There Will Be Fun.
What with all that was going on this week at WTJU—check next week’s paper for the motherlode—I didn’t have a chance to write about the King of Pop, dead for a year today. It hardly feels that long since I read on some gossip site that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital with some unnamed illness, and was shortly thereafter pronounced dead. Twelve months later, MJ remains every bit the mystery he was when alive, even as a veritable Neverland of merchandising has attempted, and failed, to do his legacy justice. (Have you seen This Is It? Don’t!)
So instead of contributing to the noise—now that he’s not alive to spend money, somebody’s making some from his music; death seems to have rehabilitated his image; etc., etc.,—here’s a video of King Michael performing one of my favorite tracks: "Get on the Floor" from Off the Wall. It’s a fascinating song for many reasons, in part because of that stanky bassline. So stanky! But the biggest treat is from around the 3:00 to 3:30 mark, when Michael engages in an early form of the breathy, gutteral scatting, like a bonobo in heat, that would become one of the hallmarks of his style.
The song that makes me question my nature as a born nondancer.
What’s your favorite Michael track?
