Requiem For A Jacko

The world hardly needs another Michael Jackson tribute. There’s probably billions online in every language in existence. But let’s get it out of the way: yes, he wrote some fantastic songs, the best being Billie Jean. Yes, his dancing was poetry in motion. Nuff said.

But looking at the scores of tributes in the media, you would have thought Michael Jackson died 16 years ago, like his life from summer 1993 onward never happened. Like he dropped dead shortly after setting ratings records in America with his Super Bowl Half Time performance, which nearly 100 million American televisions displayed.

It’s like Michael Jackson never was reviled for over 15 years as a pedophile. It’s like Michael Jackson’s media coverage wasn’t limited to bad Jay Leno jokes and people debating if his face could handle one more plastic surgery on Entertainment Tonight. It’s like Michael Jackson didn’t release two epic flops for the ages, 1995’s HIStory and 2001’s Invincible that cost Sony Music an assload of money they never recouped. It’s like critics never gave him mediocre-to-terrible reviews on Bad onwards. It’s like people weren’t only interested in his Madison Square Garden masturbatory self-celebration in 2001 just because it was so freaky and the tip of his nose possibly fell off while performing. It’s like the public opinion wasn’t that only absolute mentally ill freaks of society came out to the court he was at to support him during his 2004 child molestation trial. It’s like the public opinion after Living With Michael Jackson aired was always “Martin Bashir is evil!” and not “Wow, Michael Jackson’s mental state is so far gone he honestly doesn’t realize what he’s doing.”

All of those were totally opposite opinions on June 25th, 2009 before the announcement of Jackson’s passing was made.

When someone dies, especially a celebrity we didn’t have to deal with in our lives on a day to day basis, all of their wrongs are instantly erased. So here are some cold, hard truths. Marlon Brando was a morbidly obese megalomaniac who let his erratic behavior overshadow his film career. Tupac Shakur was not viewed as anything but a run-of-the-mill gangsta rapper in his lifetime. Brandon Lee was a B-movie actor who was always going to be a B-movie actor. Selena’s posthumous English album was far too generic to have made her “the new Madonna”. Marilyn Monroe was never going to get close to winning an Oscar. And coming out as a Michael Jackson fan prior to his death got close to the same reaction coming out as homosexual to a bunch of bigots would get you.

Real Michael Jackson fans were a loud and proud tiny subculture during his 1993-2009 era as entertainment media’s most beloved freak of nature. They, along with their idol, endured persecution and mockery by the rest of the world that gave them almost proud martyr-complexes not unlike Jackson’s. They all honestly believed the constant accusations that Jackson was a pedophile were a media conspiracy character assassination because the white media couldn’t stomach seeing a successful African American richer than they were, more famous than they were, holding the ultimate white-boy high water mark creation of the Lennon/McCartney catalog in his possession. They were the same type of people who will fiercely debate you about the government’s knowledge of UFOs landing in the United States, even though you never consented to said debate. Trust me, if any of you recent MJ converts attend any public service memorials around the country, you will be going out of your way to avoid being in the presence of real Michael Jackson true believers.

Michael Jackson spent half of his life as a beloved entertainer and the other half as a despised sideshow. He lived a very sad life. He was forced into the public eye before he was old enough to understand what they meant, and therefore never had a clear grasp on reality. Sometimes he looked like he loved being in the middle of the spectacle that even going out to the store to buy a carton of eggs would bring him. Other times he’d release a single called “Leave Me Alone” and decry the tabloid obsession that reduced his life to staying in a bizarre fantasy amusement park nearly 24/7. But it was common knowledge his people would plant outlandish stories to the tabloids to keep his name in the press, which Jackson would always deny. When other celebrities have pulled the “PAY ATTENTION TO ME......OMG HOW DARE YOU KEEP PUTTING ME IN TABLOIDS!” doublespeak, they’re instantly shutdown as frauds. Jackson got away with it for years. Because he was the first true new era tabloid icon. Sure, his good friend Elizabeth Taylor had gotten similar treatment before he was old enough to sing “ABC”, but I doubt anyone will ever be such a permanent fixture in tabloids as Jackson was. And unlike most celebrities, his tabloid coverage increased as his stardom faded. His last burst of National Enquirer headlines revolved around the belief that he was dying from Emphysema in late 2008, which his people denied. If Jackson got even a tiny royalty on tabloid coverage, not only would his financial problems never have occurred, but he’d be giving Bill Gates and Warren Buffet a run for their money on the Fortune 500 list.

