Reversible Mirror (Part 2)

Everyone knows Michael Jackson complained about his being robbed of his childhood. Most of us probably agree. I think there's a cogent argument that he may have been robbed twice, concurrently. And I get one of the robberies all too well.

Jackson was raised as a Jehovah's Witness – as were Lester Bangs, Patti Smith, the Wayans family and Ja Rule. Someone else, too: me. And to tell you the truth, I'm kind of tired of harping about it. The issues are distant. I really don't saddle up to the idea that I -- a guy in his 40s with two little children whose common trait is that they both, to my relief, seem to utterly enjoy life so far – should dredge up the reasoning/excuses I used to allow myself for bad behavior in the past, even in the service of trying to understand the psychic pain of a guy who obviously had stockpiles to spare.

But what the hell. The situation calls for it, and I pay myself by the word.

You know all the jokes about JW's (Conan had a pretty good one the other night). You might have a friend who's one. If you didn't, you do now. Unless you were raised to be a high-pressure Amway salesman or a staff typist in a fascist regime, you're probably not quite aware what being a JW kid is like. It's kind of difficult to explain how Orwellian the JW existence is without using clichés like "Orwellian."

Being brought up in "the truth" can be an oppressive existence. You don't get to do what a lot of the other kids do, and the canonical reasons why aren't always logical; at times they're insensible. Many of the regulations might look arbitrary if you allow yourself to think about them too much, which the leaders in the Jehovah's Witnesses highly discourage because it could lead to R-rated movies. It's almost guaranteed that, as a JW child, you will be told to put on a clip-on tie (if you're a boy) (especially one that looks cute in a clip-on tie) (no idea who that one boy would be) and go from door-to-door, preaching about what amounts to the hope of a marvelous fantasy paradise land that awaits you – if you do exactly as a few men who hole themselves up in Brooklyn writing things down tell you to do (they're "divinely inspired").

Please go back in that last paragraph and find the italicized phrase. See if that rings a bell. Especially if you live in Santa Barbara County and know where a certain pop star used to park his Ferris wheel.

But that doesn't account for everything. Being raised a JW doesn't ensure your future mental regression or worse. My JW sister's kids all turned out great. They don't seem like they're headed for disaster, probably because their mom and dad are pretty good parents. It depends on the environment, the family involved.

Which brings me to the second, more familiar robbery of Jackson's adolescence, and to be frank the robbery that had more impact.

There may have been awfully good reasons for Joe Jackson to push his children into show business. Well, "push" sounds a little mild, but I don't want to get more granular than that. Certainly Gary, Indiana is the vision of paradise for no one outside of bargain subcontractors, and no father is worth his nameplate if he doesn't try to find a better future for his kids.

But no motivation is worth the pain the Jackson kids endured at their young ages. I have never been able, or willing, to insert myself into the mental space of a father who sacrifices his nurturing instinct for the hunting instinct when it comes to his children. It always feels like deferred brutality. Something he picked up before but didn't find anything reasonable to take it out on, so he takes it out on his children. Disgraceful.

So imagine being a 10-year-old kid singer who has already mastered the vocal skills of the style. Listen to Michael's singing on the first few Jackson 5 singles, and his earliest solo stuff. The pitch is high, the singer is unquestionably a child. But the inflections, the phrasing, aren't the sounds of an adolescent. Michael absorbed everything that was coming out of his AM radio in the '60s: Sam Cooke's wholesome, rounded tones; James Brown's resolutions of ecstasy; Levi Stubbs' off-the-cuff, almost ministerial asides ("just look over your shoulder honey!"); maybe even Sinatra's killer sense of dramatic phrasing. When he got absorbed into the Motown fold he got first-hand instruction from other genius singers like Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder, and a surrogate older sister in Diana Ross. The kid took all of it in. It is doubtful that there was ever a popular artist more completely defined and arrived as young as Michael Jackson.

Now imagine being turned into a workhorse because of your immense talent. Maybe even being punished because of it. And then being temporarily relieved of what could have been child labor, being compelled to go to religious meetings and never getting birthdays or holidays in the off-hours.

