Aug. 1 was the 30th anniversary of MTV's first broadcast and here is the list of the first twenty video ever played on air;
THE BUGGLES ~ "VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR";
1. The Buggles ~ Video killed the radio star
2. Pat Benatar ~ You better run
3. Rod Stewart ~ She won't dance
4. The Who ~ You better you bet
5. PHD ~ Little Susie's on the up
6. Cliff Richard ~ We don't talk anymore
7. The Pretenders ~ Brass in pocket
8. Tod Rundgren ~ Time heals
9. REO Speedwagon ~ Take it on the run
10. Styx ~ Rockin in the Paradise
11. Robin Lane & The Chartbusters ~ When things go wrong
12. Split Enz ~ History never repeats
13. 38 Special ~ Hold on loosely
14. April Wine ~ Just between you and me
15. Rod Stewart ~ Sailing
16. Iron Maiden ~ Iron Maiden
17. REO Speedwagon ~ Keep on loving you
18. The Pretenders ~ Message of love
19. Lee Ritenour ~ Mr. Briefcase
20. The Cars ~ Double life
(The final video of the first day was "Carouselambra" by Led Zeppelin)
PAT BENATAR ~ "YOU BETTER RUN";
The generational breakdown was;
From The Old Guard; Rod Stewart (twice), Cliff Richard, Todd Rundgren, The Who (4)
From The New Wave; The Pretenders (twice), The Cars, The Buggles, Split Enz, Pat Benatar, Robin Lane & The Chartbusters, PHD (7)
From The Stadium Rockers; REO Speedwagon (twice), April Wine, 38 Special, Styx
Plus one from Metal (Iron Maiden) and one from Jazz Fusion (Lee Ritenour).
Geographically the breakdown is;
From the USA ~ REO Speedwagon (twice), Pat Benatar, Todd Rundgren, The Cars, 38 Special, Styx, Robin Lane, Lee Ritenour (8, or 9 if we count REO twice)
From the UK ~ The Who, Rod Stewart (twice), Cliff Richard, The Pretenders (twice), PHD (5, or 7 if we count the Pretenders and Rod Stewart twice)
Plus one from New Zealand (Split Enz) and one from Canada (April Wine).
Gender wise there is less balance with only three females (unless we count The Pretenders).
THE PRETENDERS ~ "BRASS IN POCKET";
The biggest lack of balance though can be seen in one area. The list is completely lilly white, with not one black artist in the bunch. This is no anomaly either, the policy of MTV in the early years was too play as little black music as possible so as to not offend middle America. There were a few acceptable black black artists of course; Stevie Wonder, Lionel Ritchie, Dinah Ross, Donna Summer, The Commodores, Pointer Sisters along with some vintage footage of Motown artists and Jimi Hendrix. But that's about it. Hip Hop? Forget it. Hip Hop actually had been around for a few years by then, mostly in New York and a few other urban centers in the North East, however most black neighbourhoods didn't have cable yet and would not be seeing MTV anyway (most rural areas wouldn't be getting it either), and the MTV brass were desperate not offend their mostly white suburban viewers and the advertisers who love them.
ROBIN LANE & THE CHARTBUSTERS ~ "WHEN EVERYTHING GOES WRONG";
This Lilly White policy started to get them flack from some in the media fairly quickly and during one interview David Bowie once caused a scene when he dared to ask one of MTV's unctuous hosts ON THE AIR why they didn't play more black music. What blasted the white wall of MTV though was Micheal Jackson and "Thriller".
THE WHO ~ "YOU BETTER YOU BET";
Micheal Jackson had actually been on MTV's "acceptable" list already for his previous "Off the wall" album as well as for his older Jackson 5 videos. However the "Off the wall" Jacko was a young, clean cut, smiling boy next door type. "Thriller" Jacko wore a leather jacket, a sneer borrowed from Elvis and dance steps borrowed from James Brown and MTV was reluctant to touch that one until Jackson's record company and management threatened to boycott all their artists from MTV until MTV caved in. Which they did with whatever dignity they could manage. As we all know "Thriller" only turned out to be the biggest selling album of all time a wielded a series of number one hit videos. Suddenly MTV looked like geniuses and just as suddenly they were looking around for the next Jacko.
