Vigil in Sacramento pays tribute to Michael Jackson
LAND PARK: Tyeshia Sutton holds up the cover of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" album the top-selling record in history at a commemorative candlelight vigil that drew about 250 admirers of the late singer on Friday night. "I know he's moonwalking in heaven right now," one fan said.
His face emblazoned on T-shirts and coming to life slowly from a young girl's paintbrush, the King of Pop played a farewell show Friday night in Sacramento.
Sponsored by radio station KHYL (V101.1 FM), a candlelight vigil in Land Park brought about 250 people together at twilight to pay their final respects to Michael Jackson, a musician who in his 50 years on Earth amassed a devoted legion of fans worldwide.
"I still can't believe it," said Yvette Taylor, 49, of Sacramento. "I grew up with his music
It's a very sad moment."
With the iconic bass riff of "I Want You Back" the 1970 hit that propelled the Jackson 5 and young Michael Jackson to stardom blaring across the event's public address system, Taylor said she attended to show her dedication to the man and his music.
"I'm seeing him off tonight," she said.
A throng of fans gathered around a large poster containing several images of Jackson throughout his life. Some took pictures with cell phone cameras; others wrote notes telling the singer what he meant to them.
"I wrote a note thanking him for inspiring me," said Ramon Salas, 21, of Sacramento. "I know he's moonwalking in heaven right now." Salas has been a Jackson fan "since I was in my mom's belly," he said.
"My mom was a huge fan," he said. "She's been crying ever since she heard the news." Salas was pessimistic there'd ever be another person who could move as many people as Jackson.
"There won't be another," he said.
Gerald Pliman, 43, of Sacramento combined his "entrepreneur's spirit" and love of Jackson into a stack of T-shirts featuring the image from Jackson's "Thriller" album that he and his wife, Mona, were selling at the vigil.
"I think he was the greatest person, period," he said. "(It's amazing) the audience he captured and all the people that loved him."
Even young people who grew up in an era when Jackson was known more for his legal troubles than chart-topping albums were close to tears at the rally.
Tracie Nieto, 17, somberly painted a black image of Jackson from his "Bad" album on a piece of canvas she'd spray-painted silver.
"I started on the car ride (from Elk Grove)," she said. "As a little girl, I was so dedicated to his videos. I'd watch them every day."
The painting, she said, was both her way of coping and an offering to Jackson, to say "I'm sorry we never met."
"Michael Jackson was one of the happiest parts of my childhood," she said. "I could never forget that feeling he gave me."
The rally, she said, would help her and others deal with the loss. "The best way to heal is through togetherness," Nieto said.
Tamaia Faletogo weeps during the candlelight vigil for pop star Michael Jackson Friday night in Land Park sponsored by radio station KHYL. The crowd was estimated at 250 people.
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Michael Jackson's lyrics tell a hard story
FILE - In this Nov. 13, 1988 file photo, pop singer Michael Jackson performs before a sold out crowd for his Bad tour at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
In the brief, electric prime of Michael Jackson, millions danced to "Billie Jean," "Beat It" and other songs so propulsive it almost didn't matter what they actually said.
But the lyrics - whether Jackson's or others' - could be as disturbing as the music was liberating. Sealed in the grooves were tales of deceit, paranoia, violence and victimization. Even before his life broke apart and the tabloids bore down, Jackson sang like a boy-man under attack.
"You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it," he warns on "Thriller," the title track to his all-time selling album and written by Rod Temperton. "You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes/You're paralyzed."
Jackson was almost 21 when his first "adult" record, "Off the Wall," came out in 1979. He had survived the childhood beatings and insults by his father and had already lived at least one life in show business, as the smiling, spinning prodigy fronting his brothers in the Jackson Five.
"Off the Wall" sold millions and shed the catchy, but impersonal persona of his child star youth. The title track, written by Temperton, was a lighthearted introduction to what would become Jackson's truest subjects: his strange life and the stolen innocence he wanted back. "The world is on your shoulder," the song advises, but "life ain't so bad it all/If you live it off the wall."
He would soon fire his father as his manager and vow that his next record, "Thriller," would make him the biggest star in the business - a promise met like few others. "Thriller" sold more than 20 million copies initially and sales now top 50 million. It earned him the title he bestowed on himself, "The King of Pop," and offered the first full take from the throne.
"Michael Jackson wrote songs for one great artist - which was himself," says Diane Warren, the Grammy-winning songwriter who has written for Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Kelly Clarkson and Mary J. Blige.
Warren says Jackson also picked great songs by other writers - see "Thriller" - and "was an amazing interpreter" of them. Among his songbook, she spots a theme of defiance and toughness that perhaps acted as protective armor.