(One reason JW's don't celebrate birthdays, according to their doctrinal statements, is that it calls unnecessary attention to the self when one should be focusing on his obligations to God. So imagine having that as a background while being in a business where if you don't allow yourself to be glorified, you are not doing your job. Christ, with that set of diametrically opposite prerogatives, I'd be unable to confide in anyone other than Webster and a pet chimp.)

No matter what he became, no matter what he was accused of later in life, I will always have empathy for that little boy, even if I have to freeze him in time to feel that empathy. Perhaps because he was so talented. He was so great at what he did that he wasn't allowed to feel great doing it. Going into a profession so early, so young, without much joy.

It's the psychic equivalent of the soprano castrati.

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(I've decided this is going to be a 4-parter. It was going to be a 3-parter. But I think shorter and more frequent is more digestible. Part 3 will contain the lion's share of the jokes in this series.)

(Anyway, to be continued.)

Reversible Mirror (Part 1)

Every song I heard last Thursday afternoon and evening was by Michael Jackson except one, which was by Todd Rundgren, and which sprang into consciousness when I was trying to suss out what I was going to say about the death of the world's oldest child.

I've had two almost exactly similar reactions to the two main, exactly opposite strains of eulogies over Jackson's death on June 25, 2009.

One strain is the fawning adulation, the retroactive reinstallation of Jackson as the biggest pop star in history, the man who indeed "healed" the world. "Michael Jackson inspired so many, he brought hope, he was the greatest artist pop music has ever seen, he was a beautiful soul and the best moonwalker in history hands down…"

My internal response to that went something like, "What? Do you know what this man did? How can you be a messiah when you can't even graduate from childhood? How can you heal the world when you employ a full-time staff of hundreds to keep you from it? How can you be a role model when you make such horrid judgments? And don't… get… me started on the boys. Have you no idea you've been fooled? Or have you figured it out and consciously chosen to allow yourself to be fooled for the sake of having a hero?"

The other strain of eulogizing, which I suppose is not really eulogizing, is the harsh rejection of Jackson's importance or talent. "Michael Jackson was a sham, he accelerated music's corporatization, he made crap music, he was a freak, he played upon an innocence he assumed the world would always revere him for and he betrayed it in the end…"

To which my response was… "What? Do you know what this man did? He was the most brilliant child singer ever! He ended the hypocritical standoff between black and white pop music! He broke the back of the enraging racism of early MTV! He made records that still don't sound dated, will never sound dated! For awhile he was probably the greatest endowed straight-up entertainer on the planet! What's wrong with you? Did your '80s have no soundtrack whatsoever?"

(Sigh.)

"Sometimes I Don't Know What To Feel." That's the Todd Rundgren song. It's about fatal hopelessness and everyday cruelty, whether it truly exists on a global scale in which case we're screwed, or whether it's more incidental, can be contained and overcome with hope and resolve. You want to be a realist, you need the journalistic truth, but at the same time you want deliverance. The song's not really about celebrity, but maybe it should be.

People are taking immense pride in their feelings for Michael Jackson. They're proud of their undying love for him, and they're proud of their extreme hatred for him. I guess it's not different from any other superstar.

But it doesn't matter to me: I still find that pride perverse. Especially in this case, because almost nobody knows who the hell this guy really was. But they're proud of how they feel about him, about the sweeping declarative statements that pride emboldens them to say.

I guess I might know what to feel after all. I'm sad. I'm very sad. Not about the death of a 50-year-old pop idol, though. I'm sad about the death of a 23-year-old prodigy. Who just happened to keep on living for 27 years afterward.

Jokey headline from The Onion yesterday: "BREAKING: Last Piece of Michael Jackson Dies."

That's really not too far off from the truth.

