Music Monday #7

You know what this one is going to be about. Michael Jackson. Who else, right? I have to admit, I lost a lot, maybe all, respect for him when the whole child molestation scandals came about. I don't know if they were true or not. I hope not, for the children's sakes. Although, even if he was innocent his behavior, at the very least, was wildly inappropriate. I think he was a very confused, tragic man. But before all that, back in the day, I was all about Michael Jackson. It was sad really.

Picture it. It was 1987, I was 8 years old. I had the Michael Jackson doll, the fake rhinestone glove, a bright yellow tee-shirt with the Thriller album cover on it, and down in our recroom I was dancing my heart out, trying to do the Moonwalk and grabbing my crotch, to the latest hit - Bad. Michael was my man, we were going to be BFFs when I grew up. Oh yeah.

The YouTube embedding is disabled for most of MJ's (yes, he let's me call him MJ) videos. And I can't just post the song-a lot of the fascination with MJ is over his unique brand of dance.

So click HERE to watch the Bad video. Oh man, check out that choreography! "Ohhhhh!"

And I can't have a Michael Jackson Music Monday without sharing what is probably my all time favorite Michael Jackson song, Smooth Criminal (followed closely by Billie Jean). Click HERE to watch/hear it. "Annie are you okay? Annie are you okay? Are you okay Annie?"

And of course I must share my own Michael Jackson story. As I said before, I thought Michael Jackson and I would one day be best friends. But alas, our paths were never destined to cross.

As a little girl I had the privilege of going to a Michael Jackson concert with my mom. We were only about 12 to 15 rows back, center stage and the last 4 seats in our row were vacant so we had plenty of room to move around and dance. As I was standing to the outside, along the aisle, I noticed a big, burly usher-lady stomping up and down the aisle, trailing a child or two now and again. At one point she stopped, pointed at me and said in a rather unfriendly tone "I'm coming for you next." My mother missed this exchange. I, not knowing what was going on, thought "Oh no you're not" and I promptly changed places with my mother. I hid behind her as the scary usher-lady continued her laps, gathering up less cautious children, who were clearly less educated than I about stranger danger. :)

Not much later, after Michael Jackson had pointed out that Linda Carter (Wonder Woman) was in the audience and everyone gave her a round of applause, I realized what was really going on with the big-bad-usher. MJ started up a new song and low and behold, here came the children onto the stage. The usher had been rounding up kids so they could get up on stage and dance with Michael for a minute or two!! There were about 20 of them up there, dancing their hearts out as Michael sang his heart out. AYE CARUMBA! If only I had known. :( I'm over it now, but it was more than a little disappointing that night, LOL. Over the years I have consoled myself with the fact that he didn't interact with them... :)

That's it for this Music Monday. If you'd like to play along you can read the guidelines HERE.