2009 Better-Late-Than-Nevers Round-Up

Ten songs from year-end lists I’ve been motoring to this past month:

“Make Her Say,” Kid Cudi (w/ Kanye West and Common): An indomitably sexy number. As the Lady Gaga coda goes, “He’s got me like nobody.” And it ain’t his (or their) rap(s), I assure you. Although, I will concede Kanye wins the prize here with lines ab her legality and using his medulla oblongata. And how out of touch I am, turns out this jam was nominated for a Grammy!

“Lasso,” Phoenix: “Where would you go tied up to a lasso?” Not very far, presumably. But what these guys lack in sense they make up for in energy and songcraft. Wolfgang Amadeus is one of the few albums on year-end lists that makes sense to me. Pop fans tantalized by a few Of Montreal songs but disappointed by their albums ought to click with this immediately. ELO fans won't be disappointed, either.

“Lust For Life,” Girls: A clanging guitar riff stays around too long before a nasally voice busts out about how he “wished he had a boyfriend” but “he’s fucked in the head.” When he says he wished he had a "father" or a “beach house” his voice dips low as if showing us the self-importance he thought these distinctions might give him. It’s Jonathan Richman’s gay nephew from San Francisco. Over a whole album these guys suffer from Violent Femmes Syndrome: annoying affectation substituting for songs. For one ditty, though, it’s a messy comin’ out party. They might be giants, or at least legends in their own minds.

“If Life Exists (?),” Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard: A junkyard of psychadelic acoustica swirled into some mantric grace: “But it’s hard to get too bored when you pick the right two chords and you keep on strumming as if you don’t know what’s comin’.” It’s Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches’ cousin from NYC. He does comics too.

“Cruel Intentions,” Simian Mobile Disco (w/ Beth Ditto of The Gossip): Relaxed, sultry groove. Southern-fried guitar licks. Could be one of the Weather Girls (remember “It’s Raining Men”?) singing; only older, slightly diminished: “Call me up/we’ll hang out.” Retro disco, anyone?

“My Love,” The-Dream (w/ Mariah Carey): Self-proclaimed (and repeatedly!) “radio killah,” for The-Dream, it’s all in the mix: an economical (i.e., gangsta lean) orchestral lushness. It’s not just the falsetto but this canned-whip-cream electricity (auto-tune?) that gives the music its vibe. Unfortunately, the slow jams don’t always come w/ songs; no fries w/ that coke. Not the case, here, though. Mariah’s bit is minimal but full of gusto: “Tell me what they know about my love.”

“Imma Star (Everywhere We Are),” Jeremih: More influence of The-Dream: icy synths, hey-ho thugamuffin chorus, strutting tempos, bling fantasy, Jeremih’s “got the game on a slipknot.”

“Living Without Your Love,” Walter Jones: More retro disco even though I found this one on a comp called Future Disco. Truly, if I were told this had come from a ‘70s Chic album I would have believed it. Still, there is a spare and elegant quality to this—what I’ll hazard to call a feminine quality— that is lacking in most contemporary club music. Or so what I hear of it via the Rcrd Lbl freebies I get sent everyday.

“Now We Can See,” The Thermals: Sometimes the Thermals have this kinetic spirit that is hard to pin down but undeniable. And then sometimes the Thermals sound too three-chord rock basic. Same band, but one you like, one you're hohum ab. The spirit here is conveyed in a chorus that goes: “oh-way-ah-oh-ho,” over and over. Very nice. They no longer have the disease but still need the fix.

“Drop,” Rich Boy: In your face club-rap: a slow grind (crunk? screw? I dunno), but it’s got a beat that cracks with chain-gang intensity and a mesmerizing backtrack of looped female gibberish. “You forgot to bring your gun so you got to use your heart now,” Rich Boy barks, “...Now, drop.” Meaning, I think, what we used to mean by saying, “get down.” As in down and dirty. It's the kind of song that demands your attention, whether you like it or not. And it depends on the "not" like any real gansta or punk. As the jam fades, a zany non sequitur is tossed out, “Kobe, karaoke comin’ thru!” Gotta love ‘it.

