Hellooo!

I absolutely hate delivering a late blog entry…it makes me angry! Still – I had quite a good excuse not to have been slogging over the Bberry or laptop, eyes glazed over and fingers bent…I also managed to go ginger somewhere in there as well:

I had my prom, when I should have been thinking about this very blog (Tuesday night). I had always imagined feeling like Cinderella on my prom night – rising up from the aesthetic mediocrity of not straightening my hair for weeks on end, not wearing any make-up and sitting around watching ‘The Hills’ in a tracksuit which looks like a Juicy second. Then – suddenly – the exams were over, and it was time to start thinking about looking nice – an alien concept after weeks of nighttime revision with Lucozade and Brickbreaker as my only friends…

An LBD was the order of the day, as were NBHs and an SGB. Make of that what you will – in other words, I dressed up, and then danced so much that my feet will surely never forgive me…

Anyhow, this blog isn’t all about me; in fact, this month it is about someone much more interesting: Michael Jackson. I was watching BBC 3 last Thursday night when the 60 Second News announced that he had been taken ill with a heart attack. Then, I went to check Facebook a few minutes later, and the story had exploded like a popular culture atom bomb all over the usually mundane midweek updates of “I need a fag” or “tonight was so much fun” etc etc. The word on everyone’s status was Jackson, soon followed by “dead”.

But was he dead? Was he actually dead or were these just vicious rumours. For someone whose life had been shrouded in mystery the clear cut accuracy of “Michael Jackson is dead” scrolling across the screen of Sky News did not quite fit. Neither did the Twitter tributes pouring in from @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) and @mileycyrus (errrm, Miley Cyrus). He was a little boy had never quite grown up, and who was the epitomy of a child star gone wrong. Whilst I was a great fan of his music – tunes such as ‘Beat It’, ‘Thriller’ and S’mooth Criminal’ are truly timeless – his life was some kind of candycane sugar-topped Disneyland JM Barrie adventure with a distinctly bitter aftertaste.

Here he was, in the early days of change…

But, before long, Michael Jackson was truly unrecognisable as the baby-faced boy who had charmed with the Jackson 5 (see below).

In life he was surrounded by scandal and allegation, not least those that he was a dangerous paedophile who had built his Neverland ranch to abuse young children. However, it was his physical appearance which fans such as myself had often wondered about? Did Jackson’s bitter memories of his family, and his early years spent as part of the band in a ‘travelling circus’ style, force him to shed his ‘black’ appearance for a new ‘white’ one, or was his obvious transformation one which happened because of a skin disease or even skin cancer as had been rumoured? We may never know now, but we are left which the legacy of his music and an exciting possibility to hear previously unreleased tracks which he recorded prior to his death, in order to provide a future for his children posthumously. A tragedy has occured in the world of music, but I for one think Michael Jackson has bowed out with some dignity intact and that, left any later, his death may have occured in worse circumstances.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Golden Oldies Glistening at Glastonbury

I wasn’t down in Somerset, but I know quite a few people who were rocking out at NERD, Lily Allen and errrm Bruce Springsteen. Now, neither they nor I were born in the USA, nor were we born to run, nor were even born, when Bruce was in his prime. But – for them watching him there in Somerset, and me watching here at home on the BBC – was an eyeopening experience.  Here was a star from another generation – a generation of rock n’roll, peace and love and Gardener’s Question Time – showing ‘young’uns’ how to have a good time. He even went over his set, still full of energy and vigour, crowd-surfing and slapping hands as he went like a mahoghany cowboy. Think what you might about the oldie crowd dominating modern music festivals, but stars like Springsteen sure know how to get things going (his foray into overtime ended with a fine which was – rather ironically – paid off by the festival’s organizer, Michael Eavis, who had enjoyed the set).

Also performing were Crosby, Stills and Nash (the beardy guys with the funky pagan logos methinks) and Neil ‘not-so-Young-but-very-talented’ Young.

Liking:

– Beautifully hot weather

– Beautiful sunshine

– Creepy criminality courtesy of the Crime & Investigation Network

Not liking:

– Stupid spammy @ replies clogging up Twitter thanks to Tweet Bots. Who thought up these literal, disasterous things?

– The NHS. Swine Flu is clogging up our clinics like the Ho Chi Minh trail.

That’s enough I think, I wouldn’t like to squeeze anymore Springsteen puns into this post…

x x x x