SPLIT ENZ ~ "HISTORY NEVER REPEATS";
And then up popped Prince. Actually he had also been around for awhile and even recorded a couple of albums which sold quite well on the black music charts and got good reviews from both black and white critics. However white top 40 radio wouldn't touch him. Partly due to his X-rated lyrics but also due to his dirty-old-man costume of raincoat, heels, lipstick and speedos. After seeing the squeaky clean Jacko dominate the charts and airwaves Prince went back to his closet and came back with a look that combined James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Adam Ant along with a slightly more slick sound that would take him to the top as well, not only with black audiences but white one too. Thus did MTV contribute to the breaking down of racial barriers on the American airwaves, even if they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the alter.
APRIL WINE ~ "JUST BETWEEN YOU AND ME";
Later MTV's latent conservatism (born of caution not politics) would cause them to completely miss out on the new post-punk American underground of the 1980's and 90's to the fury of the likes of The Dead Kennedys and others. It would be hard to deny that by then they deserved it too. I have written elsewhere on here comparing MTV with Canada's Much Music (who had their 25th anniversary last year) and there's no doubt that we got the better deal even before MTV gave up on music entirely and started turning out comedy jams and those loathsome reality TV shows. Still there was once a few years when MTV was the most powerful music broadcaster on the planet. And it wasn't always a bad thing.
THE DEAD KENNEDYS ~ "MTV GET OFF THE AIR";
Showing posts with label MTV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MTV. Show all posts
Monday, 5 September 2011
Saturday, 3 October 2009
The unspoken legacy of Much Music
2009 marks the 25th anniversary of Much Music, Canada's answer to MTV and oddly nobody seems to have noticed, including Much itself which has chosen to downplay this event for some unknown reason. Perhaps they fear their core audience of fifteen year-olds will be creeped out by old footage of Terry David Mulligan or Kim Clark Champnis interviewing Bryan Adams in 1985, I know I am. Perhaps they know that anyone who was a fan back in the day (as I was) stopped watching Much over a decade ago and could not possibly care less if the station was there or not anymore.
Let's not take up time stating the obvious, Much is manifestly superior to MTV in every conceivable way. Actually let's take some time on this because Much in fact played an important role (along with some other factors) in the way that the Canadian music scene evolved in the 1980's and 90's in ways that Canadians barely notice.
EXHIBIT A: THE SHADOWY MEN;
We all should know by now about the role that CanCon played in fostering a serious domestic music industry in the 1970's by literally forcing radio to play Canadian music, which in turn made homegrown record labels a viable concern. Positive as these steps were this was only a step (or two) in the journey. In spite of what the CBC's various worship-full documentaries say, and with all due respect to some notable exceptions, much of the music put out by Canadians in the 1970's were bland, derivative versions of American AM radio fare. What was still lacking was the kind of variety that would require a nationwide underground, eclectic, alternative scene that could go in a dozen directions at once while still holding the center in a country that is fiendishly difficult to tour in ways that British or even Americans can hardly understand. This would also require an openness to the new sounds coming out of England and the USA.
It is with this last point that Much Music proved it's worth from the start, inheriting the tradition already set by "The New Music", a groundbreaking music news show also owned by City TV (who owned Much) which had been going for a few years already, and who would share many hosts and VJ's in the early years, Much started out with a very different mindset than the American MTV.
EXHIBIT B: THE GRUESOMES;
MTV was built on the vomit-inducing model of American top forty radio, "All the hits, all the time", with vapid VJ's bantering meaninglessly in between short sets of video clips which came from a limited playlist. Nothing surprising, nothing off-center, nothing new, nothing that might offend the folks in Utah. And in the beginning, absolutely nothing black, at all, literally, until Micheal Jackson's clout forced them to open up ever so slightly.
"The New Music" was the first attempt at creating a music magazine like Rolling Stone for T.V. And it happened in Canada. America had MTV and before that, lip-synched performance shows like "Solid Gold" and "Midnight Special" along with Casey Kassem's "America's Top 40". Britain had their own performance shows like "Top of The Pops" and "The Old Grey Whistle Test". These all were just variations on the templates laid down by Dick Clark in the fifties, and by the punk and post punk era they were dangerously out of touch and as credible as the "Muppet Show", and not nearly as funny. But we had "The New Music" which did serious and semi-serious interviews with artists and entire genres that would never be heard elsewhere; New Wave, Post-Punk and Metal bands from England, Roots Rock, Hardcore and Thrash bands from America, Euro-techno and Industrial from Germany, Reggae, World Beat and later Hip-Hop as well.
