Living Off The Wall

The reporting of Michael Jackson's death was a remarkable example of how the internet has totally changed the rules of such reporting. I learned of it through the "feeds", one of them from the site that actually broke the news - the celebrity website tmz.com. By itself this was remarkable. It was not an established news service that made the announcement but a celebrity site. Despite the fact that the likes of the BBC and the "LA Times" had yet to confirm the death, the TMZ statement was good enough; it is a reliable source. I twittered the news and put the note on the blog before those other confirmations came through. Very small contributions but indicative of how established news and media have been partially undermined by the web; there would have been thousands perhaps millions who had done the same. Internet rumour there can often be, but this was internet fact.

The subsequent coverage that I listened into - on Five Live - was extraordinary in different ways. Though it was getting late, it was a story that was unfolding in real time. It reminded me, albeit that it was very different, to television reporting of Scud attacks on Israel during the first Gulf War. Somehow you just couldn't go to bed. Why was Jackson's death so gripping? Personally, it was and is not something that affects me particularly. Yet, it is probably reasonable to place it alongside the shocks of other famous deaths - Elvis, Lennon, Diana. Lennon's murder did affect me, partly because it was an unnatural death, but also because I grew up with him and his music; he was also British. Diana was even more of a shock, but it took a girlfriend to explain the depth of that shock - she had grown up with Diana. (I'd add that John Peel's death was more personal than most, but he wasn't in the same celebrity league.)

Jackson's death was gripping because, yes, he was a staggeringly good artist, but he was also staggeringly peculiar. His story was destined to be terminated by an early death. How else could it have ended - from the image of the young Michael of "ABC" to his emergence as a solo performer and the dancing in the record store in Leicester Square where I worked and where we used to play "Off The Wall", to the almost single-handed creation of MTV, the acceptance of black artists and the sheer brilliance of "Billie Jean", to the morphing into an androgynous, non-specific species and then to the tragedy of the molestation charges and a career seemingly in ruins.

I asked some people yesterday, why are there no Michael Jackson tributes playing the hotels and entertainment bars of Alcúdia? His oeuvre is so extensive, so well-known that he would fit the bill as a recognisable tribute. But the Elvises, the Abbas and all the rest are easy. Jackson would not be. How could any tribute transform himself from young black boy to something from a wax museum freak show without being hugely tasteless? How could anyone dance quite like that? There will doubtless now be those who attempt it, and it will almost certainly be wrong - and BAD. There is a "Thriller" opening in London soon, but the sheer difficulty of being a tribute act for Michael Jackson probably says much about him as an artist and as a person. There was no-one quite like him.

(There is in fact a Jackson 5 doing the rounds; you can catch them down The Mile now and then; maybe they're now the Jackson 4. And last night Jacksonmania had taken hold, well slight exaggeration, around The Mile; Las Vegas was Jackson, Jackson, Jackson, but next door Vamps had declared a Michael Jackson-free zone.)


Victoria's Animal Refuge Charity Day
Today there is a worthy cause to support, the Victoria's Animal Refuge in Alcúdia. The annual charity day that takes place on the Little Britain supermarket terrace between 10.30 and 2.30 aims to raise money for items such as splash pools to keep the dogs cool in the summer heat. If you had not seen it earlier, there is more information to be found on the WHAT'S ON BLOG - http://www.wotzupnorth.blogspot.com.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - David Bowie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGo9KkZea_s.

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