the sound of music

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the king is dead. long live the king.


the news of the death of michael jackson produced the usual sickening media scrum frenzied for any information or tittle-tattle that might keep their viewers and readers nailed for the foreseeable future while every last insignificant detail is pursued till like michael himself is, limp, lifeless and no longer necessary.


aside from the initial shock at losing one of the most famous and instantly recognisable people on earth, the reporting took sedonds to lapse in to a mawkish, voyeuristic bunfight that kept the rolling news services and a trillion websites going way past the dawn. apart from the omg! factor the one salient point trying to be weedled out of the talking heads was 'what about those allegations?'

those allegations.


michael jackson was one of the most villified people on the planet these last few years, his inability to confirm or deny aspects of his sexuality and personal life led to a huge raft of scurrilous yarns being told and retold with embelishments like chinese whispers till we ended up with what we talked about here on these pages the other week: the gospel truth.


even as his slippers were probably still warm people i know were bombarding facebook with messages along the lines of 'he's a fuckin' peedo, never mind the music'. utterly incredible, a forty year career at the very toppermost of the poppermost tree casually swept aside in order to castigate a dead man for being ambiguous and not like us. siigmund freud said that the adult is a mirror reflection of the child that came before, to that end the unworldly adult that michael jackson was is perfectly understandable, any child that is treated as little more than a performing monkey and brow-beaten for perfection by his own father will no doubt grow to be a little screwed up.

the need to live his lost childhood at any cost has been one opf the key issues the world finds so strange about michael jackson.


in the real world however, i shall remember him as one of the true great, creative artists of the twentieth century. sure, his music's gone off the boil in more recent years, but who can sustain a non-stop hit machine for near five decades and touch gold every time? very few, if any. ostensibly, the music he made when he was still a young black man (by this, i go right up to bad) will stand the test of time and still being blogged and analysed long after us cynical cunts have been worm food for centuries.


many years ago my then girlfriend and i were high as kites on lsd and joanne was having a particularly wobbly time. the great tim o'shea entered the fray clutching a carrier bag of 7" singles, i told him what was happening and without hesitating he produced a copy of 'got to be there' from the bag, placed it on the turntable and turned it up loud. the sweetness and beauty in michael's juvenile voice disarmed a potentially dangerous situation and turned the evening into one of the most lovely i ever spent in my entire life. thanks tim, but foremost, thank you michael. you changed my life. i'll never forget the miracle of that song and that moment. lots of love, from bernie. x


this week: we swapped one rascal for another and caught the final whiff of molly sugden's pussy.


WE WILL NOT SHY AWAY FROM POP MUSIC.

hello hooray.....judy collins.
been caught stealing (12" version).....jane's addiction.
she put the hurt on me.....prince la la.
gigantes.....tortoise
do the standing still.....the table.
sync jam.....levon vincent.
ku klux klan.....steel pulse.
waltz for a pig.....graham bond organisation.
rockchester.....fats comet.
baby what you wabt me to do?.....jimmy reed.
moth.....burial & four tet.
crimson and clover.....tommy james & the shondells.
save ny soul.....wimple winch.
xam.....subway.
cosmic dancer.....t.rex.


rolled into little balls by sir bern, straightened out and given a bloody good looking at by sike kupp-stares.


paul lordan won the quiz. answers next week.