on the passing of Michael Joseph Jackson

I was driving home from work Thursday when I first heard rumors of Michael Jackson’s death. The afternoon sports talk guys on ESPN radio had brought it up, almost as a joke really, because at the time only TMZ was actually reporting that he had died, while more reputable news outlets were merely saying he’d been rushed to the hospital. In any case, it was the first I’d heard of it, though I had already read about Farrah Fawcet’s death, which otherwise would have produced the day’s most notable obituary.

By the time I got to my apartment and got online, Jackson’s death had been confirmed and I already had seven — count ‘em, seven — Facebook friends who had mentioned his death in their status in some way. I was never a fan of his and didn’t listen to his music, and despite his having produced the top-selling album of all time (1982’s Thriller, released when I was barely 2 months old, and believed to have sold over 100 million copies worldwide to date), I probably couldn’t name more than 4 or 5 of his songs if I heard them.

In my post-adolescence, he was in the news far more for his often bizarre and mostly disturbing personal scandals than he was for his actual music, and the fact that he only released 3 albums of new material in the past 2 decades could be seen as either the partial cause or the effect of that. I didn’t follow his career and had only a cursory knowledge of his biography, let alone his discography.

However, when Michael Jackson’s name comes up in conversation years from now, I’ll still have 2 distinct memories related to his music. The first was his electric performance for the halftime show of Super Bowl XXVII (won by the Cowboys, thank you very much). He performed some of his most recent (at the time) popular material for about 6 minutes, danced all over the stage, and shattered the record for most crotch-grabs at a Super Bowl (which I’ll assume was previously held by Charles Haley). He was a decade removed from Thriller, 14 months removed from the release of Dangerous (his 2nd highest selling album), and still 2 years away from HIStory (a double album that had some of his biggest hits on one CD and brand new music on the other). He was a spritely (better adjectives could probably be chosen) 35 years old, still in the late prime of his career, and 3/4 of the way through a run of 4 albums — released between 1982 and 1995 — that today have combined to sell nearly 200 million copies! Read that last part again. In the span of 13 years, he released 4 albums that sold just shy of 200,000,000 copies worldwide! That, combined with his radio hits, brought him more music royalties than you could shake a white glove at.

But back to Super Bowl XXVII. It’s interesting to contrast Michael Jackson’s set with halftime performances at more recent Super Bowls. The most striking thing about it is he performed in broad daylight, not under a night sky on a field lit with all the snazzy lights, video screens, fireworks, and bells & whistles the National Football League can buy. The game was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California and the game began at around 5:30 Central time, as pretty much all Super Bowls do. So he was outdoors and it was most likely not even 6 p.m. Pacific time when he appeared on stage. It was fairly obvious he was lip synching but he still had all his patented dance moves and the crowd (an estimated 98,000+) went wild.

I’ll always remember watching that, though it was unfortunately followed by children gathering around the stage as he lead them in singing the almost unlistenable “Heal the World”. I was a 4th grader at the time, and within a few weeks somebody brought a tape of that song to class and it ended up getting played incessantly (thank you, Mr. Bolton!) And yet somehow, it wasn’t even the most ridiculously overplayed song of that year (on our classroom’s tape player anyway, if not radio itself); that honor went to “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” by Brooks and Dunn, but that’s neither here nor there.

My other distinct Michael Jackson memory recalls my first month of college. My roommate and I were watching the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards (apparently I had nothing better to do) when *NSYNC came on near the end to perform “Pop” (the video for which won them 4 awards that night) from their final album Celebrity, which had been released a few months earlier and had already been certified 6x platinum. *NSYNC sang, danced and basically mailed in a 4 minute performance, backed by lights, extra dancers, props, gaudy costumes, and other aesthetic features that will make all future generations wonder how *NSYNC became so popular in the first place. As their performance ended, Michael Jackson (by then 43 years old) made a surprise appearance (it’s at about the 4 minute mark in the video), and immediately the crowd at the show became about 40 times more excited than they were at any point during *NSYNC’s routine. Jackson danced for all of about 30 seconds, strung together a few of his most familiar moves, then finished and waved to the crowd and exchanged hugs with all the members of *NSYNC. I distinctly remember my roommate having a very excited “No way!” reaction upon Jackson’s appearance.

