The Black Van Gogh

don’t stop until you get enough

“Listen up and I’ll tell you a story/about an artist growing old/some artists go for fame and glory/some artists aren’t so bold.”-Daniel Johnston

Michael Jackson was so bold. His rocket to fame may have been fueled by terror but it was blazingly bold terror. Prince of Disco. A West Side Story for the MTV 80s. Military regalia that made him look like a dictator from a Third World country.(Or for awhile there maybe it was all the TW dictators wanted to look like Michael?!) But w/ one white, sequined glove, of course. Jackson was the man who would be king. The self-proclaimed: King of Pop. And if you’re talking numbers who, beyond Elvis Presley and the Beatles, both with considerable headstarts, could possibly contest his crown? Thriller sold more than a 100 million records. The next closest is AC/DC’s Back In Black with 45 million. MJ more than doubles the rest of the field.

A friend complained to me recently ab not being able to connect w/ the 24-7 coverage of Jackson’s death. Glorifying a pedophile, was his objection, basically. I blustered back ab what a singularly brilliant icon of American entertainment he was, blah, blah, forgiveness, blah, blah, and then dismissed his post-Thriller music as strained, stuck in caricature. Typical second-hand rock snob humbuggery.

Truth is beyond the biggest singles I barely knew his post-Thriller music. I’d never heard until recently the three albums he put out after Bad (’88): Dangerous (‘91), Blood On The Dance Floor (although I know some or most of this material from the History Part 2 CD) (’96), and Invincible (’01). Truth is I felt squeamish ab Jackson myself. But I turned him off before the pedophilia soap opera began.*

For me, it was his evolving/devolving/mutating appearance. He looked like a freakish plastic surgery casualty. I think I even remember the video where I turned away: “Remember The Time,” or if that’s the one where he and some perfect African model are Egyptian pharaohs or some such. He looked like he was wearing a creepy Diana Ross theater mask. I cringed looking at him, shocked by what he’d done to his appearance. Forever after I’d channel surf past him faster than you can say Jerry Springer Show.

But then the day he died I started playing his music again. We grew up together, for goodness sake. "ABC" on TV is one of my most exciting early pop memories. When I was living in group houses in the '80s he was moonwalking. He’s barely a year older than me. “Don’t Stop Til I Get Enough,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature,” “Man In The Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” etc. The guy completely invented post-disco RnB. He ate hiphop for lunch and then served it as an after-dinner dessert. But I’d played all those songs silly when they came out. I wondered what the hell he has been doing musically for the last twenty years?!

So I’ve been checking out MJ’s 90s and beyond music. I was familiar with more of this inspriational stuff than I expected in that way we pick up massively popular music in the air, radio, out of cars, in malls, dentist offices, on the street. It's astonishing how many of his lyrics from this period directly fuel the tabloid soap opera. Sings MJ in “In The Closet,” from Dangerous, “Something about you baby that makes me want to give it to you/just promise me whatever we say or do/ you’ll keep it in the closet.” But then he throws everybody off by using female pronouns. Right. Makes me wonder if his lyrics were ever used evidence against him in the child abuse trials? He sounds increasingly embattled and isolated; he is part of the culture but sounds a part from it too, both solipcistic and universal.

At any rate he was definitely NO musical caricature of his former self in the 90s. There is no sign of decline until at least 2001’s Invincible and then that’s arguable. During the 90s his music in several ways expanded, growing in variety and depth.

His funk rocks harder than ever. Check out “Who Is It,” “Give In To Me,” the aforementioned, “In The Closet,” or “This Time Around.” Play these songs up against your favorite grunge, Nine Inch Nails, or whatever hard rock from the same period. Nothing as classic as “Billie Jean” but they stretch his rock inclinations without sounding like retreads. They feel less like a crossover novelty than “Thriller.” They are angry Michael w/ angry guitars.

