Michael Jackson

I have to admit that I have never bought a Michael Jackson record in my life. Not a one, not Thriller, not Off The Wall, nothing. Back in the 70's I considered myself a rocker and to those unfamiliar with our motto, it was, “If it ain’t Rock, it ain’t music”. As we moved forward into the late 70's and early 80's, I was kind of adrift when it came to popular music. Disco was a thing that was making my stomach turn at every bar and dance club I went too. Disco babes and dancing queens (both female and male, as it turned out) were not even on my radar. I certainly didn’t have any time for the namby pamby stylings of musical acts such as Peaches and Herb, Donna Summers or God forbid, KC and the Sunshine Band. I rejoiced in teasing one of my best friends who was a fervent Stones fan about the band going disco with Emotional Rescue. I kind of stayed in my own groove and celebrated every time some real music came out. A ray of sunshine in a bleak musical landscape, so to speak.

Tape decks in cars became my outlet for music, I don’t think I tuned in to an AM station for years in a row and only rarely allowed an FM station to be played. My musical life was made up of home made tapes. In fact, the whole musical repertoire of my wedding reception consisted of 90 minute tapes that I made, just to ensure dance music didn’t somehow sneak in.

All of that changed when I first saw the video of Billie Jean on NBC’s Friday Night Videos, our only source of music videos at the time. He took elements from every genre of music and somehow melded them into a cohesive and seductive form of music. It wasn’t Rock, it wasn’t Disco, it wasn’t R&B and it wasn’t Pop, but yet it was somehow all of them, all at once. And he didn’t so much as dance as much as he glided. His movements didn’t seem to be a series of connected routines like John Travolta laid on the world in Saturday Night Fever. He had a more like a natural way to him, like a flowing river. You certainly couldn’t go into a bar and dance like Michael Jackson did, that just wasn’t realistic. But you could go in and pretend you could dance like Michael Jackson and no one would fault you for it.

The hits that followed were more of the same, each seemed to move the entertainment apect of music and videos forward. Even as the number of hits started to fall off, there was still a quality to them. The morphing faces on Black and White were, at the time stunning. It still didn’t prompt me to go out and buy any of his records, that’s just not who I was. But it certainly didn’t stop me from admiring a man who could take such divergent musical styles and history and make them into a musical entity that everyone appeared to enjoy and tap at least their toes to.

The only thing I really can’t forgive him for was introducing the Moonwalk to the rest of the world. It was nothing short of embarrassing to see grown men, usually somewhat overly refreshed, trying to do this step in a crowded bar. Man, I still cringe at the thought and to be honest, I still can't do it.