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Michael Jackson's passing was the most globally experienced music death since that of John Lennon's, maybe even Elvis Presley's. What it meant to me probably isn't much in the grand scheme of things. Kurt Cobain affected me more, and I'll be in hibernation when Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan or Stevie Wonder go, knock wood. But the suddenness of Jackson's death (which I nonetheless cannot call a "surprise," which for some reason makes me dislike myself at the moment) immediately made me try to contextualize it, to explain to myself and you lucky birds what it meant to me, and what that ascription says.

For an artist whose best-known work I neither despised nor loved (I never owned a copy of Thriller – didn't need to, really, I've probably heard it 75 times without owning it), I suppose that's saying something about his permanence as a framing device for my specific generation – one so overshadowed by the grandiosely idealist baby boom generation that, almost as an afterthought, we're only referred to by a single letter. The letter people use to cross shit out, at that. (I don't mean any of that self-piteously, but I do think it's hilarious. Well, amusing. Well, I can't really make up my mind what it is.)

I was a teenager when Michael Jackson became gigantic, and even if one doesn't care for the gigantic pop heroes of his or her teenage years, usually they're deeply ingrained in the definition of that generation. Those who were teenagers in late '50s America probably employ Elvis Presley as a touchstone for them, even if they preferred Gene Vincent. It's just a matter of scale. Rodin's Thinker might convey more, but that Statue of Liberty is one big-ass woman.

So, what can be said about Gen X, whose chief formative icon, whose Statue of Something (see the cover of HIStory), was the most innately talented, most frustratingly, fatally flawed superstar of the electric age?

Probably something pertinent, since I've been trying to avoid experiencing any emotion about it. Maybe that's because I've been trying to figure out what this particular death means in a journalistic context, and it's the first time I've ever tried to make some sense out of the demise of such a looming entertainment icon. I was too young to understand the full impact of Elvis and Lennon's legacies when they died. Nobody had to figure out the circumstances of Cobain's death; the paper trail was all too obvious. When Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson died there was no mystery: Nobody could say they hadn't led lives to their fullest.

Michael Jackson died young, died quick, and died in leaf-pile of dangling inquisitions. The questions won't be answered until someone writes a tell-all book, and when that happens we'll probably mistrust the source because of the money he got from the publisher, or because he's a bad writer, or because he's a shitheel of a person. At this writing they can't even conclusively say how he died – was it natural, if accelerated, causes, or did a quack doctor suck back the syringe too far?

Well, there's one answer for you: We don't know fuck-all about Michael Jackson. Those who adored him unquestionably refused to believe (or even acknowledge) the powerful circumstantial evidence against him; those who despised him couldn't comprehend how he never really existed in the same place we do. The absolute, almost violent dichotomy of these very devout reactions is what rules the blogs and the message boards right now, whereas the measured, comprehensive reactions of people like Deepak Chopra (who knew Jackson) are shuttered.

But That's Fame For Ya. There gots to be a show, and Ziegfeld couldn't get objectivity to dance. Most superstars are aware of the disparity of those who love them and those who despise them. The majority of that subset has figured out how to use it to their advantage.

I find it entirely possible, and in fact very probable, that Jackson had close to no idea this disparity even existed. If he did, he handled it very, very badly. But I think I know how that happened. Or why it happened. Or, at base minimum, how it should have happened.

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Man, it looks like I'm going to spend more time on this than I originally intended.

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(To be continued)

Rock and roll will never die (and it will live forever)

Rock and roll will never die. And it will live forever.

They keep trying to kill it. All them kids with their boy bands and their electronic dance beats and their temporary tattoos, they keep trying to kill rock and roll. But they fail, because rock and roll keeps living.

I realize Huey Lewis said the exact same thing that I am saying to you now, over 20 years ago. Well, actually, what Huey said was "The heart of rock and roll is still beating." Which I think underestimates the reality of the situation considerably. You can have a beating heart yet still be in a coma. You can be braindead. You could even have your legs amputated and still have a beating heart.

No offense, Mr. Lewis, but you're no doctor. So keep your rubber gloves out of the squishy innerds of rock and roll.