The MTV Video Music Awards have had a history of surprise appearances by music icons, and this one fit right in line with that, though Jackson’s minute-long cameo certainly had to have been at least partially related to the fact that his final album, Invincible, was to be released in less than 2 months. It was the last distinct memory I have of Jackson performing, and the last impression I ever got of just how hugely popular he was even 19 years after Thriller when he was into his early 40s. Perhaps just as notable was the fact that the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards show took place at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City just 5 days before 9/11.

Invincible was released at the end of October that year and received mediocre reviews and sold poorly (by Jackson’s standards anyway). And for the rest of the decade he served as little more than the butt of jokes from late night comics and as the central character of “The Jeffersons”, a memorable South Park episode that aired in April of 2004. He was mired in scandal and financial troubles for the last few years, but always had his ardent (and frankly delusional) defenders among his worldwide fanbase (myself, not being among them).

He was scheduled to play 50 concerts at the O2 Arena in London beginning in less than 3 weeks, which was to mark his musical comeback after all his recent personal and musical troubles. Obviously, that won’t be happening now. If nothing else, it certainly would have been interesting to see if his 50 year old legs could still pull off the moves he did as a 25 or 35 year old. Presumably he could have sold out arenas while performing in a wheelchair just based on his back catalogue alone. After Thursday, that’s what his fans will have to remember him by.

Music check

Haven’t posted anything in a while, and since I just opened iTunes, it feels like a good time for one of these “put your music player on random and see what plays” lists.

1. The Everly Brothers – Bye Bye Love
2. America – Sister Golden Hair
3. Death Cab For Cutie – No Sunlight
4. Cat Stevens – Tuesday’s Dead
5. Smalltown Poets – Inside the Bubble
6. Oasis – Morning Glory
7. Chris Rice – Smellin’ Coffee
8. Glisten – Untainted
9. Mae – The Sun And The Moon
10. Dave Matthews – Some Devil
11. Peel – Trenchula
12. Howard Shore – The Breaking of the Fellowship
13. The Who – I Can’t Explain
14. Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds – Don’t Pull Your Love Out
15. Sufjan Stevens – All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace!
16. Editors – An End Has A Start
17. Sanctus Real – Beautiful Day
18. Dave Matthews – Dodo
19. Department of Eagles – No One Does It Like You
20. Neil Diamond – Thank The Lord For The Night Time

Ray LaMontagne concert review

I went with a good friend and fellow music-lover to see Ray LaMontagne’s concert in Dallas on Friday night. We got to the venue with plenty of time to spare, so we walked around and had some dinner at a nice Italian place downtown before returning to the Majestic Theatre. We found our seats as opening act Leona Naess was a song or two into her set. She was a good opener for Ray, and her Sarah McLachlan-like voice and folksy low-key songs and melancholy lyrics made for a compelling performance. I may have to check out some of her albums.

Ray LaMontagne and his backing band took the stage just before 9:15 PM and launched into the upbeat “You Are The Best Thing”, the first track on his brand new album Gossip In The Grain. Naess joined the band for the fourth song, providing backing vocals on “I Still Care For You”, just as she did on the album version. In all, he played 7 of the album’s 10 songs, plus “Roses and Cigarettes”, a bonus track available with the deluxe edition of the album sold at the iTunes store. Regrettably, he played only 3 songs from his masterpiece album, 2006’s Till The Sun Turns Black, which was half the number he played from his 2004 debut Trouble. Some people in the audience called out for “Barfly” at one point, but to no avail. I was disappointed to not hear “Forever My Friend”, “Gone Away From Me”, “Sarah”, or “Till The Sun Turns Black”. Despite that, he put on a strong performance throughout the length of his 17 song set. He was accompanied by a capable group of musicians that included Ethan Johns on the drums. Johns has produced of all 3 of LaMontagne’s albums and is the son of legendary producer Glyn Johns, who produced The Who’s masterpiece Who’s Next (among other albums). Ray, as a vocalist, is incapable of mailing in a performance, and he sang all of the songs as strongly – or when the song required it, as softly – as he does on his albums.