So now they’ve got one last chance to wring every drop of sideshow ratings/sales boom out of him as the run-up to his memorial services and debate on how he actually died continues. You just know every tabloid outlet is looking for a way to bribe some hospital worker to swipe some of his autopsy photos for the ultimate selling issue. Because you know those are going to be so disturbing you must gawk. One unconfirmed report out of Australia says under his wig he only had “peach fuzz” for hair, he weighed around 100 pounds, wore a bunch of make-up to cover “13 plastic surgery scars” on his face, and his arms were covered in trackmarks. But until they can get that ultimate exploitation dollar out of Wacko Jacko Inc. and have to face the public scrutiny and lawsuits, they’re doing a 360 and pretending like they actually cared. No, they loved his relationship with his children, they never called for them to be taken away from him. They loved his eccentricities, they never claimed he was mentally ill. They’re devoting the most coverage of any celebrity event in history because they cared about him and want to help his family find the true cause of his untimely death, not because they’re going to get a fortune and a ratings bonanza out of it.

So for the time being, Jackson is getting a state of adoration that’s possibly more than he ever received during the Thriller years. Right now history looks like it is about to re-write him, definitely on Elvis Pressley’s level if not The Beatles as a musical innovator. The truth is Jackson was smart enough to see the MTV revolution coming and jumped on it, making eye catching videos with huge budgets in MTV’s infancy when a simple performance miming piece was good enough for most music videos of the day. And taking Jackson on as MTV’s first “black music” airplay experiment was only an impressive risk taking maneuver to MTV. Jackson was already a superstar the day they decided to play Billie Jean, as Off The Wall was a multi-platinum hit popular with white people as well, and he had been in the public eye for nearly 20 years at that point. He was also arguably the most non-threatening African American male in music history. They had a chance to push Rick James as their first black video star, who was more of a traditional rock star in attitude than Jackson ever was, who made an album equally as good as Thriller. But James was dangerous to lily white people. Rick James didn’t care that you knew he was on drugs, and if you didn’t like it, he’d fuck your girlfriend. Michael Jackson was asexual, polite, probably didn’t even drink a glass of wine until years later. Sure, he was a handsome guy with smooth dance moves that white women had crushes on, but you knew he’d politely turn them down; whereas Rick James would have invited as many of them as he could fit into his suite for a wild coke-orgy and written a awesome song all about it. And there was a ton of great, innovative hip-hop being produced at the time that MTV wouldn’t embrace until years later. Playing that would have been risky. Michael Jackson.....a surefire hit.

But Michael Jackson did one thing not even a terrorist attack, death of a former President, election, Super Bowl, World Cup, celebrity sex tape, or any other world event could do: he shutdown some of the biggest sites on the internet: Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, TMZ, and every blogging and social networking site in existence for upwards of hours. Not to mention put a strain on all the major cellphone carriers as friends called and text messaged friends to discuss the news. His legacy will be written as a man who, for a brief time, united a large chunk of the entire music listening populace together with one album. In death he united a large chunk of the internet surfing populace to see if his demise was true or another internet hoax. And they said the internet peaked with Rickrolling.

In all sincerity, though, I wish the best for his children. And more importantly I hope when they’re old enough they realize what celebrity did to their father and don’t stumble into the same fame pitfalls.