Music producer Glen Ballard was in the studio with Jackson and Quincy Jones for the making of "Thriller," and worked on the later "Bad" and "Dangerous" albums, co-writing the songs "Man in the Mirror" and "Keep the Faith."
"As he grew up and matured as an artist, his lyric writing had this sort of air of mystery about it," Ballard says. "He still knew how to write hooks - he just knew how to communicate that way - but he sort of created this vocabulary" that was darker, surreal and futuristic.
The bouncy duet with Paul McCartney, "The Girl Is Mine," is an interracial love triangle. The hard rock "Beat It," set to the switchblade guitar runs of Eddie Van Halen, is an anthem of pacifism, or passivity, with Jackson pleading to stop a gang war - and perhaps all wars - because "It doesn't matter who's wrong or right."
The singer in "Billie Jean" has been taken by a girl he meets on the dance floor and later claims has borne him a child. "Billie Jean is not my lover," he chants, teeth clenched. "She's just a girl who claims that I am the one/But the kid is not my son."
Jackson's "Billie Jean" lyrics are paranoid, defiant and "cool," Warren says.
"Maybe in a way he wanted to be left alone," she suggests, noting the trauma of his missing childhood.
If so, Jackson did not give that impression in the recording studio, according to Ballard. He remembers Jackson as "very shy" around people he'd just met, but when he felt comfortable, he was funny and fun to be around. He was collaborative yet focused on his larger musical vision. He moved and grooved, feeling the music. When Ballard and others hosed him with water guns on his birthday, Jackson grabbed a water gun and joined in.
Ballard had no idea about Jackson's life outside the studio. As for "Billie Jean," he can't point to any real-life experience or demons within the pop legend's psyche.
"It's just this incomplete portrait that you can fill in however you want and you can see it as this huge, mysterious, sort of tragic story or something," he says of the 1983 chart topper.
The same woman, or at least another named "Billie Jean," turns up in the equally besieged "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," in which Billie Jean is another exploiter "always talkin'/when nobody else is talkin'/tellin' lies and rubbin' shoulders." Again, there's a child and Jackson, the alleged Peter Pan of popular music, doesn't want to know:
---
If you can't feed your baby
Then don't have a baby
And don't think maybe
If you can't feed your baby
---
Jackson was a cultural radical who broke the color line on MTV and shattered the old rock clique of white men with guitars. But his politics were more personal than collective, avoiding confrontation as surely as the guy in "Beat It." In "Man in the Mirror," from the 1987 "Bad" album, he worries about "the kids in the street/with not enough to eat," and concludes that the answer is to "take a look at yourself and then make a change." He would later call to "Heal the World," although doesn't say how beyond making sure that "you care enough."
Scandal and chaos only made him look harder, at himself, and at others: The boasts of "Invincible" and "Untouchable," the rage of "Tabloid Junkie" and the taunts of "Threatened." In the self-evident "Privacy," the world is a trespasser peeking through his window: "Ain't the pictures enough, why do you go through so much," he asks. "To get the story you need, so you can bury me."
Ballard, who has written for Alanis Morissette and George Strait, among others, says the passionate performer was a "remarkable songwriter" who "absolutely" felt his songs' lyrics.
"I don't think there's any question that that was just falling out of his creative, unpremeditated self. ... He tapped into his 'whatever' and he was using it like an artist should and sort of creating these characters - maybe they're him, maybe they're not," he says. "You get distance from it. (The lyrics) just really have this kind of compelling, mysterious, very cool air about them, in addition to being really hot at the center with these grooves."
You could heat a country on all the energy spent wondering what happened to Jackson in the second half of his life and what eventually killed him. But he explained himself well in the trembling "Childhood," set to Hollywood strings and to a melody lost and forlorn as an orphaned boy.
That song "was probably the most autobiographical of all his amazing lyrics," says Grammy-winning songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, who co-wrote "That's What Friends Are For" with Burt Bacharach.
"Have you seen my Childhood?" Jackson wonders, his voice light and high. "Before you judge me, try hard to love me/The painful youth I've had."
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Questions on Jackson's Death
by Mike Krumboltz
People search the Web to find answers. And yesterday, when Michael Jackson died, people across the country and around the world had a lot of questions. Below is a summary of some of the most popular lookups surrounding the untimely death of the King of Pop...
1. Who dubbed Jackson the "King of Pop"?: Searches on Jackson's famous nickname surged an astounding 3,645% yesterday. Related searches on who came up with the phrase were also extremely popular. While most believe that Jackson anointed himself "The King of Pop," according to sources on the Web, Elizabeth Taylor actually coined the phrase at a 1989 awards gala. Jackson is rumored to have insisted that MTV call him by his royal nickname.