EXHIBIT C: SLOW;
Both "The New Music" and "Much Music" were owned by CITY TV/CHUM Radio and therefore Much could build on the foundations laid down by New Music. So right from the start Much was far more eclectic than MTV ever would be, playing the whole variety of musics that New Music had already blazed a path for. Much also followed the same CanCon regs that radio had to follow, but unlike commercial radio they were not satisfied to simply play the token top forty CanCon hits, Much even had the "Indie Street" show to focus on low budget indie videos by unsigned Canadian bands. The cause of indie and alternative CanCon was helped by the support of Video Fact grants that help fund the making of low budget videos that could actually have a chance to get played thanks to Much and New Music. There was simply no equivalence to this on MTV or BBC, still isn't actually. This meant that bands like Deja Voodoo, The Gruesomes, Slow, Ray Condo, Blue Rodeo, The Razorbacks, 54-40, The Grapes of Wrath, Skinny Puppy, Change of Heart, The Shadowy Men, Martha & The Muffins, Breeding Ground, The Payolas, Sturm Group, Death Sentence and Voivod could get their videos, which ranged from the fairly cheap to the laughably cheap played as if they were almost as important as top 40 fare. And clearly way more cool.
CHANGE OF HEART ~ "TEN MILES AWAY";
Remember the cheapo videos like The Shadowy Men's puppet shows? Or Ray Condo's cartoons? Or Sturm Group running around the Scarborough bluffs waving swords looking like a pasty Conan The Barbarian? Or Skinny Puppy's morbid super 8 performance art bloodfests? They must have cost all of two hundred dollars to make, not counting the pizzas and beer. Then there was the ultimate in clueless Canadiana; April Wine's video for "I like to rock" in which our boys take time out from a busy day in the studio to play some tabletop hockey and brew some coffee. Only in Canada you say? Pity. God how I miss them all.
EXHIBIT D: APRIL WINE;
They were also helped by the fact that the established acts like Rush, Triumph,Trooper, not to mention earlier dinosaurs like Burton Cummings and Gino Vanelli at first refused to make videos at all, and later only grudgingly and poorly. The same thing was happening in the USA with the likes of Journey and Boston sulking on the sidelines as New Wave and New Romantics bands breezed by them. Some American critics are still bitter about this. It is a fact that relatively fewer American bands of the early eighties bothered to make videos at all, they were too expensive to make if they weren't going to get played on MTV anyway. And there were no Videofact grants for them. The lack of videos from this era is actually a real loss American music, although there were a few exceptions. The Ramones, Fleshtones, Blondie, Cramps, Lords of The New Church, Long Ryders, Iggy Pop, Motels, Talking Heads, Joan Jett and a few others did make some videos as did the Stray Cats after they moved to England, which doesn't count. However for the most part they were ignored by MTV and only got played on Much anyway. The lack of videos of the likes of The Gun Club, Jason and the Scorchers, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Rank and File, Blasters and even early REM is inexcusable and it's MTV's fault. If it weren't for "The Decline of Western Civilization" and "Suburbia" we wouldn't have X, TSOL, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, The Germs and D.I. footage either. In Canada or even Britain and Australia they all would have made videos as a matter of course, and they would have been played too.
EXHIBIT E: RAY CONDO;
Of course Much was hardly alone here. CBC joined in with "Brave New Waves" and a network of campus and community radio stations would grow up including CKLN and CIUT (both of which I worked at) in Toronto. Ironically even though the Chum/City group also owned the most powerful radio stations in Toronto (and a number of other cities), they kept those operations separate from Much and New Music which left an opening for upstart CFNY to fill. There would also be a network of magazines like Nerve, Reargarde (which I wrote for), What Wave and Graffitti and weekly papers like Now Magazine (in Toronto) and in most other Canadian cities. But Much was in the unique position to act as a nationwide unifier and by and large they did.
