Michael Jackson - Dead at 50

[AJ Azure]

alright we've got hitler and government conspiracy in a thread. what makes the internet nut job poster trifecta?

[Doug Beaumier]

Back to the MUSIC...

MJ had a "mountain" of unreleased songs in his vault when he died. Recently recorded, "dozens and dozens" of songs according to this article---> Click

Fans will be hearing and buying "new" Michael Jackson material for years to come. Can you imagine what his estate will be worth in future years?

He sold 2.6 Million downloads just this week!

[chas smith]

As an aside, I live in Encino and was driving down Ventura Blvd, past the intersection at Hayvenhurst, to get to an appointment, this evening. This is about a half a block from the Jackson house, and, the street was blocked off, there was a throng of people and a news helicopter hovering. There's a lot of money up that street and I bet those folks are really tired of this thing.

[David Doggett]

alright we've got hitler and government conspiracy in a thread. what makes the internet nut job poster trifecta?

The race card.

But seriously, as long as we are talking about everything else MJ-related, we gotta talk about race. I can hear b0b groaning, but I'm sure we can keep this all politically correct and music-related.

Al Sharpton and others in the media are talking about how MJ crossed the color line and "for the first time" took black music into American and world pop music. Hunh?! I remember back in the late '50s when I was growing up in Mississippi (not a very racially enlightened time and place, to say the least) I bought as many Chuck Berry and Little Richard 45s as I did those of Elvis and Gene Vincent.

Now I realize I don't necessarily have a good idea of what kids were listening to in Cleveland and Omaha at that time. For example, I thought I played rock'n'roll back then, but years later I read in Rolling Stone that what I was playing was really rockabilly - and the more I read about the distinction, the more I realized it was true. So I'm willing to be educated on this MJ crossover thing.

As I remember the mid-'60s, the Jackson Five were just another Motown soul group crossing over to the pop charts, like The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, and others. And as I recall, Hendrix hit the pop charts before MJ started his big solo career. By the time MJ started having his big adult solo pop career, nobody was paying much attention to whether pop performers were black or not. Admittedly, MJ's repeated successes with singles and albums carried this crossover history further than anyone had before. But it seemed like just another step in that direction, following many others, not like he single-handedly created black crossover into pop. And don't forget Prince.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I was already color-blind as far as pop music goes, but the rest of the nation and the world weren't. I don't want to discount the black entertainment world if they think MJ was the biggest deal ever for crossover. They are more attuned to that than I am. Is there anybody out there from Cleveland or Omaha...or Europe or Asia? What do you think? Was MJ the big crossover hero Sharpton claims, or are he and others just getting caught up in the circus surrounding MJ's untimely death?

[b0b]

Getting too political here. Closed.