Farewell to The Gloved One

He's gone. Sure, he was not in my life that much these days, but nevertheless his music has always had a spot on my iPod and I have fond memories of what he brought ... musically speaking ... into my life.

Growing up on Emerson back in Louisville, my mom kept a steady rotation of LPs (my brother probably has no idea what those are) going on the weekends when she cleaned the house. Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Billy Joel's Innocent Man, Huey Lewis and the News, and Michael Jackson's Thriller. I used to listen to it in the basement and I had to manually force the record to skip to the next song when Vincent Price's voice came on to tell me of my impending doom. Damn voice gave me nightmares.

It's sad how Michael's life turned out, but I guess that is the world we live in, when supposedly playing around with little boys and girls can really piss off the American public. And it's a shame, because if he just would have not creeped everyone out so much and potentially broken a lot of California statutory rape/child molestation laws, maybe his latter years could have been more celebratory than made for mockery. Those were his decisions, however, not ours. You can't sell 100 million copies of Thriller and then think no one will pay attention when you build an enormous theme park in your back yard for kids to stay at by themselves with only you to watch over.

Despite all this, I will retain many memories of MJ's music in my life. Listening to Thriller in my basement with the record player turned up loud. Watching the Grammys (when those actually meant something) and seeing him master the stage like few others ever. Doing the moonwalk like every kid in the 80s did. I once participated in that Jump Rope For Heart thing in grade school and they pumped Man in the Mirror and Lean on Me on repeat for about 4 hours straight. Donnie and I would blast Thriller and Off the Wall and Bad and other albums all the time while hauling ass down the highway in The Cougar to speech tournaments and wherever else. I remember tuning in to HBO to watch the world premiere of his Live from Bucharest concert in 1992 (Those people went nuts, it's just amazing to see how different concerts are now compared to back then, when seeing your favorite artist was a true experience). I sat and watched the MTV world premiere of his Black or White video, and remember the discussions of how exactly he got those people to morph into each other, a rather simple technology seemed like the greatest thing on the planet at the time. Even watching him teach Michael Jordan to dance in Jam was goofy and classic Michael. The videos to Thriller, Smooth Criminal, Beat It, Billy Jean, The Way You Make Me Feel. There are tons others, yes, but they are all seared into my head.

It's been less than 24 hours since your death, and I hope that the outpouring of support continues long after this blog post and the countless hours of coverage wear on. No sense in mocking you and wondering what could have been or what should have been or what might have happened. Instead, I will be thankful that I can still load up my favorite song of his, PYT, and think about how much you influenced our music and our culture. And with so many of your other songs, I can load them up, think back and, as the title of your song says, Remember The Time ...