The King Of Pop
This was pretty fucking hard.
Doing justice to an icon like Michael Jackson is a pretty damn tall
order. Upon hearing the news, I was shocked. Memories of growing up
in an immigrant household came flooding back--my entire extended
family, 3 generations worth, huddled around a TV watching MJ perform
live, all of us in awe. (I looked it up... viva la youtube, my memory
was of MJ's 1988 Grammies performance).
So as a DJ, of course it's only fitting that I'd retreat to my stacks
of records as a shelter from the onslaught of news coverage. And man.
It was hard. Really, really hard. The man's career spanned over
three decades. His music (and his countenance) morphed and evolved
over time to suit the times. And listening back to his material,
there's a lot of really good stuff. A LOT. More than anything, the
challenge for me was putting together a "complete" tribute.. but it's
effectively impossible. The best tribute to MJ is to just buy a
complete anthology and have it for reference.
What this mix represents is just simply what are my personal
favorites. I tried to reach for across the eras as best I could, but
generally stuck to what I felt most popular and notable. I went
through 4 or 5 versions of this mix, not quite feeling any of them
perfectly captured what I wanted---but it finally dawned on me that
likely nothing ever would. This is just the first one I grabbed to
convert to mp3.
Hope you all enjoy. And uh, for the occasion I even dusted some of my
old, actual vinyl records to make this mix. Too bad one of my doubles
of Billie Jean has a nasty gash in it that I didn't know about until I
was recording this mix. :(
RIP MJ, we'll miss you. Until then, we'll all have one hand in the
air and the other grabbing our crotches in your honor.
PS for those of you who know me, contact me if you'd like a high
bitrate version of this on mp3 instead of the lower fidelity one
uploaded.
