Michael Jackson is "evil"

My band is finally finishing our magnum opus of New Orleans brass band versions of MJ songs, which we've been slowly working on for like...7 years. Cool timing. :/

yikes bad timing

jordan :(

let's not forget mj's amazing dancing skills
he put them to some pretty weird use over the years but his natural skill was undeniable
i remember the abundant crotch-grabbing being scandalous at the time

yea when I saw This Is It I was pretty amazed, he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man. for all the strangeness with his face he actually looked kinda decent those last couple years (I mean, comparatively).

his impact on dance styles is pretty undeniable, he's a key figure in that period where things became stiffer and more robotic (obviously he cribbed a lot from hip hop dance crews in this respect). the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

like this whole thing where you have a gang of backup dancers all doing these super-stiff synchronized robotic movements, that just became standard. personally I find it really boring to watch 40 years on when every pop act does it but whatever, I guess other people found musicians making music too boring too look at after awhile.

I think this broader conversation to some extent exposes how much of the r Kelly convo was enabled by the fact that in some circles he was *never* taken seriously whereas mj was universally so, and we will see ppl flip.

this seems OTM. there have been far fewer calls for "cancelling" MJ so far which feels like a double standard to me.

the moonwalk is p much it's own unprecedented thing, obviously.

even MJ acknowledged that the moonwalk was an extension/revision of one of James Brown's dance moves (which itself JB had no particular copyright on)

nothing is ever completely new!

MJ was doing a version of the moonwalk as part of the J5 and he was widely understood to be a prodigy incorporating the dance moves of many of that period's top black stars.

the saddest thing of all is watching clips of the j5 and knowing what time had in store for all of them, but particularly MJ. what a mess.

I ... guess? Not denying MJ learned a lot from Brown but I've never seen JB slide across the stage backwards like that, when he did the sliding thing he was constantly twitching his feet around. idk

sure, it's not identical. but it was hardly "unprecedented" (or should we say "unpresidented"?)

MJ feels too deeply embedded in culture to cancel entirely. Like, no one has gotten married in the last few decades without dancing to at least one song at the wedding, where would you even start.

I remember that moonwalk being really jaw-dropping when he did it at the Motown 25th, like this superhuman moment where ppl were amazed that a person could do that. it was shocking.

i mean JB is obviously super influential on everyone but MJ was so opposite in many ways, James is fundamentally very manly and effortful, sweating his ass off, grunting collapsing then forcing himself to go on through sheer force of will....

MJ thriller an on seemed like this weird alien creature, the moon walk was so striking because it really seemed like some strange unnatural magic like he just floated on the Earth

Delighted to see they are so many devotees of the terpsichorean arts on ILX all of a sudden.

ctrl-F "fosse"

no hits

I mean, if we're going to play the "where did those moves come from" game, let's at least cover the known sources

In a November 1969 episode of H.R. Pufnstuf, Judy the Frog teaches everyone a new dance called "The Moonwalk", which includes two instances of a stationary moonwalk.[10]

https://youtu.be/eUTEhEPONgc?t=70 for those who don't know what I'm referencing

would never deny Fosse, personally

i remember that Pufnstuf episode

Oh damn, that is insane (the Fosse clip)

I don't know shit about dancing!

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

Thanks for that link, DJP. Wow!

alas for Fosse cred, The Little Prince was a huge bomb at the b.o.

re: the Smooth Criminal lean

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/MichaelJackson/story?id=7941951&page=1

aha! I knew it was a magic trick

he definitely did not move like a 50 year old man.

Fosse is 47 ish in that clip. 50 years isn't that old if you keep in shape.

reminds me of people being surprised that "Jordan can still dunk at 50!!"

this is a really weird conversation

tony hawk last did the 900 at 48

maybe I should clarify that, I guess it wasn't so much that he was 50 but rather that he was apparently in very poor health and was just counting down the days until his tragic death

Michael Jackson was the Ken Stabler if dancing

well yeah Fosse was a chainsmoker and pillpopper, and an epileptic as well.

so, that's how he did it.

for me it was that Smooth Criminal lean, I still have no idea how they do it

It was shoes that clicked to the ground.

i was thinking about his dancing skills because no matter how grotesque his face began to look, his dancing skills were unscathed, like a reminder of who he used to be (even if the styles of dancing changed a lot)

i am of that age that by the time Bad came out, I thought MJ was pretty corny/someone I liked as a little kid (and by that time I was no longer a little kid, i was a pre-teen...so matoor)

Same. My dad bght me the rec cause he knew I was a fan. Well, yeah, was.

Thanks Dan! I thght I made that up. Haha

http://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article6727091.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Michael-Jackson-shoes-2.jpg
https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/05/22/613306407/michael-jacksons-gravity-defying-lean-continues-to-fascinate
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5742939

I think dangerous might have been the first tape i ever bought

First Music You Ever Bought

hey this turned into an ILM thread, what a surprise

Those smooth criminal shoes look really painful

Cruel shoes, you might say

that song from 'Little Prince' goes hard

LL otm about his dancing. i still love watching choreo rehearsal footage of MJ. like, there’s hours of Dangerous tour rehearsal but thats more saddo territory lol

i like this Thriller one - https://youtu.be/3Y9jwxE0TJA

born in 83. i was just getting into music right at the moment when MJ and Prince had become kinda outdated -- hip hop totally twisted the world upside-down. vanilla ice & mc hammer, and i remember reading a kris kross interview or something i think where they mentioned liking michael jackson?? but then really the chronic, and finally doggystyle ... snoop dogg was my michael jackson at age ten. MJ and Prince felt like they were from another era, he seemed weird and creepy, and the new or recent music never lived up to the reputation. there was a whole aesthetic shift at that moment. i did like one prince song ('lovesign') but it almost felt like prince doing G Funk! ALso I should mention aside from "Cream" by wu tang which spoke to me as a kid somehow lol I really associated this shift with west coast rap and derivatives like da brat, new york rap got hot again for me as a teenager more, and in the late 90s

obviously loved mj & prince when i got into them as a 'music nerd' in my late teens & of course there were certain songs (thriller) (human nature cuz of the nas sample, lol) that I knew already as part of the ambiance but yeah there was a definite generational shift at one specific moment

oh and i DEFINITELY learned the "whats the difference between neil armstrong and michael jackson? Neil Armstrong WALKED on the moon ... and Michael jackson [child rape joke]" on the playground in like, elementary school. there was always some 'question' about it ... but it was more an aura around it