About midway through the show, his band left the stage and he performed solo acoustic versions of “Burn” and “Winter Birds”, before the band returned for a rousing rendition of “Hey Me, Hey Mama”. The regular set closed three songs later with “Trouble”, and the band left the stage to a prolonged ovation. After a few minutes, they returned for an encore and played “Three More Days”. 3 of the 4 backing musicians exited afterwards and Ray played “Jolene” accompanied by bassist Jennifer Condos. She left afterwards and a stagehand brought Ray a neck rack that held a harmonica in front of his mouth. Before he could start the song, someone in the crowd yelled out that he looked like Jesus. Ray, who has a reputation for rarely interacting with the crowd, and who up to that point had said little more than “thank you very much” between songs, grimaced and replied, “I do NOT look like Jesus. Shut the f*** up with that.” This animated response prompted a lot of laughs from the crowd. He thanked the crowd, his backing band, and his supporting act Leona Naess before ending the show with “All the Wild Horses”, the last track on Trouble. It was a good song to end on, and when he wasn’t singing he played the harmonica while strumming his guitar, the harmonica being used in place of where the strings are played on the studio version of the song.

It was a really good show overall, the best I’ve seen this year so far. The crowd was great (despite some occasionally annoying catcalls), all the performers and musicians were top notch, and the venue was perfect for that type of show. I hope he plays Dallas again sometime, and I’m glad I got to finally see him live.

Here is the setlist Ray LaMontagne played:

You Are The Best Thing
Hold You In My Arms
Let It Be Me
I Still Care For You#
Empty
Henry Nearly Killed Me (It’s A Shame)
Roses and Cigarettes
Meg White
Burn*
Winter Birds*
Hey Me, Hey Mama
You Can Bring Me Flowers
Shelter
Trouble

encore:
Three More Days
Jolene+
All The Wild Horses*

#backing vocals from Leona Naess
*Ray solo
+Ray solo with Jennifer Condos on bass

Top 5 Tuesday

This week: favorite live music videos (Professional division)

1. U2, “Where The Streets Have No Name” (from the Elevation Tour 2001: Live from Boston DVD)
At the 1:14 mark, this clip has one of the most goosebump-inducing camera shots I’ve ever seen in any concert film.

2. Coldplay, “Clocks” (live at the 2006 Isle of Wight festival)
This one has a great ending, I wish they’d ended the album version that way.

3. John Mayer, “Belief” (from his Where The Light Is DVD)
Has some of the most infectious guitar licks of any song I’ve heard lately.

4. The Who, “Baba O’Riley” (live at the Concert for New York)
The band has given far more energetic performances than this (see: here), and Roger Daltrey’s voice is almost painful to listen to in the early verses, but this was possibly the most emotionally-charged performance of their career (which just happened to be one of the last, if not the last concert they played before bassist John Entwistle died). They were part of the lineup of bands that played the Concert For New York at Madison Square Garden barely a month after 9/11, and the audience was filled with New York firefighters, law enforcement officers, and their families. By almost all accounts, The Who gave the best performance on the night, and this was one of the 4 songs they played at that concert.

5. Ray LaMontagne, “Three More Days” (live on the BBC Four Sessions program)
I also really love his performance of “Forever My Friend” on the Late Show With David Letterman, but I could only choose one of them, so I went with this, one of a few songs he did for the BBC Four Sessions show. His performance of “Be Here Now” on the same show was excellent as well.

Top 5 Tuesday

I realize it’s technically Wednesday, but I wanted to start a new weekly series now rather than later.
This week: favorite live music videos (Amateur division)

1. Sufjan Stevens, “The Transfiguration” (live in Milwaukee, WI 9/25/06)

2. Mute Math, “Noticed” (live at La Zona Rosa in Austin, TX 10/15/06)

3. U2 & Arcade Fire, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” [Joy Division cover] (live in Montreal 11/28/05)

4. Five Times August, “Audience of Zero” (live at a Virgin Megastore, probably in Grapevine, TX)

5. Jars of Clay, “Light Gives Heat” (live in Minneapolis, MN October 2006)

Music you should check out

I just put together a new playlist with 20 songs that I like a lot right now. They’re either songs I’ve been playing a lot on iTunes or ones that have randomly played on the iPod when I’ve been walking somewhere lately. Check them out! (Note: click on the picture to open the pop-up standalone player in another window.)