VITAL SINES ~ "COLLAGE";
This openness to music beyond the mainstream meant that most of the Post Punk and New Wave sounds coming out of Britain now actually came to Toronto first to break into North America where they would have once treated Canada as a backwater of the USA. This meant that British bands like U2, Simple Minds, The Cult, The Cure, OMD, the Banshees, Jesus and Mary Chain and virtually every other contemporary hit here first, Aussies like Midnight Oil and INXS would follow as would reggae and world beat. You could even occasionally see the likes of serious weirdos like Cabaret Voltaire, the Severed Heads, The Virgin Prunes, Laurie Anderson and SPK who probably couldn't even spell MTV. It actually got to the point where even some American bands were actually more popular here than they were at home, including REM and Steve Earle.
EXHIBIT F: SKINNY PUPPY;
The spinoffs this had for enriching the scene in Canada are impossible to measure. Once upon a time Canada was a backwater known for crappy cover bands where anyone with real talent and ambition had to go to New York or L.A. to get signed. And where international bands largely ignored or treated as a stopover on their way to New York. That is no longer true at all. Much played a big role in this evolution, they weren't the only player, but they were vital in pulling local scenes together and one shouldn't forget that.
EXHIBIT G: BLUE PETER;
It's true that in the past decade or more Much has become bland, glitzy, commercial and predictable, so has CFNY. Graffiti, Nerve and Reargarde magazines are long dead and were replaced by Exclaim and Chart which in turn also became more commercial and bland. "Indie Street" is long gone and when New Music finally gave up the ghost a couple of years ago few noticed or cared. But it also true that MTV has declined even more to the extent that even the mention of MTV as playing videos at all is considered a punchline. Much branched off into various specialty channels for punk & metal, hip hop, retro 80's, country, latin and french which segregated the audiences and diluted the variety and unpredictability of the original. While Much may be a pale shadow of it's former greatness one shouldn't totally forget that greatness once existed, even if Much seams not to care. Those who grew up with Much can take a minute to reflect on memories that go beyond mere misty eyed nostalgia. Sometimes the old days really were better. So thank you Much Music, glitzy warts and all.
EXHIBIT H: THE NILS;
P.S. I planned on including the videos for Sturm Group's "Twenty" but it's not on youtube damn it. However by way of bonus we have this Indie Street segment from 1983;
Let's not take up time stating the obvious, Much is manifestly superior to MTV in every conceivable way. Actually let's take some time on this because Much in fact played an important role (along with some other factors) in the way that the Canadian music scene evolved in the 1980's and 90's in ways that Canadians barely notice.
EXHIBIT A: THE SHADOWY MEN;
We all should know by now about the role that CanCon played in fostering a serious domestic music industry in the 1970's by literally forcing radio to play Canadian music, which in turn made homegrown record labels a viable concern. Positive as these steps were this was only a step (or two) in the journey. In spite of what the CBC's various worship-full documentaries say, and with all due respect to some notable exceptions, much of the music put out by Canadians in the 1970's were bland, derivative versions of American AM radio fare. What was still lacking was the kind of variety that would require a nationwide underground, eclectic, alternative scene that could go in a dozen directions at once while still holding the center in a country that is fiendishly difficult to tour in ways that British or even Americans can hardly understand. This would also require an openness to the new sounds coming out of England and the USA.
It is with this last point that Much Music proved it's worth from the start, inheriting the tradition already set by "The New Music", a groundbreaking music news show also owned by City TV (who owned Much) which had been going for a few years already, and who would share many hosts and VJ's in the early years, Much started out with a very different mindset than the American MTV.
EXHIBIT B: THE GRUESOMES;
MTV was built on the vomit-inducing model of American top forty radio, "All the hits, all the time", with vapid VJ's bantering meaninglessly in between short sets of video clips which came from a limited playlist. Nothing surprising, nothing off-center, nothing new, nothing that might offend the folks in Utah. And in the beginning, absolutely nothing black, at all, literally, until Micheal Jackson's clout forced them to open up ever so slightly.
