Make Me Wanna Holler

... nothing new worth blogging about - a bus strike, Tiger Woods, those goofball party-crashers in Washington - I've nothing new to add to any of that crapola.

So, in lieu of nothing else, here's something for the kids out there who haven't yet seen 'Drysdale's Ditherings' in the year-end ish' of 'The Beat.'


Like it or not, the cultural event and on-going news story of the year has been the the death of Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed King of Pop.

I was never a big fan, but I'm willing to admit to owning one Michael Jackson album - 1979's 'Off the Wall,' the predecessor of the mega-hit 'Thriller.' At the time, I justified its purchase because it was produced by Quincy Jones. But actually, I bought it for just one song - the dance-floor hit, 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.'

Over the course of the first weekend after MJ died last June, I played that song over and over; back to back with Marvin Gaye's 'Got to Give It Up.' Some of you may be familiar with from it from that scene in the first 'Charlie's Angels' movie set in a space-age bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills in which Drew Barrymore discovers she's been set up by the supposed shy computer-geek and his kick-ass Emma Peel-gone-bad partner.

There are similarities between the two songs which make them a DJ's dream segue. There's the high-falsetto lead, the party atmosphere, the occassional yelps and squeals of joy; the swirling room-spinning wall of bass-heavy funk. Even the choruses are alike - "Don't stop till you get enough," mirrors Gaye's admonition to "Keep on dancin'."

Gaye's single was released two years before 'Don't Stop,' and Michael and Quincy were either paying homage to the Motown pioneer, or trying to best him. Or just plain ripping him off.

In retrospect, I like Gaye's song better because it shows his continuing evolution as an artist. From Motown to 'Inner City Blues,' to 'Sexual Healing,' the word 'comeback' wasn't something you would associate with Marvin Gaye. He continued to grow until his early death at the age of 44. The brutha was always moving ahead, never backwards-walking into his catalogue to pay the bills with a Greatest Hits tour.

So I won't be buying the new 'This Is It' DVD. Last summer I sat through Jackson's memorial concert, held 12 days after his death and that was enough for me. I can only take so much of 'Reverend' Al Sharpton.

But the tearful on-stage 'goodbye' given by MJ's 12-year-old daughter, Paris provided the most startling revelation of the day - that MJ - the freak, the contrived eccentric curiosity, was also an obviously much-loved Dad. Deep down, underneath all the make-up, costumes and masks, turns out that he was a real human being. Imagine that.

Never saw that one coming. Because by any standards, he WAS a freak. Despite what all the Al Sharptons and revisionist apologists tell you, Michael Jackson was first and foremost, a freak. And it was Michael who deliberately cast himself in that role - and that's partly what killed him.

When talking about the child-molestation trials and accusations, people often bring up the theory that Michael must be guilty after he paid off most of his accusers to go away - "Because, who in their right mind would agree to pay millions to anyone who made such awful accusations? If you were really innocent, why wouldn't you defend yourself against such vile charges?"

Well, the first thing you have to understand is that we aren't talking about a "normal" person here. In fact, dying a cliche Hollywood drug-related death was about the only *normal* thing Michael Jackson ever did.

At some point, he severed all connection with Reality. What caused it? Growing up in show-business? Being a superstar and the family's chief bread-winner from an early age? Well, to name just one of many, Sammy Davis Jr. turned out okay.

Even in Jackson's own family, the rest of the kids seem relatively normal. With the exception of LaToya of course. But she's merely a spoiled untalented brat and so her outbursts are predictable.

After Michael's death, one of the biggest pieces of clap-trap I ever read was an opinion piece on the front page of the 'Globe and Mail' which insisted that "the world" killed Michael Jackson - and by implication, "we" were the murderers. Well, if 'we' are the 'world,' then let me off, because I won't accept any responsibility for the death of a guy whose final years are looking more and more like suicide as a work-in-progress.

If we're going to point fingers at people other than Michael himself, you don't have to look much further than his father/manager Joe Jackson. As a parent, he beat his youngest son and verbally abused him for being lazy. He made fun of the kid's "big nose" to the point that so much plastic surgery was done that it no longer resembled anything human.

All of that has to have a big effect on a child and explains a lot. As a father and a manager, the Jackson patriarch was a bully and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that Joe Jackson killed Michael just as surely as Marvin Gaye's father killed his own son.

If you remember, Marvin Gaye Senior blew his own boy's brains out with a shotgun in 1984 over a business disagreement.