Music Memories

How this works: open iTunes, put the play setting on shuffle (or random), and write about what memories or thoughts you have on the first 5 songs that it plays. Or, if it plays a bunch of songs you’ve never listened to or have nothing to say about, just pick the first 5 songs that you do have something to say about.

1. Glen Hansard, “Fallen From the Sky” (Once Soundtrack)
One of the songs from the soundtrack for my favorite movie of 2007. It shows up in the movie during the scenes in the recording studio, shortly after the Hansard, Marketa Irglova, and the hired Irish musicians there with them play “When Your Mind’s Made Up”, arguably the musical highlight of the film. It’s a cute little song, though one of the lesser ones from the movie and from the soundtrack in my opinion, and so I haven’t listened to it a whole lot.

2. Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” (Narrow Stairs)
This song was the leadoff single from Narrow Stairs and the first thing it always reminds me of is its amazing video. The full version of the song clocks in well over 8 minutes, and Ben Gibbard doesn’t sing his first line until about the 4:30 mark, so the song only exists on radio (and MTV) in a much-shortened form. It’s definitely different from what I’d come to expect from Death Cab, but I really love the song. It will occasionally play on my iPod shuffle when I’m at work or walking to or from my car and I always find it hard to resist air drumming, air bass-ing, and air piano-ing to the first half of the song. The album isn’t the band’s best by a long shot, but this song is one of my very favorites that they’ve done.

3. The Decemberists, “The Crane Wife 3″ (The Crane Wife)
This is the first track of an album I wished I liked more than I did. I’d heard a lot of good things about The Crane Wife before I listened to it, and I liked about 3 songs on it a lot, but I didn’t like the rest of it enough to re-visit the album much. This song was one that I liked a lot off of that album, and is actually my 2nd most-played Decemberists song, behind “Sons & Daughters”.

Funny thing though, I just heard this song last night in an AT&T commercial that aired during the Olympics. AT&T using Decemberists music to promote itself? What’s next, songs by The Who used to sell Hummers? Oh wait, never mind.

4. Sara Groves, “Conversations” (Conversations)
The title track from the only Sara Groves album I own, one I got as a blind buy based purely on some praise I’d read about it. Groves has a great earthy sort of voice, and this song is one of only two or three from the album that I ever listened to a lot. She starts out the song singing entirely a capella, before she’s joined by some soft piano notes and later a stringed instrument I can only guess is a mandolin. It’s a very earnest and heartfelt song and probably the best one on the album. She has released a few albums since this one but I’ve never checked them out, for whatever reason. She seemed sort of like a female version of Chris Rice, one of the best singer/songwriters the Contemporary Christian sub-genre has had in the past decade, though it’s a sub-genre I essentially quit keeping up with 4 or 5 years ago, with the exception of a few bands or artists I was already a big fan of.

5. Five Times August, “Most Uncommon Thing” (The Independent)
This is a song I own at least 3 different versions of, as it’s been recorded in as many different ways on different releases. Five Times August is the moniker under which singer/songwriter Brad Skistimas performs. “Most Uncommon Thing” is a sweet love song that he wrote for and played at the wedding of his older sister. It was one of the very first FTA songs I heard some 5 years ago when I ran across Skistimas’ music on the old mp3.com website and started to become a fan. One of the songs he had posted on his page was a solo acoustic version of “Most Uncommon Thing”, and I liked it a lot. It was one of two or three songs from his early recordings that really got me interested in his music and made me want to keep up with his career. As far as these types of songs go, it’s kinda similar to Stephen Speaks’ “Out of My League”, but performed with different instruments. It’s one of his better songs but not one that he plays live very often; in fact I’ve seen him play at least 7 live gigs over the past 4 years, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard it played in concert.

The version that iTunes played was a re-mixed version with strings and piano, a version that was first included on a Limited Edition EP that Skistimas made 100 copies of in 2006 and gave for free to the first fans who asked for it. It was then included on The Independent, a 2007 repackaging of his 2005 album Fry Street that was sold in Wal-Mart stores nationwide after he signed a deal with the chain (which was remarkable in itself as Skistimas has never signed with a record label).