Yodeling garage-punk: The Monks "Oh, How to Do Now"

New wave Dylan doing "Jokerman" on Letterman w/ the Plugz

Baby It's Cold Outside

“Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu-Tang, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, & Karen O.)— Combine vintage Wu Tang, the insistency of a tight contemporary club mix, and an impenetrably angsty Karen O. (batting champion in my Top Ten, apparently) chorus, and what you got is some wicked hot jam whose nostalgia (“Rumpelstiltskin,” indeed) feels more than earned next to what else passed for hiphop in ’09. With your now obligatory weed references, it’s just about keepin’ on keepin’ on in a very strange world. BTW, when did underground become code for pothead or am I forgetting (ha ha) it always meant that?!

“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School— Reportedly off an album called The Poor and Needy Need to Party, one of those kind of titles that make you wonder how nobody ever thought of it before, and of which I’m not sure really exists beyond the blogosphere. I first heard this tune on a mix tape given to me this last year but it could have come from Olympia or Eugene or Athens or Charlotte anytime over the last twenty-five years—timeless lo-fi jangle pop distilled into a two-chord hum-a-long of yearning harmonies and self-deprecating humor. Not that I’m at all clear as to what it’s about: being “sick and tired” and calling “oly-oly-oxen-free” to “old friends” in a “crowded universe," all of which sounds to me humble and funny. Maybe it’s about going home, too; doing some gardening, with ringing guitars as accompaniment. If the voluntary simplicity movement doesn’t already have a theme song they could do worse than this disarmingly bittersweet number, for sure.

"I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner

Before this song, all I knew about Antony was Hercules and Love Affair’s retro-disco “Blind” from last year and some ugly pretentious or pretentiously ugly, I’m not sure which, record covers. This, nonetheless, is the best Dylan song put out in ‘09. Purists might have trouble with Antony’s celestial falsetto but if you liked Bowie’s “Song For Bob Dylan” or any Iron & Wine song or ever lost something you loved, you’ll be right at home here. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” croons Antony in his trembling falsetto, making a traditional song sound as indelibly pop as the Cowboy Junkies doing “Sweet Jane.” There’s this old canard that songs are somehow more subjective than albums. I disagree but this song makes me wonder. “I never wrote a letter to my home” and “baby sister gone all wrong” and “can’t go home this way” and “when I pay the debt I owe to the commissary store then I’ll pawn my watch and chain and I’ll go home.” It’s not the story of my life— in this economy, I’m relatively debt free and get to see my parents— but it does intersect with it enough that it makes me want to cry. I found it on Dark Was The Night, a good way to hear some of the best of the progressive freaky folk rock sounds of contemporary indieland. If I sound too sarcastic for you let me try to put my finger on my general ambivalence about the Grizzly Bears and Animal Collectives (it's a veritable zoo) by saying simply: too much Peter Gabriel! Not here, though. And if you find Antony's face-painting foppishness too subjective he’s got a rejoinder already readymade: “If you missed the train I’m on/count the days that I’m gone/you can here the whistle blow 100 miles.” Let’s hear it for the boy.

country gals tellin' it like it is

“Fifteen,” Taylor Swift- The music is about as gritty as a John Cougar Mellencamp car commercial. Esatz, sure; there’s no virtuoso soloists here. Excepting, perhaps, Taylor’s voice, which is fragile, limited; as girl-next-door faceless as any Dixie Chick or Bangle. And that is as it should be, the better to render her songs raw and still somehow emblematic, personal and still somehow universal, like pop songs are supposed to be. Jaded rocker machismo cannot abide Swift’s frilly gossamer lite country pop. But to fifteen year-old girls, like the two in this song, she’s a hero. And tougher than you think: “back then I swore I was going to marry him someday but I’ve realized some bigger dreams of mine.” I don’t want to make too big of deal of her story telling, as it’s not essential to what I think makes great pop, but in pop it’s rarely done better than this. From the git—“you take a deep breath/and you walk through the doors/it’s your very first day/say hi to your friends/and try to stay out of everybody's way”— she takes you there. High school, a ruthless popularity contest, full of shiny new hopes and muffled miseries. Endure, kids; endure.

“Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert- This was closer to my Number One until I watched the videos, where in every version I checked Miranda is, confoundingly, restrained and serious. When this song is, in fact, a stridently big bodacious grinner that stomps and swings cheerfully. “Let’s shake hands and reach across those party lines,” challenges Lambert, “we’re a lot like you, only prettier”! The song is so damn winning I imagine it’d make curmudgeonly partisan columnist Paul Krugman reconsider bipartisanship. “I got a mouth like a sailor and yours is more like a Hallmark card,” she chides. The strutting crunch and sociable lap-steel guitar melody make you want to hug a redneck. Or at least imagine the possibility you could coexist happily with one for the duration of the song. Besides a couple other tugs at the heart her latest album is kind of hohum, though. Why is it the country music outsider alt-rockers love most always seems to turn out to be not as good as you might have hoped?

Rock & roll

"Heads Will Roll," Yeah Yeah Yeahs- The summer hit of ’09, it is unfathomable to me how, more than any of my top three, anybody could resist this club rocker; as if they would have to be somehow immune to the collision of music and physical sensation. Sure, it’s as tritely nostalgic as P-Funk’s “free your ass and your mind will follow” and as emotionally powerful as, uh, masturbation? The synths are as goth as a hearse racing the streets after midnight, the thumping riffage as synthetically powerful as a dentist drill, and the bridge pure Donna Summer disco. Pop music. Dance music. As rock & roll as any shama-lama-ding-dong! Off with your head, just dance!

"If I Can't Have You," Kelly Clarkson- Apparently, I’m the only person in America who really, really likes this song, but I imagine it’s a huge hit with Japanese train commuters. It doesn’t replace “Since U Have Been Gone” as her song but it is heart-racingly classic rock & roll. More Out of Our Heads than Beggars Banquet but rock & roll nonetheless. The blaring buzz to the computerized production kicks like late-night coffee. In a sense Clarkson’s ain’t –no-mountain-high-enough pipes make it harder to tell whether she feels something or is just flexing her muscles but what, as the kids might say, a beast she is w/ those muscles! “I haven’t seen the best that love has to offer…but we can break the rules,” she wails. I’m pretty sure she means it.

"Tie My Hands," Lil Wayne & Robin Thicke

Okay, it’s ab the aftermath of an event from ‘05, was released in ‘08, but it took til ‘09 for “right now we just ridin’ on love, a shot in the dark” to cut through my defenses and “they don’t want us to see but we already know” to register w/ me as Us, like a post-Katrina “won’t get fooled again.” So sue me, I’m slow! Amidst the run-on raps and forays into rock and hard-to-find mixtapes that never sound as good as the critical hype would have you believe, Lil Wayne is still now and then able to make his ridiculously vein boasting sound essential. And then dismissed as Justin Timberlake’s dorky sitcom Canadian cousin by people who should know better, Robin Thicke has made the best blue-eyed soul-sexy-lover’s rock-RnB of the last decade. Together, they’re butter and toast. Post-intellectual, post-cynicism. Obama wins the Presidency, the Saints win the Superbowl, what comes next for a hope and a prayer? We could use some Big Easy right about now, no?

One of my better-late-than-never finds from '09 year-end lists, sort of: "Listomania" and "1901" appear on the lists but I like this tune better. Say you've lost your way, lonely, the songs asks, "where would you go with a lasso?" I'd try Whole Foods or the Fremont farmer's market, see if I couldn't rustle up me a little lady. Nothing artier-than-thou, just zoom-zoom power pop w/ a gleaming electro-sheen.

