Michael Jackson

[Asset]

Rod Temperton wrote most of his big hits, he's the one who will be laughing all the way to the bank!

[????]

100

[bigbadwolf]

Quids do you celebrate the Centenary of all the threads you initiate?

[Steph]

The King is dead, long live Jarvis Cocker...

[paragon]

His kids will be minted. The amount of records that will be sold in the next two weeks will probably wipe all his debts out. Says on Wiki that he has shiz loads of unreleased stuff still to come out.

[????]

bigbadwolf Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Quids do you celebrate the Centenary of all the

> threads you initiate?

This is the first time I've 100d one of my own and i'm chuffed

[Asset]

well, they well be minted - but they'll be orphans.

[????]

Are their mum's dead? :-$

[Eliza.D]

The legal process of who gets what and who is owed what will take years. As we speak the bottom feeders are making their case for compo etc.

The kids will be 'represented' by a legal team who will have their own interests in the front of their minds and not the children.By the time they lawyers have finished those kids won't have a pot to piss in.

[Asset]

the mother of the first two gave up all rights to them as part of the divorce settlement, she may come out of the woodwork now but what her motives may be, who knows? third child's mother unknown.

[*Bob*]

When you say "won't have a pot to piss in", I assume you mean "set-up for life with somewhere to live, a lifelong income and nothing to worry about by any normal standards"?

[Eliza.D]

Hi Bob

No i mean all his assets will have been frozen. He owes millions. His record company will have advanced him huge amounts of money that they will need to be recouped. I do hope you are right and they are financially secure. They are the only innocent party in all this.

[Michael Palaeologus]

We are missing the point here.

He will rise again, he IS the Messiah.

Watch the internet, it will come to pass.

[????]

On the sauce tonight Mike?

[Michael Palaeologus]

A bit. I have just sat through over an hour of Michael Jackson testiculation on Newsnight and the out-pouring of this pompous old wank is getting me fractious.

He wasnt Elvis or the Beatles, they created whole genres of music. They defined for the first time, the Teenager. I happen to be a fan of neither.

MJ was very good at pop, but thats it.

I take no pleasure in his death, but the toss that is being spewed out as a result deserves all the scorn I can muster.

[????]

I sort of agree, but it's mass culture innit......

[Michael Palaeologus]

True. Which makes it all the worse. There seems to be a reading of "successfull" as "meaningful".

Get a grip East Dulwich.

Time for bed.

[Keef]

Elvis sang a load of covers. Beatles okay, but Elvis was way behind MJ in most departments.

[Keef]

Night x

[Jeremy]

Keef tells the truth. Elvis sang a load of covers, and basically recycled existing R&B music. How was he any better than jacko? They were both performers first and foremost.

[red devil]

That's very debatable MP, post-war there were lots of socio-economic factors going on, as well as music and film (Rebel Without a Cause), which gave rise to the 'teenager'. Chuck Berry was a big influence on Elvis and The Beatles, but never got the full recognition he deserved, probably due to the colour of his skin - don't forget America was still segregated at that time. I'm not saying MJ was better or worse than Elvis and The Beatles, but as the first black (no jokes please!) global superstar, I think that's a pretty impressive epitath to have...

[MrBen]

I DONT UNDERSTAND the Elvis thing. I heard my first Elvis record several years after I had built up my collection of old Blues records by Howlin' Wolf, Buddy Guy and lesser known greats like Guitar Slim, Lightning Hopkins.

So to my ears Elvis was rip off merchant - a white sanitized bubble gum version of The Truth. And someone who got the credit for the sound that all the unsung black artists before him made.

There is a long, great tradition of showmanship in black music that brings us to where we are today. Guitar Slim for example was one of the first acts to play a distorted guitar (in 1950) with a ground breaking stage act that included playing his guitar with his teeth and behind his head. Buddy Guy picked a lot of his stuff up from that act (he still does it now if you are lucky enough to see him live). But all this was long before Hendrix, the Stones etc picked up their influence.

So with that historical context, Jackson took this tradition of showmanship to the mainstream - where previous black acts had largely been marginalised to some extent. A point some hack was attempting to make on a very tedious Newsnight last night.

I'd argue that even the great Godfather of Soul didn't really crossover until his mid 80's Living in America years....

For that alone Jackson's legacy is significant.

[MrBen]

And while I'm at it - a weird favourite clip of James Brown, MJ and Prince on stage together. For perhaps the first and only time. It should be great. A meeting of legends. But it's a shambles. MJ starts well with some signature moves and a good vocal. Prince is drunk and carried to the stage on the shoulders of a Hells angel. They don't know what to do. So Prince takes his top off.

It's weird, shambolic and yet genius at the same time.

Check it out.

[red devil]

Mr Ben, is that you in the pith helmet behind Mr Jackson?..

[Keef]

Buddy Holly was much much more ground breaking than Elvis.