Category Archives: Music

Update II: Michael Revivalist Revelry

America, Journalism, Media, Music, Pop-Culture, Sarah Palin, The Zeitgeist

Civilians are dying in Iraq; soldiers in Afghanistan, Putin, his little helper (Dmitry Medvedev), and the patriotic Russian people, are getting the better of Barack; China’s Uyghur minority is going ape on its Han majority, Zelaya is seeking solace from Clinton—Bill, that is; key Irani clerics have dismissed the results of the vote (that’s good news; sensible non-interventionist wanted any findings to issue from Iran)—all the while, America’s cable news channels have been glued for hours-on-end to the formless shape of Rev. Al Sharpton, and other other black entertainers, swaying to the sounds of a pop singer passed. The same specter has occupied the front-pages of major newspapers.

To paraphrase Pat Buchanan, a silly people living in serious times.

Perhaps our Alaskan lass gets it. Having, we hope, seceded from “politics as usual,” Sarah went fishing with her hunk and her adorable kids. I hope she’s winking in the direction of Russia, and having a laugh at the expense of the self-important Obamas.

Update I: Marc Lamont Hill, Ph.D, Bill O’Reilly’s token black intellectual (read: a man who is clearly a product of America’s system of racial promotion, and doesn’t make O’Reilly’s lack-luster intellect too obvious), said: “Michael Jackson is the greatest child prodigy since Mozart.” Good grief. This man teaches at an elite university and he cannot distinguish between a Mozart and a songster, who was able to write a simple, three-chord jingle and dance to it; and who couldn’t even play an instrument proficiently, much less compose a symphony or an opera?

For this music lover—Bach, anytime anywhere—that was the most obscene comment to come out of the “wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage.” Writes Debbie Schlussel, with equal disgust: “the only people I feel for at this funeral circus are those kids. Sad to see his daughter, Paris Michael Jackson, cry. It’s probably the only sincere moment in the entire thing. The rest are just phonies glomming [sic] onto a successful circus act.”

[SNIP]

Bubbling up from this sewer of coverage, so emblematic of American society, was the repeated refrain that MJ managed to transcend race and gender. How stupid. The man was tortured by his race and his looks. The latest reports detail the shocking lily-white color of his frail, emaciated body, and the fresh track marks along his snow white bony arms. This was a man wracked by hate for his original looks. It takes self-loathing to voluntarily transform yourself—through dangerous, disfiguring, bone-crushing surgery—from a black young man into a no-nosed elf whose facial structure—the bones—had been chipped away to render a concave, collapsing mess, both sexless and raceless.

As for MJ’s alleged genderless “achievement”: the claim that Jackson was gay is certainly silly. He was clearly childlike and quite innocent. He didn’t have a history of affairs, male or female, and there was no evidence of child-molestation, although there was ample evidence that MJ assembled around him grafters who did not hesitate to use their kids to blackmail a childish man with means.

Update II: Jackson’s adopted daughter is a lovely little girl, who doesn’t sound remotely like the Valley Girls infesting that state. I dread to think how she’ll fare if one of the sisters takes her in. MJ seems to have imparted some manners to his kids.

“Ever since I was born, daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine.”—PARIS KATHERINE JACKSON, Michael Jackson’s 11-year-old daughter, at the pop icon’s memorial service Tuesday.

Updated: Welcome Hard-Core Sound In MJ’s Last Video

Celebrity, Music, Pop-Culture, Race

As all the repugnant muso hip-hop adulators pronounce vacuously on Michael Jackson’s contributions to “black music,” and other permutations thereof, the King of Pop’s last video reveals a hardcore edge: a catchy riff accompanied by a LOUD—and wait for this—competent guitar. The very antithesis of the aforementioned “art form.” Jackson the perfectionist sought out a competent, I suspect, studio axe woman playing in the progressive rock tradition, which relates to “black music” as Barack relates to economic recovery. Jackson had moved away from his signature, intolerable, squeaks-and-hiccups sound. Good for him—and for posterity, however long that lasts in this culture.

What a shame that, in Lawrence Auster’s astute estimation, Jackson had destroyed his health through drastic, disfiguring, medically-sanctioned self-mutilation.

Update II: The Gall Of The Media Ghouls (Arrested Development?)

Affirmative Action, Celebrity, Criminal Injustice, Healthcare, Intelligence, Justice, Law, Media, Music

Following the death notice are a few apropos excerpts from my “Mad Dog Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson,” one of the few trenchant defenses of Michael Jackson, written at the time of his trial. Michael J. was accused of molesting a big hairy “child,” three times the size of the frail singer.*

Michael suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.”

Now Keith Olbermann eulogizes Jackson, but back in 2005, “Olbermann, expecting a prosecutorial touchdown, aired a rather cruel segment on his consistently cruel ‘Countdown With Keith O.’ The segment was called ‘Prepping for the Pokey.’ In that bit of “comedy,” the awful Olbermann “pondered how Jackson would fit his prosthetic proboscis in jail.”

“The only man (Jon Stewart disappointed),” other than yours truly, “to have distinguished himself from the pack was Geraldo Rivera. The Fox News reporter conceded Jackson’s conduct was creepy and said as much (as did I). But he understood that creepy is not necessarily criminal.”

* “Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” was rejected for publication by a leading libertarian website. Much to the proprietor’s disgrace, the rejection was based on a dislike for the column’s author.
Speaking of whom, if you appreciate her work, please support it. And do visit WND on Fridays for the weekly column. If not for those courageous evangelicals, the cultists in mainstream media and among my own ideological faction would have seen me banished from larger audiences for good.