Best of 2008 so far

We’re nearly done with July and the year is almost seven-twelfths finished, and though I’m probably a month late on this, now feels like a good time to do a “best of the year so far” recap.

My top movies of 2008 so far:
1. The Dark Knight
2. Iron Man
3. Wanted
4. U2 3D
5. Wall-E

Worst movie of 2008 so far:
Smart People

Most disappointing movies:
Prince Caspian
Indiana Jones and the Kindgom of the Crystal Skull

Most forgettable movies:
Vantage Point
Nim’s Island

Books I’ve read in 2008: [by this time last year I'd read close to a dozen books, but for some reason I've been slow and uninspired in my reading]
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon
The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie
The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth (currently reading)

Best albums bought in 2008 so far:
Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova – The Swell Season
Sufjan Stevens – Seven Swans

Concerts seen in 2008:
Five Times August, Stephen Speaks
Dashboard Confessional, Five Times August
Death Cab For Cutie, Rogue Wave

My top 5 most-played tracks over the past 6 months:
1. Sufjan Stevens – He Woke Me Up Again
2.(tie) Mute Math – Noticed
2. Nada Surf – See These Bones
4. John Mayer – Belief
5. Coldplay – Viva La Vida

song memories

My family and I are taking a brief vacation to the gulf coast tomorrow morning, probably our last vacation with just the 5 of us (myself, my parents, and my two sibs), but then again we said that two years ago when we last took a vacation the summer before my sister got married. Before I leave for a few days, I’ll start a new recurring blog topic, Song Memories. Here’s how it works: I’ll open iTunes, set it on shuffle or random play, and write out whatever comes to mind on the first five songs that it plays. This could include times or places I remember playing or hearing that song, people songs remind me of, or how old I was when I first heard it. So let’s see what iTunes has in store for us tonight.

1. Relient K – Trademark
Hmm, don’t have any particular memories attached to this song. It was featured on Relient K’s Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right, But Three Do album from 2003, which I still think was the band’s most fun album to listen to, although Mmhmm was probably their best overall. “Trademark” wasn’t one of my favorite songs on it but it has a memorable enough melody.

2. TobyMac – Hype Man (truDog ‘07)
Where did that come from? I’ve never once even listened to that song all the way through. It’s from TobyMac’s Portable Sounds album, and features some rapping and interplay between the artist and his son. TobyMac, in his solo work apart from dc Talk, has never been an artist I kept up with, as his style doesn’t appeal to me that much, though all of his albums are good for at least a couple of songs that would become mainstays on anyone’s iPod. This isn’t one of them.

3. Coldplay – Amsterdam
This is the last song on Coldplay’s 2002 album A Rush Of Blood To The Head, which is my favorite collection of songs by the band to date, although oddly enough I’m beginning to think their brand-new Viva La Vida album may actually be their best. “Amsterdam” is a great song from a band that always picks great songs to close out their albums. It was included on their Live 2003 DVD and they did a great performance of it there, though they didn’t play it three years ago when I saw them live in concert. The song doesn’t remind me of anything in particular, though a few others from that same album do.

4. The Secret Machines – All At Once (It’s Not Important)
This song was the second track on the band’s Ten Silver Drops album. I bought the album because I loved the heck out of their song “Lightning Blue Eyes”, which by a wide margin is my #1 most-played song from the past couple of years, according to the charts on my last.fm page. As for “All At Once (It’s Not Important)”, the only real memory I have attached to it is listening to it (along with the rest of the album) one night during the summer of 2006 at home while lying on my bed and reading a book, which was most likely one of the Harry Potter books.

5. Sigur Ros – Heysatán
This song is the last song on the band’s Takk… album, and although a good one, it’s probably the song I listen to the least from that album, which is my favorite that they’ve done. I have some definite memories of listening to songs from Sigur Ros’ Agaetis Byrjun album while pulling all-nighters and trying to write papers during a particular semester of college, and some other memories having to do with other songs on Takk…, but nothing jumps to mind as far as “Heysatán” goes.