"The New Music" was the first attempt at creating a music magazine like Rolling Stone for T.V. And it happened in Canada. America had MTV and before that, lip-synched performance shows like "Solid Gold" and "Midnight Special" along with Casey Kassem's "America's Top 40". Britain had their own performance shows like "Top of The Pops" and "The Old Grey Whistle Test". These all were just variations on the templates laid down by Dick Clark in the fifties, and by the punk and post punk era they were dangerously out of touch and as credible as the "Muppet Show", and not nearly as funny. But we had "The New Music" which did serious and semi-serious interviews with artists and entire genres that would never be heard elsewhere; New Wave, Post-Punk and Metal bands from England, Roots Rock, Hardcore and Thrash bands from America, Euro-techno and Industrial from Germany, Reggae, World Beat and later Hip-Hop as well.
EXHIBIT C: SLOW;
Both "The New Music" and "Much Music" were owned by CITY TV/CHUM Radio and therefore Much could build on the foundations laid down by New Music. So right from the start Much was far more eclectic than MTV ever would be, playing the whole variety of musics that New Music had already blazed a path for. Much also followed the same CanCon regs that radio had to follow, but unlike commercial radio they were not satisfied to simply play the token top forty CanCon hits, Much even had the "Indie Street" show to focus on low budget indie videos by unsigned Canadian bands. The cause of indie and alternative CanCon was helped by the support of Video Fact grants that help fund the making of low budget videos that could actually have a chance to get played thanks to Much and New Music. There was simply no equivalence to this on MTV or BBC, still isn't actually. This meant that bands like Deja Voodoo, The Gruesomes, Slow, Ray Condo, Blue Rodeo, The Razorbacks, 54-40, The Grapes of Wrath, Skinny Puppy, Change of Heart, The Shadowy Men, Martha & The Muffins, Breeding Ground, The Payolas, Sturm Group, Death Sentence and Voivod could get their videos, which ranged from the fairly cheap to the laughably cheap played as if they were almost as important as top 40 fare. And clearly way more cool.
CHANGE OF HEART ~ "TEN MILES AWAY";
Remember the cheapo videos like The Shadowy Men's puppet shows? Or Ray Condo's cartoons? Or Sturm Group running around the Scarborough bluffs waving swords looking like a pasty Conan The Barbarian? Or Skinny Puppy's morbid super 8 performance art bloodfests? They must have cost all of two hundred dollars to make, not counting the pizzas and beer. Then there was the ultimate in clueless Canadiana; April Wine's video for "I like to rock" in which our boys take time out from a busy day in the studio to play some tabletop hockey and brew some coffee. Only in Canada you say? Pity. God how I miss them all.
EXHIBIT D: APRIL WINE;
They were also helped by the fact that the established acts like Rush, Triumph,Trooper, not to mention earlier dinosaurs like Burton Cummings and Gino Vanelli at first refused to make videos at all, and later only grudgingly and poorly. The same thing was happening in the USA with the likes of Journey and Boston sulking on the sidelines as New Wave and New Romantics bands breezed by them. Some American critics are still bitter about this. It is a fact that relatively fewer American bands of the early eighties bothered to make videos at all, they were too expensive to make if they weren't going to get played on MTV anyway. And there were no Videofact grants for them. The lack of videos from this era is actually a real loss American music, although there were a few exceptions. The Ramones, Fleshtones, Blondie, Cramps, Lords of The New Church, Long Ryders, Iggy Pop, Motels, Talking Heads, Joan Jett and a few others did make some videos as did the Stray Cats after they moved to England, which doesn't count. However for the most part they were ignored by MTV and only got played on Much anyway. The lack of videos of the likes of The Gun Club, Jason and the Scorchers, Mission of Burma, Replacements, Rank and File, Blasters and even early REM is inexcusable and it's MTV's fault. If it weren't for "The Decline of Western Civilization" and "Suburbia" we wouldn't have X, TSOL, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, The Germs and D.I. footage either. In Canada or even Britain and Australia they all would have made videos as a matter of course, and they would have been played too.