The Holy Bible II: King (Richey) James Version

You all know the story. There was once a guy named Richey James Edwards who wrote some of the most intelligent rock lyrics of all time and pretended like he played guitar for a Welsh band called the Manic Street Preachers. After releasing his brilliant, disturbing masterpiece The Holy Bible, he disappeared off of the face of the earth in 1995.....he hasn’t been seen since.

Some of his lyrics were used on the band’s 1996 follow up Everything Must Go (Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier, Kevin Carter, Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky, The Girl Who Wanted To Be God, Removables) but after that the band did the best they could to move on without him. They achieved massive success without him, with some arguing his bleakness was holding them down. But they never forgot about him, claiming for years they planned on releasing some writings he left behind in a book.

But then, almost 15 years after his disappearance, the band has decided it is the right time to revisit the lyrics he gave to them before disappearing. The time was right, they thought. They’re coming off of one of their most successful albums in their career (2007’s Send Away The Tigers) so they can’t be accused of trying to cash in with a cheap gimmick. If anything, they’re committing commercial suicide, since the pitch black outlook of Edwards’s lyrics aren’t exactly Radio Disney material to put it mildly. And needless to say the album hasn’t exactly set the charts on fire in the UK, quickly falling out of the top 40 already.

But this isn’t about sales, they knew that going in, refusing to release any singles from the album. This is a tribute to their departed best friend, and a reminder of how when it comes to intellect in rock lyrics, there is Richey Edwards and then there is everybody else. Richey goes where few people have the courage to ponder on. On The Holy Bible there were songs about prostitution, dictatorship, genocide, and those were just the singles. He had a college degree in world history and wasn’t afraid to use it. He was also a manic depressive alcoholic, with self mutilation and anorexic issues, and he was totally open about it. Needless to say, they don’t make rock stars like Richey James Edwards anymore.

The album itself acts as an intended sequel to The Holy Bible. They toss in some audio samples to begin some songs like T.H.B. did. The reversed R’s (not in the Korn way, mind you) are back for the artwork. And the cover, depicting a little girl’s reaction to her face becoming bloodied, is drawn by artist Jenny Saville, who also did T.H.B.’s cover of a morbidly obese woman admiring herself in the mirror. And the fury of the lyrics, which Nicky Wire just couldn’t match, are back ten fold. It’s like it’s 1994 all over again.

One thing different is production is handled by Steve Albini. The problem is, the Manic Street Preachers don’t wear it very well. Albini’s masterwork, Nirvana’s In Utero, was awesome because the band already had the sonic power naturally that they didn’t suffer from the obsessively hands-off Albini. Manics on the other hand, they sound much better with studio help. Not that they’re a bad band by any means, but stripped down they sound rather bland, so it is not a good match. But that’s okay because the feeling that they’re obviously so reinvigorated carries them. And it’s certainly better than the over-compressed production T.H.B. got (the 10th anniversary release with the superior US Mix that doesn’t sound like it was recorded by playing into an old pay phone is where it’s at.)

And it’s not about the music. It’s about the lyrics. Richey was a fearless writer. He wasn’t going to pander to dumbasses in top 40 land. No, he made you do some work. Even the smartest MSP fans had to do a little research to get some historical references. The way MSP worked was Richey would come to James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and Nicky Wire with a bunch of prose some would call rambling in a lot of cases, and they’d edit it down to semi-workable rock lyrics. This time, the band included Richey’s original prose so you could see what they had to work with. A lot of times it’s a little disappointing that they cut out some great stuff. Lines like “I wanted to kill, but my tears love” and “Here I am lover man. Here I am abortion. Here I am miscarriage. Here I am selfish man.” are great director’s cut material. The most edited down song is the 2 pages of prose chopped down into a song with much repeating on lines in “William’s Last Words”. But we’ll get to that one later.

You even have to wonder if the title “Journal For Plague Lovers” could be Richey-speak for “The Holy Bible”. Think about it, the books in the bible are not unlike journal entries (although fictional ones, so maybe it’s more like certain Judy Blume books) and plagues are written as revenge strikes from god that its writers and readers adore.....a journal for plague lovers. And much like the real Holy Bible, people are going to pour over these cryptic writings looking for meaning. Did Richey spell out his final plans anywhere here? Was he sane enough at the time it was written for his cryptic metaphors to really mean something still? And even if they did really mean something will anybody ever understand them?