2. When did Elvis die?: The sudden and tragic death of Jackson brought back memories of another king who died too soon. Queries on "death of elvis," "when did elvis die," and "how did elvis die" all surged into breakout status. For the record, Presley passed away on August 16, 1977. He was 42 when he died of an apparent drug overdose. Also surging in search: "When did John Lennon die." The Beatle was killed on December 8, 1980.
3. Heart attack vs. cardiac arrest: Reports that Jackson had died of cardiac arrest spurred incredible interest in the difference between that and a heart attack. A heart attack is when a portion of the heart muscle dies due to a blockage of the coronary arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle. Cardiac arrest is when the heart actually stops beating. This can be caused by several things including medications and can also follow a heart attack if too much of the heart muscle dies.
4. How to do the moonwalk?: Jackson's signature step surged 56,873% on Thursday. Reminded of Jackson's heyday, people looked up tips on how to perform the move. An article from WikiHow gives would-be Jackos a step-by-step set of instructions, but you may find viewing a video from the master much more informative (if a bit intimidating).
5. Order of Michael Jackson's albums: There was also an instant surge of lookups for MJ's discography. All told, he released 10 albums. They were, in order: Got to Be There; Ben; Music and Me; Forever, Michael; Off the Wall; Thriller; Bad; Dangerous; HIStory; and Invincible. Jackson's biggest seller was, of course, Thriller.
6. What is vitiligo?: Though many believed that Jackson bleached his skin, the star actually suffered from vitiligo, a skin disorder that leads to de-pigmentation. You can learn more about the effect it had on Jackson and his revealing 1993 interview with Oprah from this article from CNN.
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What Makes A Great Album?
As you may be aware I have started a project where I make an album completely from scratch and you can follow me as I make my album as I am blogging here on Rhythm Creation about it every step of the way. So far I have announced my project and improved my work area. Today I am going to look at what makes a great album before I actually start work on mine, hopefully I will be able to take some thoughts about what makes them great and carry them through to set myself tasks that my final album should be able to achieve.
Everybody's idea of the perfect album is different and based upon their taste in music and many other factors. Their idea of the perfect album now may not be their perfect album in a few years or even a months time. Many people's perfect album probably doesn't even exist. Rather than looking at specific albums and why they are great, I feel that it is maybe better to look at the reason why any album could be classed as great. Here is my 10 things which I think make a great album.
1. Ground Breaking - At the time that the album is released there should be something that sets it apart from all the other albums currently available. It doesn't have to be a completely new style of music but it could be a new fusion of things that no one has yet thought to bring together or have a certain new take on something done before.
2. Listeners Want To Listen Again - The album should make listeners want to re-listen again and again. To do this there should be sounds and instruments in the background that upon a second listening they hear but they may not have heard the first time. There should be sections which make listeners want to quickly rewind and re-listen to a section again.
3. No Skipping Through Tracks - A great album makes you want to listen through it without skipping a track, each track should add something to the album. The saying "quality over quantity" should be used here as many would agree that having a 40 minute album of quality is better than a 80 minute album of bad tracks. When the album is sold on iTunes this means that people will want the whole album, not just a couple of the tracks.
4. A Flow Throughout - There should be a certain flow throughout, like a cohesiveness between the tracks that make them sound a part of the collection. They should sound like they have been produced by the same person(s) and have a kind of feel like they belong there.
5. Longevity - The greatest albums will still be a part of peoples collections in 10 years or even 20 years from now. This comes down to good music, good sound production and also individuality of the album.
6. Generate Feelings - Music stirs certain emotions, a good album should generate lots of different emotions throughout whether it is happiness, sadness, memories, etc. This is usually done through the lyrics which could be linked in to do with current events, a lot of people say that good music is written during hard times. A album which comes out about the right thing at the right time can make it greater than if it came out at the wrong time.
7. Artwork - The albums artwork should complement the music and should also be artistically creative and as much of a talking point as the music. People remember album covers quite well, sometimes even more so than the actual music.
8. A Good Ordering of Tracks - The album tracks should be in a order where the next track complements the previous track. The starting track should be either an intro or a track which gets the album off to a good start and the ending track should be one that sums up the album as a whole.
9. Memorable - The album should be easily remembered, this could be the lyrics, melodies or anything else that will mean that people will be singing or humming different tracks to themselves after listening.
10. General Appeal - A good album is one that you will want to share with your friends, therefore it should have general appeal and greatl enough to make most people want to listen to it.
These are what I think make a good album. It doesn't mean that an album has to have all of these 10 things but a great album will at least have many of them as a feature. For my album project I will need to find ways to make my album excel in some of these areas if it is to stand out from the crowd of other music makers.
Anything that I have left out that you think makes a good album and should be added? Please write them in the comments!
Album Project
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