EXHIBIT E: RAY CONDO;
Of course Much was hardly alone here. CBC joined in with "Brave New Waves" and a network of campus and community radio stations would grow up including CKLN and CIUT (both of which I worked at) in Toronto. Ironically even though the Chum/City group also owned the most powerful radio stations in Toronto (and a number of other cities), they kept those operations separate from Much and New Music which left an opening for upstart CFNY to fill. There would also be a network of magazines like Nerve, Reargarde (which I wrote for), What Wave and Graffitti and weekly papers like Now Magazine (in Toronto) and in most other Canadian cities. But Much was in the unique position to act as a nationwide unifier and by and large they did.
VITAL SINES ~ "COLLAGE";
This openness to music beyond the mainstream meant that most of the Post Punk and New Wave sounds coming out of Britain now actually came to Toronto first to break into North America where they would have once treated Canada as a backwater of the USA. This meant that British bands like U2, Simple Minds, The Cult, The Cure, OMD, the Banshees, Jesus and Mary Chain and virtually every other contemporary hit here first, Aussies like Midnight Oil and INXS would follow as would reggae and world beat. You could even occasionally see the likes of serious weirdos like Cabaret Voltaire, the Severed Heads, The Virgin Prunes, Laurie Anderson and SPK who probably couldn't even spell MTV. It actually got to the point where even some American bands were actually more popular here than they were at home, including REM and Steve Earle.
EXHIBIT F: SKINNY PUPPY;
The spinoffs this had for enriching the scene in Canada are impossible to measure. Once upon a time Canada was a backwater known for crappy cover bands where anyone with real talent and ambition had to go to New York or L.A. to get signed. And where international bands largely ignored or treated as a stopover on their way to New York. That is no longer true at all. Much played a big role in this evolution, they weren't the only player, but they were vital in pulling local scenes together and one shouldn't forget that.
EXHIBIT G: BLUE PETER;
It's true that in the past decade or more Much has become bland, glitzy, commercial and predictable, so has CFNY. Graffiti, Nerve and Reargarde magazines are long dead and were replaced by Exclaim and Chart which in turn also became more commercial and bland. "Indie Street" is long gone and when New Music finally gave up the ghost a couple of years ago few noticed or cared. But it also true that MTV has declined even more to the extent that even the mention of MTV as playing videos at all is considered a punchline. Much branched off into various specialty channels for punk & metal, hip hop, retro 80's, country, latin and french which segregated the audiences and diluted the variety and unpredictability of the original. While Much may be a pale shadow of it's former greatness one shouldn't totally forget that greatness once existed, even if Much seams not to care. Those who grew up with Much can take a minute to reflect on memories that go beyond mere misty eyed nostalgia. Sometimes the old days really were better. So thank you Much Music, glitzy warts and all.
EXHIBIT H: THE NILS;
P.S. I planned on including the videos for Sturm Group's "Twenty" but it's not on youtube damn it. However by way of bonus we have this Indie Street segment from 1983;
Monday, 29 June 2009
The King is dead?
I come to bury The King not to praise him. Some of the weeping over Jacko's sudden passing is simply the first explosion 80's nostalgia for for people who are old enough to have sat through the orgy of self-referencial mass mourning over Elvis and John Lennon but who haven't before had the chance to indulge in it themselves, and they never could relate to that Cobain guy and that whole grunge thing. I remember resenting that at the time; the pompous "The Golden Age has passed and there isn't any good music anymore, you kids with your punk rock, new wave and metal noise don't know shit about real music" from those snooty boomers. It was years before I could listen to Elvis or The Beatles without sneering, but eventually I got over it and had to admit they really were pretty good after all. This time out I'm pretty sure I can be more detatched about the whole thing, so I think I'm on pretty solid ground when I say; knock it off with all the "greatest musical treasure of all time, a pop Shakespere no less" drivel. I'm not denying his cultural importance, he is the obvious and direct godfather to much of what we take for granted as pop culture products today, the slickly produced pop records with their even more slick videos with their vaguely totalitarian dancersize routines are so all pervasive that we don't even pay attention anymore, they actually have become as omnipotent as tv commercials after all. From Madonna to Mariah, from Nelly to Kelly, from The Spice Girls to Boy Bands, they are all his offspring for better or worse. He did not invent MTV but he might as well have. I can still remember the days B.J. (before Jacko) when videos were low budget slapdash affairs, badly shot, poorly lit, improvised student films like Iggy's "I'm Bored", The Pretenders "Message of Love" or the collected works of Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Banshees, The Fixx or Cabaret Voltaire, God how I miss them. Now no major label band would even dream of putting out a video that cost less than a small townhouse since it would never get seen. That is Jacko's legacy as well.
