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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Living crazy, that's the only way!

I know everyone is tired of hearing about Michael Jackson, well, I am not! I didn't start my love affair with Mike until a couple of years ago.

I didn't like him growing up, my parents weren't into him, and I was just a little too young to get into the hype. I do remember seeing him on television from time to time. It was Rob who got me into Mike, Rob still has the Thriller vinyl he listened to as a kid. The first album that got me is Off the Wall. It's the perfect culmination of Motown, disco, and everything that the eighties held for Michael, and for music. The production is immaculate, you can't find that anymore. It has real instruments layered together perfectly. Pop music today is made with a workstation!

It kind of breaks my heart to see so many people tire of hearing about him. I feel like people are missing the point. When he died most of the internet slowed to a halt. Millions of people googled him at once, AOL instant messenger crashed for 45 minutes, Wikipedia, Twitter, TMZ, Facebook all experienced problems with crashing. His music took over the top 20 spots on Amazon.com and itunes. The video for Thriler alone has over 40 million hits on youtube. All of his other videos come in around 20 million views.

Enormous pressure is being placed on CD manufacturing plants in various countries as Jackson's work goes back into full scale production to meet the popularity! I saw R5 Records, where Rob works, on the news yesterday. Huge vigils are being held around the world, with people buying his records up all over the world!

The reason this is important to me is because you won't see this again. I strongly doubt that anyone will ever outsell Mike. The music industry has change, so has pop music. The emphasis on albums has been replaced by itunes singles, musicianship replaced with workstations, and vocal skill replaced with auto-tune. Thriller became the best selling record of all time a little over a year after it's release. 7 out of 9 songs became singles! He wanted every song to sound like a single, to be strong enough to stand on it's own.

Monday, June 8, 2009

the annunciation


Come to my art show and see all of the new paintings I have been working on. It's going to be a tribute to all of my favorite queens and queen consorts. Among the lucky; Marie de' Medici, Catherine of Aragon, Elizabeth I and Mary I, and last but not least, Mary Queen of Scots. Also, I have been working on my own illuminated manuscript. Come check it out June 13th from 6:00pm-8:00pm at the Javalounge, due to unforseen circumstances my art will only be up for about a week and a half. Preview photos coming soon!