Kicking things off Peeled Apples is the chaotic nihilistic adventure that they just haven’t been able to do since ’94. The lyrics give a shout-out to Noam Chomsky’s book “Rethinking Camelot”, which took the legacy of John F. Kennedy to task. “Falcons attack the pigeons in the West Wing at night” is one of those lines only Richey Edwards could have come up with. Poetic, biting politically. You don’t get that anymore.

Jackie Collins Existential Question Time takes things down a few notches musically. If you’re wondering who Jackie Collins is, she’s a romance novel writer who has a reputation for writing some of the trashiest, stupidest pieces of literature known to (wo)man. The song seems to deal with the breakdown of the romantic institution, with Edwards singling out Collins’s lust-over-love books (for reasons only known to him) to maybe make his point about the media playing a role in its downfall? Or is the key to the song meaning in the “Oh mummy, what’s a Sex Pistol?” line. Is that a reference to revolutions failing? A pun talking about the failure of families to sexually educate their children properly? Or did Richey just write it for the lulz?

Another great song is Me And Stephen Hawking, featuring some very-dated and very-British references to infamous genetically engineered animals, a famous British pro wrestler used as a metaphor for all of working class England, and a delicious pun using Stephen Hawking’s lack of a sex life in the chorus. Fucking brilliant.

We get a ballad with This Joke Sport Severed that would probably be the best single if the band had chosen to release some. Using some of the many poetic equating of the emotional torture of a bad relationship to the physical torture of.....torture. There’s even a very low-budget nod to the massive orchestral break in The Beatles’s “A Day In The Life” at 1:19. That took some balls to attempt. Even Noel Gallagher never went that far in his Beatle-worship with Oasis.

The title track Journal For Plague Lovers sounds like what Dave Grohl reuniting with Albini for a Foo Fighters record would sound like. But it harshly attacks people who “leave it all in god’s hands” pinning their triumphs and tragedies on the invisible man in the sky. Obviously this didn’t sit well with Mr. Edwards, so he lets the “perfect actors” leading the charge in dumbing down society 4 Christ have it.

She Bathed Herself In A Bath Of Bleach sounds like a title Kurt Cobain would have been kicking around for the “In Utero” follow up. And it sounds like it too. Not just because of the patented Albini micing, but the soft verse, exploding chorus dynamic Cobain loved writing is in full effect. Lyrically it appears to be about a woman dealing with the emotional trauma of a violent relationship. Especially with the pleas of “Stop hurting her” that are in the original lyrics that Wire took out.

Playing the role of “Small Black Flowers....” musically is Facing Page: Top Left. Beautiful strings and acoustic guitar make what I’m sure ends Side-A of the vinyl edition. References to medical care about beauty issues would make you think it’s the “4st 7lb” of the album, but I don’t think it is. That’s coming up later.

Holy shit, a drum machine on an Albini record? How did that sneak on there? Marlon JD is assumed by most people to reference famous 50s actors Marlon Brandon and James Dean, or maybe that’s too easy. But the general belief is Edwards was referencing a guy who lived out his life to old age and disappointed everybody by fucking up along the way and getting fat and wrinkled, against a guy who died really young being given the benefit that you get to wonder what might have been when you die young. A comparison could be drawn to Edwards and Wire. Richey vanished after releasing his magnum opus, Wire stayed around long enough to release some really embarrassing songs not even counting his solo album. Maybe all musicians should listen to Neil Young. Neil Young should have listened to Neil Young‘s advice.