Well, that didn’t work out like I hoped it would. Maybe next time I’ll put it on random and only write about the first 5 songs I actually have some memory of, and not the first 5 songs period.

Budgets, Death (Cab) and All His Friends, and the Implausibility Scale

The county I work for currently is facing a $34 million budget shortfall, which apparently means a few departments overspent their budgets, or whoever works in the budget department never learned how to balance a checkbook. After much deliberation, our esteemed Commissioner’s Court decided that the best immediate short term answer is to make everyone remove their personal refrigerators, heaters, and fans from their offices, and to turn off the power for all electronic devices at closing time. Left unstated was that they would also be turning the thermostats in the two county courts buildings a few degrees higher. I had a judge ask me today if they’d turned the temps up in the law library, because her office was noticeably warmer than it normally was. I didn’t notice much difference in my own work space, but my co-workers did. Apparently having everyone remove pull the plug on their mini-fridge and fan and making us work in offices that feel 80 degrees is going to save the county millions of dollars. Personally, I don’t buy it and it’s just the county commissioners trying to look like they’re doing something to solve the problem. Nobody is happy with it, and things will probably get worse and more draconian before they get better. I’ve half-seriously thought about buying a mini-fridge for my apartment, just to plug it in for a month and see what, if any difference it ends up making on my electric bill, because I don’t see how a few less personal mini-fridges or fans being used is going to save the county any tangible amount of money.

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I saw The Incredible Hulk on Saturday, and liked it better than the first Hulk movie. It was more action oriented, more interesting in a lot of ways, and had some great cameos (Stan Lee; Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk on TV for years; and even a certain other comic book character who has starred in his own movie recently).

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At this time tomorrow I will be watching Death Cab for Cutie live in concert. I’ve been a fan for nearly 4 years now and this will be my first time to see them. I’ll try to keep up with the setlist and post it afterwards, along with a picture if I get a good one. As long as they play “Title and Registration”, “Brothers on a Hotel Bed”, and “Marching Bands of Manhattan”, I think I’ll be happy.

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I’m four episodes shy of finishing season 4 of 24. I’ve had in mind something I want to write about that season, and the show in general, but I’ll wait until I’ve finished that season. I’ll just say that it’s alarming what the lifespan is of CTU agents assigned to either protect analysts in the field, serve as backup for Jack Bauer, or be the security detail for an agent doing investigative work. If the mortality rate for extras on that show was anything like that of real life counter-terrorist agents, no amount of money would be enough to get anyone to sign up for that line of work.

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Another blog I may end up writing later on has to do with a concept I’ve thought of in recent weeks. After watching the new Indiana Jones movie and the trailer for the upcoming Angelina Jolie-McAvoy actioner Wanted, I’ve decided that we need an Implausibility Scale to measure the sheer ridiculousness of the action sequences seen in movies today, and perhaps also for silly plot devices and plot twists. It would be similar to sportswriter Bill Simmons’ legendary Unintentional Comedy Scale, which he has said is topped by a YouTube video of William Shatner “singing” Rocket Man.

I had a few conversations about Indy IV last week and it says something about a movie when it features a crazy sequence where a kid swings on dozens of vines and glides quickly through a forest to land safely on a speeding vehicle, and that part isn’t even one of the 3 most implausible scenes in the movie. However one puts the Implausibility Scale list together, the sequence in Transporter 2 with the crane removing a bomb from the bottom of the hero’s flipped car has to rate at least a 105 out of 100, because such a thing is so ridiculous it doesn’t even happen in video games or comic books. I feel this is a good time to mention that Transporter 2 is among my favorite dumb action movies ever.

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Coldplay’s new album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends is out tomorrow, but between that night’s Death Cab concert and Wednesday night’s Texas Rangers game that I’m going to with a couple of friends, it looks like I won’t be getting my hands on the album until Thursday at the earliest. I got X&Y the day it was released and that album reminds me of the year 2005 more than any other one does. I’m not quite as high on the new album now that I’ve heard parts of some of the songs on it, but it may grow on me after a while, as X&Y did. Personally, I think A Rush of Blood to the Head will always be my favorite set of songs from that band.