Update I: “Thriller” was undoubtedly a musical triumph, Jackson’s only one, perhaps. The Jackson of that era had achieved a good look in his life-long plastic-surgery odyssey. The songs were very tight, accompanied by enormous talent: Eddie Van Halen played guitar on the song “Beat It,” and Steve Lukather, studio musician from Toto, did guitars on the remainder. It was an exciting, polished effort, with a hard-core manly sound, attributable to the guitar greats cited. (Here is another one worth a listen.)

Update II (June 27): ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. At the time a 911 call was placed from the Jackson home, Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson’s cardiologist, had been performing CPR on the already dead MJ for the better part of an hour. If that doesn’t strike the medical profession (the media is even less inclined to think critically) as odd, perhaps the position chosen to administer the life-saving procedure will: the singer was splayed on a bed.

Now, a CPR recipient has to be lain on a hard surface — “because it is difficult to compress the chest on a soft surface.” How can you deliver an awakening thump to the heart on a surface that gives?

Yet it was the 911 operator that had to tell “the staffer to ‘get him on the floor,'” a message the latter presumably conveyed to the inept doctor.

What is it about these celebrities that makes them seek out such incompetence in their care-givers? If you recall, Anna Nicole Smith too was surrounded by an incompetent team of husband and wife nurses at the time she died.

Kanye West’s mother died under the knife of a trendy plastic surgeon. West was celebrated as a woman of some intelligence, yet she appeared to have chosen a surgeon based on his celebrity. “Dr. Jan Adams, who is being investigated by the state medical board, has been the target of malpractice lawsuits and has paid out nearly $500,000 in civil settlements.”

The fact that Adams happened to also be an Oprah-endorsed Brother might have contributed to his appeal to the late Mrs. West.

Dare I suggest the following? The common thread in the specter of wealthy celebrities choosing manifestly incompetent care givers is their own patently low intelligence.

Talent, Beauty, Intelligence: Noa & Mira Awad

Europe, Human Accomplishment, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Music, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

As a fan of chamber music and hard-core progressive rock, I don’t pay much attention to pop music, all the more so considering the genre has been overrun with the toxic sludge of American, booty shaking bimbos with bedroom voices and no talent.

(Pop rock is even worse. )

Me on “cut-and-paste” hip-hop electronica: “The P. Diddy or Missy Elliot-type electronica entails taking ready-made sample CDs on which drums, keyboards and guitar have been recorded. Aided by a computer program operable even by a simian, the mouse is used to drag and drop these samples anywhere along the track. Riffs and beats can also be dropped in the software way into the “song.” An entire band of backing tracks is thus “produced” with a computer and more often than not without a single instrumentalist.”

The overwhelming nature of the bad makes one forget that there is such a thing as a well-executed, pleasant warble, accompanied by competent musicians.

The gifted Noa is a striking Israeli Yemeni singer. Now Noa, in collaboration with Mira Awad, an Arab-Israeli talent, have united to represent Israel at the Eurovision. These are musical, intelligent, gracious, modest women, who speak soberly about the issues, and do not vaporize in the vernacular of Oprah—another American pop-pollutant.

I’ve heard some boosters tout American cultural products as export-worthy. I’ve argued that: “American mass entertainment continues to spread around the world like the cultural kudzu it is, not because of its quality or the vigor of its values, but because, in form and in content, it’s as easy as a prostitute on a street corner. It demands nothing but for the performer and his audience to relinquish artistic standards and shed inhibitions.”

I’m done. Over to the ladies. Here they spoke of what brought them together. And here they sang what ought to have been the winning “Eurovision” song, so achingly beautiful is it: There Must be Another Way

There must be another
Must be another way

Einaich, achot
Kol ma shelibi mevakesh omrot
Avarnu ad ko
Derech aruka, derech ko kasha yad beyad

Vehadma’ot zolgot, zormot lashav
Ke’ev lelo shem
Anachnu mechakot
Rak layom sheyavo achrei

There must be another way
There must be another way

Aynaki bit’ul
Rakh yiji yom wu’kul ilkhof yizul
B’aynaki israr
Inhu ana khayar
N’kamel halmasar
Mahma tal

Li’anhu ma fi anwan wakhid l’alakhzan
B’nadi lalmada
l’sama al’anida

There must be another way
There must be another way
There must be another
Must be another way

Derech aruka na’avor
Derech ko kasha
Yachad el ha’or
Aynaki bit’ul
Kul ilkhof yizul

And when I cry, I cry for both of us
My pain has no name
And when I cry, I cry
To the merciless sky and say
There must be another way

Vehadma’ot zolgot, zormot lashav
Ke’ev lelo shem
Anachnu mechakot
Rak layom sheyavo achrei

There must be another way
There must be another way
There must be another
Must be another way

Beautiful Noa in an old performance—interesting Yemeni beat, and a stage presence that is powerful, alluring, without being remotely slutty:

The Yemeni beat, Arabic beat, so so intricate and interesting; yet so foreign to North American ears schooled in the hip-hop, rap, deadening hump-a-long . 

Lyrics
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s very violent
A bouquet of violets
Lies trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
Where it’s hot and steamy
Don’t go around too dreamy
You’ll be trampled to the ground
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Can I find a future here?
Everything is so unclear
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Can I ever find a life?
Under threat of fire and knife
(Give it up, give it up, give it up)
Changing tide
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour to the deep southside
It’s a game we play
And it’s very scary
With all those maniacs running around
Y’know
Manhattan Tel Aviv
With a detour, 18 years old
Caught under the wheels
It’s a pretty bad deal
But this is my hometown
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
Falling, calling, tryin’ to survive
Doing a quick-step
Keeping in stride
With the changing tide
Changing tide
Changing tide