Michael Jackson's Thriller

One more day until Halloween, and things will go back to normal around here. But not yet! Michael Jackson's Thriller was an event akin to the Super Bowl when it premiered on MTV. Jackson went from being that androgynous guy who sang disco in Off the Wall to a force of nature with Thriller. By the time his "long-form video" (which he also invented) debuted, the album had already been a hit for over a year, with a string of hit songs before it. With the release of the Thriller movie, Jackson's career peaked, and he never really came close to topping it. And he was only 25 years old.
 

Thriller Sequel? Michael Jackson's Ghosts

UPDATE: Unbelieveably, I wrote this post just a few days ago. Given the untimely death of Michael Jackson yesterday, I thought it might be nice to bump this up, as I'm not sure many people are even aware of Ghosts, the short film Jackson made in the mid-90s. Enjoy.

ORIGINAL POST (06/22/09): A friend and former roommate of mine was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, and I got to go have dinner with him at a mutual friend's house. This friend has the nearly unique distinction of having worked at Neverland Valley Ranch for several years, directly for Michael Jackson.

Michael has--fairly or unfairly (or a combination of the two)--gotten a reputation as a weirdo more than he is remembered for being a consummate musician and entertainer. Which is a shame. My friend brought along a video, one I had never seen, that proves this point rather well. After all, this video is well produced and entertaining, right up there with Thriller. It was co-written by Jackson and Stephen King, and has special effects by the late, great Stan Winston. And yet if it was ever released in the US, nobody's ever heard of it.

Particularly interesting in Ghosts is the battle between the protagonist, a rich oddball in a big house, being hounded by the townsfolk for his eccentricities. Add to that the villain--played by. . .well, you figure it out--who is lobbing the sorts of accusations the real Michael has probably heard all too often. Throw in some special effects, and a creepy atmosphere, along with (almost an afterthought) some Jackson music, and this should have been a winner. It's just too bad the video quality of this clip isn't better. Anyway, enjoy.



Michael Jackson - Ghost (full version) @ Yahoo! Video

Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch Faces Foreclosure

Photo from source, Raw Story

Who knew the housing bubble was this bad? Seriously though, this story is particularly sad for me for a couple of reasons. Growing up as I did in the early 1980s, I'm old enough to remember when Thriller came out, and quite literally changed the world of music. I'm also old enough to remember standing in a K-Mart, looking at the LP cover, and feeling vaguely embarrassed. I didn't want anyone to notice I was looking. It was akin to admiring the Osmonds or the Carpenters' new album.

Then Thriller took off, with a huge string of hits, and was largely responsible for putting MTV on the map (along with Duran Duran, Culture Club, Pat Benatar, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, of course). Michael Jackson was almost a deity from late 1982 to some time in 1984. And along about that time, he started getting weird--weirder. All sorts of bizarre rumors, strange behavior, the flaming Pepsi commercial. He didn't get unpopular, exactly, but it wasn't as cool to like him.

Then came Bad, which heralded another wave of Michael love, but in a more contained and more compressed time frame. His eccentricities shone through during they heyday of Bad, so much so that he answered the tabloid stories with an extra cut called Leave Me Alone. The cycle continued with Dangerous, which was also hugely popular (especially Black or White), and the coolness factor was even shorter.

At around this time, a friend of mine who worked for Michael (long story) asked me to come work at Neverland for a famous celebrity's wedding. Being in the area at the time, I jumped at the chance (as did several of my friends). In all, I got to go to the ranch twice, and even tour Michael's house. It was all spectacular, in a simultaneously ostentatious and understated way.

Let me just say that if I had Michael Jackson's fame and fortune back then, I could only have dreamed of creating such a place. It was flat-out amazing. I'd never want to leave. Due to legal documents I signed, I really probably should leave it there, other than to say if you've ever been there, you wouldn't find it crazy. Here in Las Vegas, I've seen some of the "secret rooms" in casinos that they reserve for Arabian Shieks and such--those are crazy. Neverland Valley Ranch was cool.

So, sorry Michael. I'm sorry your dream has come to this. I'll always remember it fondly.

[Excerpt]

Michael Jackson faces forced sale of Neverland

Michael Jackson's famed Neverland Valley Ranch in California will be foreclosed and sold on March 19 unless the pop star pays a balance of nearly $25 million, property records showed on Tuesday. . .

Read more at: Raw Story