Not only is the heart of rock and roll still beating, but its lungs are still breathing. Its liver is still detoxifying ingested substances. Its kidneys are still regulating electrolytes and processing waste products for eventual excretion. Its spleen is still guarding against advances of infection, its pancreas is still secreting important digestive enzymes, and its cerebral cortex will kick the ass of your cerebral cortex any day of the week.

What we have here is a well-functioning body of rock and roll, and if you don't believe me just look it up on webmd.com.

Rock and roll is still here, and it will be here forever, though many try to kill it.

The Communists tried to kill rock and roll with vodka and workers owning the means of production, but rock and roll stood up and said, "Screw you, pass me my whiskey and make sure it was made by English schoolboy coal miners."

Then Communism became semi-okay to some rock stars, and rock and roll said, "All right, total reversal in policy on the vodka, we want lots of it, and I'm starting a phone tree for some love-in next week... just don't get too Trotskyite on me because I'm still trying to pay rent over here. Despite current trends, I ain't really into communes, I'm into independence of personality, because I am rock and roll. And I will not be killed.

"If you could spare a mudshark next week for some visiting associates of mine I would really appreciate it too."

Rock and roll will never die. It also never forgets. It remembers more than easy listening will ever know. Wondering where you left your car keys? Crank up some Black Oak Arkansas. You'll find them in the couch cushions, Jim Dandy.

Country music forgets. Hell, half of country music is about trying to forget. The rest of it is divided between fishing and drinking, both of which could be properly applied in the process of attempting to forget, so we might as well go whole-hog with that one.

Classical music remembers but it speaks too slowly for me to understand a goddamn thing it's saying. "Eehhhh, ehhh, back in my day we got our cocaine from little tin boxes and our amphetamines from the Roman Catholics!" Shut your parfait port, old man. Go whine to Jeff Lynne. I'm-a-gonna rock all over ya.

Jazz remembers nothing. The biggest jazz star in the world is Kenny G. With that in mind, how can you tell me jazz remembers anything? You got all these people wearing vinyl and telling me they're into jazz because they got Kenny G and the Yellowjackets and Spyro Gyra on their mobile playback device, all of a sudden going into conniptions (sp?) because some barrista accidentally put Ornette Coleman on the in-store play and it fucked up the feng shui of their breast pocket. Not only does contemporary jazz forget, it suffers from a severe case of amnesia.

There's a possibility that Tuvan throat singing never forgets either, but I don't have hard data in front of me.

Nope. It's rock and roll, that's what never forgets, because it will live forever and never die.

In fact I tried to kill rock and roll once. Strictly business. I needed a new mower.

I cornered rock and roll in its lair. I said, "Business. Never personal." And I launched into it with all my might. Fists, guns, knives, curling irons, yoyos, copies of Alan Bloom's The Closing Of the American Mind, a shitzu, couple of eggs, an H-bomb, a billiards player with a detached retina, Fergie, one of those desk toys with the five metal balls, Liberace's hotel bills, an Instamatic, a spiral-bound notebook, another one of those desk toys with the five metal balls except bigger, English muffins, Danish pastries, plush toys stolen from a charity organization, teeth, chewing gum, dust remover and a pair of pliers.

You know what rock and roll said to me? "Nice garage sale, chump." Then it kicked my ass and I ran away like a shamed accountant.

So never more will I detract from the fact that rock and roll is eternal. It will never die. It will stand the test of time. It will annex Guam if we're not careful. Rock and roll will, in the end, simply LIVE FOREVER.

I am also fond of Brazilian music.

Format alteration announcement

In order to get this going again I've decided to write about individual songs. That's the music customer's main unit of consumption, again.

Album reviews as needed.

May possibly post my blips, as appropriate.

Possibly a music rant or two not tied to a specific recording.

That is all. It is written, my nizzle.

Who’ll win the Album of the Year Grammy? Glad you asked.

If the 50^th Grammy Awards proved anything, it cemented one indisputable fact of the music industry: I AM A GOD.