The stunning success of "Thriller" also is one of the few truly global phenomenons. From the far east to the mid east to africa Jacko is still a genuine superstar, there is simply no denying it. There is also no denying that "Thriller" is still the biggest selling album of all time, and will probably never be overtaken. Unlike previous pop culture icons like Elvis and the Beatles however Jacko's formula for stardom is impossible to really pin down or recreate, even by himself.
Elvis and the Beatles were so clearly head and shoulders above any of the competition both in terms of talent and charisma as well as clearly being in the right time and place that it almost seems like they couln't possibly have failed, and they were able to build on their initial smash hits with a logical progression of follow ups. Jacko was never really able to do this. His initial hit with "Thriller" was such a shock that even now nobody can really figure out quite how it happened, including the King himself, especially him. Writers have wasted whole forrests of paper trying to explain his success in terms of his being a non-threatening black man-child, of being the first truly video star of the MTV age, of having management who knew what to do with what they had and who had the clout to force MTV to play him. All of this is true and it's also true that "Thriller" is in fact an excellent pop album that still holds up well. But it's also true that neither he nor any of his army of handlers could quite figure out what to do next. The sheer momentum of the media juggernaut, along with his own work ethic pretty much guaranteed that the follow ups would do well and they did, although notably less so. But it's also true that most of his post "Thriller" work would become progressively bloated and formulaic until he became a self-charicature even before his actual life became the grotesque circus that stopped even being funny some time ago. Even "Bad", the immidiate follow up to "Thriller", showed signs of egotistical rot and creative laziness. Those vocal exclamations quickly went from being annoying tics to really annoying crutches that could not help but draw attention to themselves. The dance moves became even worse, with all the crotch grabbing becoming laughable. which is never a good sign, and the once gracefull spins and turns looking robotic and spastic, which is even worse. In fact his whole persona quickly changed from the charmingly vulnerable and wholesome to the jaw droppingly pompous even before he started building imperial statues to himself, dressing in those weird Nazi toreador uniforms and pretending he was really "bad" after all. And we won't even dwell on the sleazy pedophile trials that we are now expected to gloss over. I'm not willing to gloss over the grotesque tabloid circus his life became, but I don't want to dwell on it here if only because I want to limit myself on the music, which we are also supposed to forget or not notice has been perfunctory for years.
Elvis is usually given as the perfect example and cautionary tale of pop decadance and decline but his decline was actually more gradual than that. He made a number of classic records before he went into the army and several more after he came out. And at least some of his early movies were reasonably good, driven by his sheer charisima and even a certain amount of light acting talent. It wasn't really until the mid 60's that Elvis got overtaken by the Beatles that he started phoning it in, and another decade until he became a bloated, sequened, giant collared jumpsuit wearing, drug addled buffoon. Jacko melted down much faster and even more grotesquely, both mentaly and physically. And as for his creative output; "Off the wall' and "Thriller" are considered classics, "Bad" is not, and the Jackson reunions and various followups and "best ofs" are the very definition of phoning it in. He even had to get his little sister to drag a couple of half decent songs out of him. It's no coincidence that the endless soundtrack of Jackson tunes that has been blaring out of windows and radios in tribute this week have all been songs off of those two albums and a few older Jackson 5 songs with virtually nothing newer. Let's be honest (which is asking alot from the cult of Micheal); most of his post "Thriller" work has been perfunctory at best and accidentally self parodying at worst for over a decade and he has been a hasbeen, albeit a fabulously famous one, coasting on the worlds biggest laurels while going in an endless plunge downward. There is no conceivable way the series of extended European gigs could have pulled him out of his self inflicted death spiral no matter how fast they sold out.
Like Elvis, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Billie Holliday and Brian Jones, Micheal Jackson had ceased to be a serious artist a long time ago and had become a miserably helpless prisoner of his own persona. I remember seeing t-shirts a long time ago with the slogan "Brian Jones died for your sins", I wouldn't go that far of course but that doesn't mean there's not a good point in there somewhere, which most will of course ignore. Still; even during this usual orgy of worshipfull mass grief someone should still jot that down somewhere.
