I'm trying to think back to the last death of a major music star that I can remember, and that was Kurt Cobain in 1994. Everyone in my middle school was all weepy and depressed, and the footage that MTV showed of people gathering around some place in Seattle was the same. If his fans did anything that night to memorialize him, it was to light a bunch of candles and cry in the dark. I wasn't old enough to remember it, but from the footage I've seen, the death of John Lennon seems to have been the same (though I'm not so sure).
Last night at '80s night, they played a full fucking hour of Michael Jackson, and not just his 1980s stuff -- just awesome. I've never heard "Black or White" in a nightclub, and it's actually pretty danceable and uplifting. One of the few songs from the early '90s that has aged incredibly well -- and not a trace of the identity politics that was epidemic at the time (in fact, just the opposite).
The DJ said that Michael Jackson has been the most requested artist at '80s night for the past 10 years, so you'd expect the people there to have been downcast after hearing about his death. But nope -- everyone was getting into the groove, had a smile on their face, and cheered every song. No crying, moodiness, or anything like that. How can you to "I Want You Back"?
Basically, if you want people to enjoy themselves when they're memorializing you, don't make depressing music.
Black people are right about whites being too weepy. Get a grip and enjoy the good memories you have.
Jackson's "Off the Wall" album, the one BEFORE "Thriller", was his best work in my opinion. Its really good stuff. "Rock with You", "Girlfriend", "Off the Wall", "Dont Stop Till You Get Enough" and a few other super-catchy, immediately likeable songs.
ReplyDeleteIf his fans did anything that night to memorialize him, it was to light a bunch of candles and cry in the dark. I wasn't old enough to remember it, but from the footage I've seen, the death of John Lennon seems to have been the same (though I'm not so sure).
ReplyDeleteWeeping and candle-lighting pretty much sums up the reaction to Lennon's death.
Peter
Jerry Cantrell once explained that he wrote depressing music because when he was in a good mood he had better things to do than write music. I think cheery music is less enduring. So blues songs will be covered forever while bubblegum is reduced to kitsch.
ReplyDeleteI never cared for Jackson. I guess since I'm younger he's always just been a weirdo to me. I didn't hear Nirvana until years after Cobain died either, and it blew my mind that such music even existed (no MTV and had only recently gotten my own clock radio), so I bought Nevermind and listened to it beginning to end over and over for a week or so. I got into Alice in Chains before Staley died but after he had retreated into junky hermitude, so it was telegraphed from a mile away and not really a big deal. I can't actually think of a musician off the top of my head whose death would get me too bummed though.
No way. Lennon's was way bigger. Unavoidable if you turned on the radio. I'll skip the set-up, but I don't see how there's any comparison, across-the-board cultural-wise, taking into account demographics (age, race, musical tastes) the norms of the technological mediums (album-oriented-rock (AOR) vs. today's mix), and the respective career arcs (40-year-old Lennon's nascent transformative comeback vs. 50-year-old MJ's avoid bankruptcy swan song nostalgia-fest), between the two. Again, there were less outlets then, and for that whole weekend where I grew up (Long Island), everything was Beatles and Lennon. Classical music stations were even playing symphony versions of his songs. We didn't have 600 channels. You couldn't turn on the tv and not see it. Papers were full of it. There was literally no way to avoid it if you consumed any media. Teachers in his age cohort were bummed out for weeks.
ReplyDeleteWe were really a more homogeneous nation back then.
One strange fact about Lennon's death is that many millions of people found out about it while watching Monday Night Football on ABC. It was an important late-season game, and with cable in its early years there were many fewer choices on TV, so a big percentage of the U.S. population (including me) was tuned into the game. If I can recall, there was a "crawler" across the bottom of the screen saying that Lennon had been shot, and a few minutes later Howard Cosell, one of the three announcers, said that Lennon had died. During the rest of the game there were several quick cutaways to ABC News for more reports on the story. One thing I remember is that very shortly after the news broke, there was a scene of hundreds of people gathered in Central Park singing "Give Peace a Chance."
ReplyDeletePeter
PS Long Island, via NYC, was somewhat closer to London than LA: Clash > Beach Boys. Is it still?
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