Starting Over

“Starting Over,” Black Lips: Begins with some 12-string Searchers jangle that is intentionally garagy. The voice is some off-script drunkin’ karaoke warble about how he’s gotta keep running and drink some beer and blow out his mind, etc. All of which wouldn’t signify that much if it wasn’t for the crowd counterpointing dude’s sloppy lament with soothing “ahhhs” and beseeching “starting overs.” The chorus transforms the inarticulate pain towards something like a catharsis. The lead ends with some wounded animal cries of “allllriight” a la Darkness Springsteen. It’s all so physically satisfying I’m willing to imagine drunk guy might even give up the hooch. Or not.

Pet Shop Boys "Love, Etc."

“Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys: Split the Pet Shop Boys career into an early pop period and a club period. (And then maybe a musical theater period, although I’m entirely unfamiliar with this one?) From the club period I like the first three or four tracks of Very and lose interest after that. Fifteen years later this song feels like a throwback, and an unassuming one. The first four or five times through I thought, ‘okay, but why not just put on Discography?’ Fifty plus plays later I think “Love Etc.”’s a piece of pop pastry, dreamy electro-pop tempo, hooks galore, big-boy choruses, perfect for 2009. It’s Yes-We-Can pop jingoism (“I believe we can achieve the love that we need”) and still wryly sardonic (“you don’t have to be beautiful but it helps”). Their gayness has never (nor maybe their lousy videos either?) played well in the States but their pop craftiness rules as far as I’m concerned.

You Need More!

2009: Top of the Pops Songs

Top Ten
1. “Love Etc.,” Pet Shop Boys
2. “Starting Over,” Black Lips
3. “Tie My Hands,” Robin Thicke & Lil Wayne
4. “Heads Will Roll,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs
5. “If I Can’t Have You,” Kelly Clarkson
6. “Fifteen,” Taylor Swift
7. “Only Prettier,” Miranda Lambert
8. “I Was Young When I Left Home,” Antony with Bryce Dessner
9. “Strange Enough,” N.A.S.A. (featuring Wu Tang & Karen O.)
10.“Gardeninginginging,” Knight School

Runners Up
11. “Next Hype,” Tempa T
12. “Day ‘n’ Nite,” Kid Cudi
13. “Space,” Sarah Buxton
14. “You’re Not Sorry,” Taylor Swift
15. “Rockin’ That Thang,” The-Dream
16. “My Heart Is Open,” Keith Urban
17. “Be By Myself,” Asher Roth & Cee-Lo
18. “Oh Lonesome Me,” M. Ward & Lucinda Williams
19. “Hey There Ophelia,” MC Lars (featuring Brett Anderson & Gabe Saporta)
20. “Animal,” Miike Snow
21. “I Gotta Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
22. “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga
23. “Psychic City,” YACHT
24. “Even Now,” Caitlin & Will
25. “Tightrope,” Yeasayer
26. “Never Gonna Happen,” Lily Allen
27. “Right Hand Hi,” Kid Sister
28. “Of the Mountains,” Dan Deacon
29. “My Wife’s Home Town,” Bob Dylan
30. “Tin Birds,” Blank Dogs
31. “Let’s Go Surfing,” The Drums
32. “Nu Style,” Shystie
33. “Fork In The Road,” Neil Young
34. “Wrong,” Depeche Mode
35. “Young Adult Friction,” The Pains of Being Earnest
36. “Do It for Free,” Sarah Borges & The Broken Singles
37. “Blue Snakes,” Canyon
38. “Knock You Down,” Keri Hilston, Kanye West & Ne-Yo
39. “Moth’s Wings,” Passion Pit
40. “Make Her Say," Kid Cudi

So here it is. Some justifications may or may not follow. Radio professionals looking for further progamming consultation leave a message and I'll get back you. If it wasn't for a whole bunch of people who listen to waaay more current releases than I do this would be a list of a whole bunch of Robyn and Wedding Present and Kinks and Le Tigre and Rollings Stones and Handsome Boy Modeling School songs, so thank you. You know who you are and I won't call you out right now so as to spare you from being blamed for my crassly commercial and willfully obscure tastes.

