Well the media is going to run with this story for the next 2 months if not more but I couldn’t pass over the event that happened today and not make a comment of my own.
Over the years as a DJ I played a lot of music, but there has never been an artist that offered so much music to play.
In 1982 I was working as a salesperson at Vibrations Records in North Miami Beach, a popular local record store and head shop, when I recall 1 in every 3 people walking in to the store to purchase a copy of Thriller. We were selling hundreds of copies of that album a day, the 2nd most popular album was INXS’s “Shabooh Shabah”.
When I played in the disco at the Turnberry Isle Yacht & Racket Club in North Miami Beach, Joe Jackson’s (Michael’s dad) yacht was often parked just outside the windows of the club and his sisters, along with Joe, were often there partying the night away.
When I spun at Penrod’s on the Beach in Ft. Lauderdale during spring break the Off the Wall and Thriller albums had so many cuts that we kept 2 copies of each in the DJ booth at any given time. It’s almost a cardinal sin to play 2 songs back to back from the same artist but because of the popularity of this man and his music it was not uncommon to live re-mix Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough or mix from Don’t Stop into Wanna Be Starting Something and live re-mix that (looping the intro of Wanna Be was an art and it drove the crowd nuts).
Like Madonna, there came a point where the music no longer had the same magic and I played less and less of his music (and Madonna’s as well) but the reality is that MJ was a superstar, a GLOBAL Superstar, something that has never been seen and likely never will be.
I know that this little blog has little impact in the global blog-o-sphere but I felt it was important to give a shout out for what Michael Jackson did to influence me in my DJ career.
Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)
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