The day after the nominations were announced I said Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters would win the Album of the Year award, because that honor frequently acts as a career appreciation award, rather than one of straight-up merit. Tony Bennett, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, all those folks won Album of the Year for recordings that won't be the first ones mentioned in discussions of their greatest works. They won because they hadn't won before. So last year the industry was in a position to honor Hancock's career, and they did. I was ridiculed for my picking Hancock. I was cajoled, I was teased, I was scoffed at, but most of all I was right.

So when I open my gold-purloined trap, you best take heed. Suck it, E! Network.

This year's AOTY nominees offer two chances for career appreciation awards: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's superstar duet album Raising Sand, and Radiohead's In Rainbows. Neither has as open-and-shut a case as Herbie Hancock did in 2008. In fact, you can count Radiohead out right now. Nevertheless, it's a bit closer this time. However, if you're feelin' pari-mutuel this year, you may want to put your clams down on the only two albums that stand a chance of winning.

First, here's who won't win:

Radiohead, In Rainbows. A great album, but not the kind of album that wins awards. I'm betting some voters will shy away from this one because of political reasons: It was initially offered for the low low price of nothing via the band's website. An important event in the history of music consumption, but I'm betting the Academy is still too uncomfortable with the business model. Yeah, for real: They're that petulant.

Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentleman. He's an R&B songwriter who is excellent with narrative and composition, but nobody I know owns this record.

Coldplay, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. Won't win because everyone's sick of Coldplay.

That leaves two nominees, and the winner will be one of them: Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Raising Sand.
It will come down to a David-vs.-Goliath struggle, with the interesting twist that Plant is on David's side.

Tha Carter III is an astonishingly good record. It was also 2008's biggest-selling album. The Grammy people are no longer nervous about giving the AOTY award to a rap album (Lauryn Hill, OutKast). BUT, are they ready to give it to a self-described gangsta? That might be outside their comfort zone. These are people who think you can valet-park at McDonald's.

Raising Sand is also a great album. It's produced by T Bone Burnett, a figure of massive industry respect. The past-due factor also plays to its factor. Plant has never won a Grammy of great importance: none with Led Zeppelin, and only two on his own. The last one he won was, in fact, for a duet with Krauss: "Gone Gone Gone," a single which was released in time for eligibility at the Grammys last year. The full album wasn't released until after that deadline. So he's your career-achievement pick here.

Downside? Raising Sand is an indie record. These things never go to indie records. Although it sold extremely well, not many people can hum a song from it.

So it's really down to who has the more compelling story as to why either album shouldn't win. Also, consider the average age of the voter community. It's probably pretty advanced. I'm guessing young artists don't vote for the Grammys all that much. The ones who best appreciate the, um, prestige of the Grammys are probably old-school. And their time is running out. They need to establish their credibility almost retroactively. They almost always choose the retroactive option, despite the fact that their cred would exponentially increase if they recognized the cutting edge. But they had the chance to do it with Beck in 1997; instead they gave it to Celine Dion for an album no one remembers.

That's what we're up against here, except the Plant/Krauss record, unlike the Dion record, is legitimately good.

It'll be tight, and Lil Wayne stands more of a chance than Kanye West did last year, so I wouldn't be surprised if he got it. But tradition is hard to escape, and I'm betting the Grammy voters want to make a statement about music's history, rather than its future potential.

After the Plant/Krauss album came out, I proclaimed that it was guaranteed an AOTY nomination by virtue of its mere consummation, and barring a generation-defining opponent along the lines of U2, it would probably win. And face it: If the Academy can give a career-achievement award to a Herbie Hancock album that still hasn't sold that much, then they'll definitely give it to an album that's been a commercial success.

So take it to the bank: On Sunday the Album Of The Year Grammy will go to Raising Sand.

Did I mention how utterly right I was last year? Mmmmm-hmm, it appears I did.

Sabbatical is almost over

The Benign Comedy will ride again in the new year.

Watch this space.

Museum Of Pop Archaeology

The Benign Comedy is going on an extended sabbatical. In the meantime, please visit my new blog, Museum Of Pop Archaeology. That blog will be my primary focus for awhile.

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Thanks for your support of TBC over the past year-plus.