End of the trendsetter

June 26, 2009 saw so many shell shocked fans across the world and British fans especially would be wondering as to their unfulfilled wish of getting to see MJ's farewell concert. I thought I would chip in with some memory recall again and how I got to know MJ's gems, almost one at a time each.

In the late 1990s, it would have been hard for any schoolboy in any remote part of the country with a penchant for current affairs to not be aware of MJ.In the era of DD-1 and DD-2 (only if u have a 50 feet long Antenna and keep adjusting it) the occasional international news and small snippets was the major source of information on MJ.'Bad','Beat it' were some of the earliest ones that I got a sneak preview of.

As someone not acquainted to English music as a school kid, my first encounter with a MJ song on cassette was for academic reasons. 'We are the world' was listed as listening items to do in our class IX English text book. Anne Dorothy ma'm had a tough time in finding the song cassette in the small town Dindigul and in fact, it was my friend Nisthar, a hard core MJ fan,who came to her rescue.The cassette was meant to promote brotherly relations between US and Africa or something on those lines. Nisthar,again wanted me to get him cassettes of album 'Dangerous' when I was going to US in my summer vacation in Class X. Unfortunately, I wasn't focused enough and failed to get even one.

The biggest consignment of MJ songs arrived when I was in BITS, Pilani. The place expanded my musical quotient to include a vast range and the expansion started with the usual Backstreet boys and MJ. I had to cajole mum into getting Rs. 125 every time to get the albums 'Bad' and 'History Part-I'. I used to keep running the cassettes throughout the day. It still were those days where there was no computer in our house. So no wiki, no googling to get more information on the songs. Still, the two cassettes were not an exhaustive collection. Interface 01, management festival and we got to see Rocket and another guy dance for 'Smooth Criminal'. The rocking performance led to a frantic search for the song by guys and through the Arbits club or some way, we got hold of it. Bhavan's nite performance by Udaykanth for the ageless song 'They don't really care about us' got guys on the search for that too. And here came in our whizzkid, computer's all-in-all, limitless library, Eli, who got the whole load of songs on his computer. We got them written to cassette (still mp3 players, ipod were not in) and started running them endlessly.

In between, we also got hang of videos of MJ songs, again from Eli. Black or White, Smooth Criminal, Beat it, Thriller were some of the best music videos I've seen. The coordination, rhythm, passion that MJ alone can bring on screen makes one see them again and again. Even people with two left feet (like me) will feel like shaking a leg for these videos.

The man has been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late. For someone,who made a fortune with his voice earlier, the man died with uncleared debts. He may have done things contrary to what he was preaching through his songs. However, the fact remains that he has stirred creative thoughts in people and has inspired a whole generation of artists.

As we pass through the highway of life, we come across several milestones, signboards, pitstops and motels. We may not remember most of the places where we take a brief stop at. We would pay significant attention to the milestone and remember the content on it, like how far a place is, we may not necessarily remember the milestone physically. However, in the rear mirror of our car, for some distance, we can still look at the milestone for some distance. Why I brought up this was an honest attempt to equate the milestone to the King of Pop and the contents of the stone to be his work. Though, MJ may not be amongst us anymore, he will live through his music. Salute Michael Jackson!!!