His inspirational balladry, a weakness in his solo work of the 70s and 80s (“We Are The World” aroused the first MJ backlash, as I recall), grows in depth and songcraft: “Heal The World,” “Keep The Faith,” “Gone Too Soon,” “Earth Song” “You Are Not Alone,” “History.” Sure, there’s a lot of Hallmark card sentiment in these songs but I find their let’s-all-sing-together gospel fervor more uplifting than “God Bless America” at post-9/11 baseball games. In every one of them it’s as if he were trying to top that gospelly Coke commercial, "we'd like to give the world a coke," in hand-holding pop universality.Pleading for unity over cynicism is fine by me w/ a nice melody or beat.

What stands out in this period as something different for Mike are these personal songs like “Stranger in Moscow” and “Childhood” going gothic. This is music not quite like anything he’s done— uber-loungy Judy Garland-Barbara Streisand-Nelson Riddle-Robert Plant baroque pop elegance— and he totally owns it, as good as my beloved Dusty Springfield doing “What Are You Doing With the Rest of Your Life” or any other song I’ve heard in this style. His vocals soar, delicate as gossamer wings, dramatic as Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, plucking and dropping intimate flower petals of melody in a slow hypnotic dance, like some pied piper of the apocaplypse. Compare these w/ ballads from his early period, “She’s Out Of My Life” or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” In the 90s his voice assumes a heft and virtuosic richness unavailable to him before. His singing is stunning.

On the other hand, “Childhood” also stands out as a song in which he takes head-on the tabloids attacks: “People say I’m not okay/because I love such elementary things/It’s been my fate to compensate for the childhood I’ve never known” and “Before you judge me/try hard to love me/the painful youth I’ve had/look in your heart/and then ask/have you seen my childhood?” Yeah, but like Kimya Dawson says, “Having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up,” either. She also suggests, in her songs "My Heroes," if MJ is guilty "off w/ his balls." All I know for sure is if he is guilty this has to be one of the creepiest great songs I’ve ever heard.

When he isn’t singing, he resorts to his post-JB jams. Pre-hiphop and anti-dance music people will never get this stuff but it's MJ’s bread and butter, really. Sure, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Bad” and “Jam” are repetitious. But as long as you feel the force “keep on with the force don’t stop,” just like Michael says. And through the 90s he does not disappoint. Check out album tracks like “Can’t Let Her Get Away” and “Money” “2Bad.” He works the rhythm like it were an exorcism— his kinetic dance energy feverishly masterful. It's always state-of-the-art funky, incorporating current Rnb trappings and then showing the way. At his best, MJ makes the pleasure of rhythm feel involuntary and this will probably last as his greatest aesthetic achievement.

My overall sense is that his post-Bad records will eventually grow in reputation with his death. He's been set free and so has his music. Only Invincible starts to feel merely ordinary in Jackson terms. (Which means it was probably strikingly better than most pop long players put out that year. And talk about star-crossed: the guy puts out a record called Invincible a month after 9/11!) Dangerous and Blood On The Dance Floor, or what I know of the latter from History Part 2, are as unique and musically rewarding as Thriller or any other record he has made.

None of this is to suggest I haven’t had trouble following the TV coverage, too. I don’t want to see the dangling-baby-over-the-balcony scene ever again. He was unhinged, no question. I don’t know how anybody takes that many drugs. I don’t want to watch Joe Jackson plugging his new record label, again. I prefer seeing MJ at one of his last public events, the announcement of his proposed upcoming 50 shows in London. He’s decked out in an Elvis Presley shirt and hair, Ross fright mask, giving some Nixonesque peace signs. And then into a Kung Fu fighting stance he works the crowd with some grunts and stomps like he really believed he was going to do it to them all over again, as only the king of pop could.

And the best eulogy I’ve heard so far comes from radio talk show host Bev Smith on a News Hour last week. Brought on the show to defend all the MJ memorial coverage (how could Jackson be given more coverage than the cap and trade system being discussed in congress? groused a panel opponent), Ms. Smith would not give an inch, concluding one of her segments with “He’s our Van Gogh” or something to that clear effect.

The black Van Gogh sounds about right to me: Michael Jackson R.I.P.


*(So he's a pedophile? Duh, the guy built a theme park for pre-pubes in his backyard! The evidence as to whether he hurt children is not clear to me, although I’m no expert on the literature. But, I gather, nor are most those positively sure he’s a perverted monster.)

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