Anyone else bored of the Michael Jackson media circus? No? Over a million of you are so completely enamoured by it, that you want to spend just over an hour in a warehouse with him. Well, good luck to you.
50 dates for the crumpled 50 year old plastic man who looks a little like Michael Jackson used to. AEG Live (the promoters of the O2 gigs) must be spewing into their jackboots watching the frenzy of cash roll in. Christ, if you thought Whacko Jacko was disturbed before, 50 dates performing in front of 20,000 people nightly should just about see him off completely! Let’s see this gibbering music icon reduced from gibbering wreck to gelatinous mess. LIVE!
OK -- so you’ve paid your £75, or your £8,500 to see him. You’re going to live or relive the dream. You’re set to wallow neck-deep in nostalgia and watch MJ moonwalk. Brilliant. I’m excited for you -- but not as excited as you. I didn’t buy a ticket, didn’t even try to buy a ticket. “Yaaah, booo -- you miserable twat!”
Yeah.
I was a Michael Jackson fan once, probably a bit like you. I had the albums (‘Thriller’ was my era), the biography and even a Michael Jackson mirror. Whenever a good Jackson song is played (up to and including anything off the album ‘Bad’), and if I’m drunk in public, I’ll pull out a move or two, spectacularly failing to emulate any of the moves I learnt from hours spent watching videos as a kid. He’s had a legendary career and brought happiness to millions of homes and people the world over but, as we all know, it went deeply wrong.
Forget the child abuse claims (you seem to have done that anyway), forget the ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Invincible’ albums, forget the dodgy stories of him sleeping in an oxygen chamber and forget that he bought The Beatles’ back-catalogue when Paul McCartney was bidding for them too.
What you should never forgot is his hideous performance at the Brits in 1996. It’s simultaneously Jackson’s worst moment on stage (including that time when he got burnt alive) and Jarvis Cocker’s finest.
You’re going to see more of this at the O2, so you’re an idiot for going. You’re off to watch an overblown show with your heart plastered in a cast of the past. For such an expansive career you get 16 tracks, and one of them’s the ‘Heal the world’.
It’s a total car-crash of a concert: a megastar version of Big Brother. How long before we see the inevitable breakdown? How many dates will be cancelled? How many destructive rumours in the red-tops while he’s here?
There is no way -- no way on earth - that this series of dates is going without a hitch. For those of you who give a shit about salving just one iota of Jackson’s career, don’t go: just remember.
No?
Well, farewell then, Michael Jackson.
That alleged set-list in full.
1) Billie Jean
2) Wanna Be Startin’ Something
3) Rock With You
4) The Way You Make Me Feel
5) Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough
6) I Just Can’t Stop Loving You
7) Human Nature
8 ) Smooth Criminal
9) Girlfriend
10) Man in the Mirror
11) Beat It
12) One Day in Your Life
13) Heal the World
14) You Are Not Alone
15) Remember The Times
16) Thriller
God bless Jarvis.
yes, in order to remind the public of Michael Jackson’s former glory, American Idol’s first exercise for the kids was to have them cover MJ songs on this past Tuesday’s episode.
It was mostly torturous.
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