Too Cool For Woodstock

Chuck Eddy’s antidote for all the Woodstock anniversary puff pieces appearing everywhere. Let’s face it, the music from this iconic event was, w/ a few exceptions, a “tedious snooozefest.” As “a modest proposal” Chuck suggests an alternative lineup that would have made the three-day concert more exciting and memorable musically. I’m w/ him here until he suggests replacing Jimi & Janis. Before me, I see a stampeding horde of old hippies with pitchforks. It’s not just that the event was ab more than music, for some who were there, apparently, the music was irrelevant. I saw this piece recently where the couple who appear on the cover of the original concert album look a lot older, they are still happily together (yay), and they have no memory of the music at the event at all. For them it was more like this mass give-peace-a-chance happening. For others, it was an exhibition of the potential size of a segment of society, a counter culture. Which turned out to be valuable mostly as a marketing audience. Still, even if it was more ab “peace, love,” or marketing, than “music,” Jimi & Janis are part of the Woodstock brand. Love the idea of Archie Bell & The Drells on the bill, though.

Currently playing:"Tighten Up," Archie Bell & The Drells

Invented post-disco RnB-

Yes-we-can in the just-say-no days-

Currently playing:


Couldn't find an original but this will do, although the cover shot is just the kind of MJ pic I cannot bare. (Close your eyes or be prepared to do so b/c otherwise there are some fun dance sequences.) From the special edition version of Bad. Four or five great tracks on that LP but this is the overlooked gem. I might have liked Pretty Woman if this ditty would have been part of the soundtrack.

"Dream On" By Robyn

Thugs and badmen
punks and lifers
locked up interns
pigs and snitches

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be strip-searched, torn up tonight
you won't be cut up, bleeding tonight
you won't be strung out, cold, shaking to your bones
wishing you were anywhere else but right here
So dream on

Thieves and muggers
tricks and hustlers
cheats and traitors
scum and low-lives

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be sad or broken tonight
you won't be squealed on, ripped off tonight
you won't be back-stabbed, double cross, face down
teeth knocked out, lying in a gutter somewhere
So dream on

So dream on

Freaks and junkies
fakes and phonies
drunks and cowards
manic preachers

Rest your weary heads, all is well

You won't be pushed or messed with tonight
you won't be lied to, ruffed up tonight
You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night
So dream on

So dream on

You won't be insane, paranoid, obsessed
aimlessly wandering through the dark night

So dream on



Currently playing:Robyn's "Dream On"

Neil Young, 1970-71

Phil Dellio on the massively expensive Neil Young Archives box set (first installment!). It's still too rich for me but this does make me want to take some Neil on my road trip and replace my old bootleg cassette copy of Massey Hall as soon as possible.

The Embarrassment go with the Force--

Currently playing: "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough," The Embarrassment

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.)

Currently playing: Michael Jackson

Johnny Cash American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002)

This is NOT Johnny Cash the shitkicker-folkie man-in-black icon. This is a Mount Rushmore legend, his voice a sepulchral croak. But it reminds me of this broadcast I ran into of Cash and Carter around the same time going through an emotionally wrenching version of “Jackson” and saying goodbye to all their guests as if doing so for the last time. It ripped my heart out. These songs, obvious choices, several he’s recorded before, stamped with the same weary, loving gravitas, do that too. “Freedom, freedom, oh that’s just people talking/your prison is walking this world alone,” he confides, cutting through the everyday murk like a thunderbolt.

Currently playing:"Desperado," Johnny Cash