The stunning success of "Thriller" also is one of the few truly global phenomenons. From the far east to the mid east to africa Jacko is still a genuine superstar, there is simply no denying it. There is also no denying that "Thriller" is still the biggest selling album of all time, and will probably never be overtaken. Unlike previous pop culture icons like Elvis and the Beatles however Jacko's formula for stardom is impossible to really pin down or recreate, even by himself.
Elvis and the Beatles were so clearly head and shoulders above any of the competition both in terms of talent and charisma as well as clearly being in the right time and place that it almost seems like they couln't possibly have failed, and they were able to build on their initial smash hits with a logical progression of follow ups. Jacko was never really able to do this. His initial hit with "Thriller" was such a shock that even now nobody can really figure out quite how it happened, including the King himself, especially him. Writers have wasted whole forrests of paper trying to explain his success in terms of his being a non-threatening black man-child, of being the first truly video star of the MTV age, of having management who knew what to do with what they had and who had the clout to force MTV to play him. All of this is true and it's also true that "Thriller" is in fact an excellent pop album that still holds up well. But it's also true that neither he nor any of his army of handlers could quite figure out what to do next. The sheer momentum of the media juggernaut, along with his own work ethic pretty much guaranteed that the follow ups would do well and they did, although notably less so. But it's also true that most of his post "Thriller" work would become progressively bloated and formulaic until he became a self-charicature even before his actual life became the grotesque circus that stopped even being funny some time ago. Even "Bad", the immidiate follow up to "Thriller", showed signs of egotistical rot and creative laziness. Those vocal exclamations quickly went from being annoying tics to really annoying crutches that could not help but draw attention to themselves. The dance moves became even worse, with all the crotch grabbing becoming laughable. which is never a good sign, and the once gracefull spins and turns looking robotic and spastic, which is even worse. In fact his whole persona quickly changed from the charmingly vulnerable and wholesome to the jaw droppingly pompous even before he started building imperial statues to himself, dressing in those weird Nazi toreador uniforms and pretending he was really "bad" after all. And we won't even dwell on the sleazy pedophile trials that we are now expected to gloss over. I'm not willing to gloss over the grotesque tabloid circus his life became, but I don't want to dwell on it here if only because I want to limit myself on the music, which we are also supposed to forget or not notice has been perfunctory for years.
Elvis is usually given as the perfect example and cautionary tale of pop decadance and decline but his decline was actually more gradual than that. He made a number of classic records before he went into the army and several more after he came out. And at least some of his early movies were reasonably good, driven by his sheer charisima and even a certain amount of light acting talent. It wasn't really until the mid 60's that Elvis got overtaken by the Beatles that he started phoning it in, and another decade until he became a bloated, sequened, giant collared jumpsuit wearing, drug addled buffoon. Jacko melted down much faster and even more grotesquely, both mentaly and physically. And as for his creative output; "Off the wall' and "Thriller" are considered classics, "Bad" is not, and the Jackson reunions and various followups and "best ofs" are the very definition of phoning it in. He even had to get his little sister to drag a couple of half decent songs out of him. It's no coincidence that the endless soundtrack of Jackson tunes that has been blaring out of windows and radios in tribute this week have all been songs off of those two albums and a few older Jackson 5 songs with virtually nothing newer. Let's be honest (which is asking alot from the cult of Micheal); most of his post "Thriller" work has been perfunctory at best and accidentally self parodying at worst for over a decade and he has been a hasbeen, albeit a fabulously famous one, coasting on the worlds biggest laurels while going in an endless plunge downward. There is no conceivable way the series of extended European gigs could have pulled him out of his self inflicted death spiral no matter how fast they sold out.
Like Elvis, Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Billie Holliday and Brian Jones, Micheal Jackson had ceased to be a serious artist a long time ago and had become a miserably helpless prisoner of his own persona. I remember seeing t-shirts a long time ago with the slogan "Brian Jones died for your sins", I wouldn't go that far of course but that doesn't mean there's not a good point in there somewhere, which most will of course ignore. Still; even during this usual orgy of worshipfull mass grief someone should still jot that down somewhere.
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