Saturday 27 June, 2009

The King of Pop

In the wake of his death, many maudlin and mushy posts would have already flooded the internet.Michael Jackson's death was not shocking at all for me,I would have been zapped had he died a natural death with his grandchildren sitting around his wheelchair.Maybe he would have have done a reverse spin on his wheelchair for their amusement.It is another matter altogether whether his son would have let daddy get too close to his "grandchildren". That would be one dark shadow cast forever on MJ.

One bizarre factor when I listen to music is that, the lyrics never stick to my head.The first thing that hits me is the sound, layers and layers of sound can be deciphered by my brain.. but never the lyrics.In the pre-Rahman era there was nothing worth talking about in the Indian Film industry when it comes to the standard of Sound Recording.

Michael Jackson's tapes from my father's collection was an eye(ear) opener for me.Considering the choices that I had from his collection, the choices apart from MJ being Donna Summer and ABBA.
Incidentally Donna Summer's "Love to Love you Baby" is the song which plays in the background when VK Ramasamy and Janakaraj watch porn in AgniNatchathram. :-)

Unlike many others, the first ever MJ I track I heard was not Thriller, Beat It or Billie Jean..
It was Wanna be starting something[ dummies please click].
The short and rasping 3 sharp beats that signals the start of the song followed by that very funky synth hook which loops through the song and the simple tune with catchy African chorus was enough for this kiddo to get hooked....
It was a pretty smart edit when the synth loop is held back for the African chants some 5 mins into the song and then it kicks back in with perfect sync without missing a chord.

Skipping the big three to another lovely track in the album.. his duet with Paul McCartney.. The girl is mine...

This song has recently popped onto my play list, especially the spectacularly re-worked version from his Thriller 25 album.Will.i.am ably lends it a smooth jazz feel for his version of the duet with MJ.In fact I found a similarity between the re-worked version and one of namma Rahman's work..

Girl is mine- Michael Jackson with Will.i.am

Oh La la- Bombay Dreams



Compare the opening bars of the above two songs ... Rahman thinks like MJ in his chord Progression.. this is just one of the many examples..

Next track is something which I have personally observed nobody talking about it.

Human Nature is a smashing melody, the first in his line up of great melodies that he would be belted out later in his career.
MJ's forte has always been his strong melodies and the fact that only his adrenaline pumping work has fetched him his bread and butter is totally unfortunate.
The dreamy opening bars of Human Nature [ link highlighted above] almost grabs you by your balls.

At times I feel slightly bad about the Comment Section of my blog, the fact that it is almost virginal in its exposure to comments has made me decide on something.

I pledge to write the 2nd of the series of posts even if I receive a solitary comment. :-)

Do dust up your old records or search some dark corners of your D:Drive and fish out some old Mp3 of MJ. May he Rest In Peace.

2 comments:

VJ said...

now now that is good writing ....felt more real and heartfelt and not trying to show off at all . this is what i have been telling you all along ..write abt things that you love rather than things you hate and thank god it didnt have any puke or vomit words in them :-)

psychedelic monk said...

Hmmm, i must say, a ucking well written piece of work. But i guess the only problem was that you didn't know how to finish it. I thought it ended flat after the big hype in the start. I think you didn't have the time when you wrote that blog. I think there are a humongous amount things that you know about MJ that got missed out here. Still, i like your style of writing and am waiting for volume 2 of this edition. Well done my boy.


P.S I didn't want to write that your writing is inspiring and so on and so forth, but i guess you did start the spark in me to start writing again...Thanks Buddy.