Doors Closing Slowly is full of religious imagery that would be tempting to say is Edwards painting himself as the martyr suffering for great art. But while he did have quite an ego, I don’t think he was that pretentious. It ends with a sample from the truly awful film version of “The Virgin Suicides”, which Nicky Wire went out of his way to assure us was only in tribute to Richey’s fondness for the book and he too thinks the movie sucked dog dick and Sofia Coppola is a talentless, nepotistically enhanced moron. Well, he didn’t say that last part, but I’m confident he agrees with it.

Following that comes All Is Vanity, which is highlighted by the always underrated drumming of Sean Moore (although, again the Albini drum-recording method doesn’t suit him) and features Edwards feeling that just living life makes you vain, and wondering if having all of your decisions made for you in a communist dictatorship would make you happier? Hmm, maybe Richey is hiding in North Korea?

Musically Pretension/Repulsion sounds like out-take from “Know Your Enemy” but is another one of Richey’s finest lyric gems. What other rock lyricist would namecheck the famous Ingres painting Odalique. That painting was when the long-standing male trend of saying “This beautiful woman is really hot, but she’s just not sexy enough naturally. Let’s use our editing powers to change some flaws.” Ingres gave his model a back longer than any ever seen in nature (“extra bones for sale”) and thus kickstarted a revolution that would give computer based photo editors work until kingdom come.

Could you imagine a radio DJ having to announce the title Virginia’s State Epileptic Colony as a title? Man, I wish there was a way to rig the charts so they’d have to play that song, just to hear some guy in his cheesy rock radio DJ voice “That was the Manic Street Preachers with their new single ‘Virginia’s State Epilep....Epiwhat?” Supposedly the song is about the real Epileptic Colony in Virginia that used patients like guinea pigs, although a Google search didn’t show me anything about it. But you have to wonder how much of it is referencing Richey Edwards’s stay at the Priory Clinic in 1993 for self-mutilation, substance abuse and anorexia. His mentions of it in interviews during “The Holy Bible” press tour (along with Nicky Wire’s descriptions of what he saw when he visited him there) kind of match the descriptions of the song. But maybe it is solely about the Epileptic Colony Google doesn’t know about.

Okay, the most talked about track is by far William’s Last Words. It’s nothing but lines about being incredibly depressed, talking about leaving family and friends and other things that seem to be Richey Edwards all but announcing his intentions to leave or commit suicide. But it’s really not. No, in the album’s booklet, for all 6 people who still buy CDs, you can see the complete “William’s Last Words” in all of its rambling, grammatically incorrect glory. It seems to be some kind of bizarre short-story about a old man having a conversation with an old friend, knowing he’s close to death. Now granted, if you wanted to analyze to the extreme, you could still make the argument that Edwards was using this story to say goodbye to friends and family, but James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire both say Richey would never write something that melodramatic. If Edwards was going to do something like that, he would have left a private note, not in a sappy weepy song. No, Wire edited down the words to make it look that way it seems. He also sings the song instead of Bradfield. And because of the emotional weight of the song (due to his editing of it) it is the only time Nicky will ever get a pass from people singing. Because to put it bluntly, what Richey Edwards was to guitar playing, Nicky Wire is to singing. He’s H-O-R-R-I-B-L-E! But the music is beautiful enough around him to disguise it.

Fortunately the record doesn’t end with that engineered-downer. No, Bag Lady, which announces “I am not dead” as the opening line, which gets maximum attention because of what it follows, is a hidden track that sounds like the rawness of “The Holy Bible”, kind of sounding like “Archives Of Pain” from that album. It’s just an awesome denouncement of all things held sacred, just like T.H.B. was. Such a great, invigorating way to close things......unless you got the vinyl that it isn’t on. Then Nicky Wire croaking is the last thing you’ll hear. Sucks for you.

All in all, this is a celebration of one of the greatest minds rock n roll ever produced. It isn’t for everybody, obviously. Really, it’s going to appeal to so few people you can say it’s for nobody. But if you like your rock lyrics bleak, cynical, cryptically poetic, nihilistic, depressing, scholarly and in need of a lyric sheet due to the thick Welsh accent of the singer.....then this is for you.

RATING: 5/5