them, he set up and performed public concerts that people paid to hear and he toured. He had wealthy supporters who supported him during his lean times.
That’s pretty much exactly what modern “popular” musicians do today. I stand by my statement that what he did was the “popular music” of his day. The audience is much larger today because more people have leisure time and disposable income, meaning the audience for modern popular music artists who can spend money on their music is far larger. That’s the only significant difference.
Well… yeah and no. Yes you could make money performing folk music, that’s what minstrels DID. But traveling & local minstrels rarely if ever had wealthy and powerful patrons.
I don’t see many cases of wealthy patrons taking on pop stars but I guess that happens. Anyway, I don’t see the parallel as being as perfect as you do. He was mostly writing for a different audience than the audience for folk music, and most of the people he wrote for were of the same snobbish mentality as current classical music fans have pretenses to be.
Anyway, that’s how I see it. Oh, and I do like a lot of classical music, by the way. Including Mozart. ;-)
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