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Valerie77.
With Great Power
By Syl Mortilla
I had the dubious honour of being one of the first to write an online magazine review of the now infamous ‘Michael’ album. The honour is, as I say, open to dubiosity, but the repercussions of the article are cause for a great deal of personal pride, being as it was, an inspiration for the people behind the A Truth Untold Kickstarter campaign:
www.kickstarter.com/projects/atruthuntold/a-truth-untold
The review was as one would expect from a diehard Michael Jackson fan: I was as objective as possible (though with hindsight, perhaps too fawning over a couple of the songs – look, I was excited, alright?), and I, of course, exposed the fake Cascio tracks as the fraudulent activity they were, and hence they received their justly-deserved critical complete annihilation, with an accompanying demand that they be immediately scrubbed off the canon that is Michael Jackson’s life-work, and preferably, off the face of the planet.
The official explanation at the time was that the voice didn’t sound like Michael Jackson because he had recorded the tracks singing through a pipe whilst standing in the shower – no, this is not satire, this was the official explanation, which some fans chose to accept – and so I suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that Michael should have maybe not employed this method, as, “it makes him sound much less like he had one of the richest and most soulful singing voices of all time, a voice nurtured and trained since childhood, and more like he’s doing spontaneous, drunken, self-parodying, angry spastic karaoke.”
On the other hand, Estate-pal Joe Vogel, described the tracks as sounding like, “indubitably genuine and orgasmic out-takes from the Dangerous and HIStory sessions”. I paraphrase; but you get the picture.
As part of my review, I mentioned an old game show called You Bet, in which members of the public came on and undertook specific skills to showcase their esoteric talents. One such undertaking was a man who had to name Michael Jackson songs after hearing less than a second of the music. I half-jokingly noted in the review, in support of my credibility as an expert on Michael Jackson’s voice, that I remembered considering the contestant to be quite slow.
The point is, don’t try to deceive Michael Jackson fans. We are an army, and you will fail. In the ongoing Vanity Fair ‘Cover of the Century’ poll ( www.vanityfair.com/100-years-of-vanity-fair/covers )
, Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame had started proceedings with a somewhat suspicious forty-thousand lead head start. Nevertheless, and never ones to relinquish a challenge, the Voice As One campaign group, amongst others, proceeded to promote the poll and make up the difference in votes. We did it. And then, strangely enough, as soon as Michael was in the lead, he became impossible to vote for, whereas Pattinson’s votes continued to be accepted. Let’s hope, for their sakes, Vanity Fair take heed of our ongoing protests and complaints, and manage to quickly rectify this apparent glitch.
(In the meantime, one Voice As One member appears to have found a way of overcoming the voting difficulty: “Go to the page, click ‘vote’ as normal.
Go away from the page but DO NOT CLOSE the window, open another tab instead. Return to the page, and check. You may have an error message, it may have done nothing at all. If there is an error message, click to remove, then repeat the process above, if nothing, click vote again and repeat the process. It may take some time, but it WILL work after a few tries at this.”)
Michael always said it was his stature that made him such an easy target for the sheer volume and size of rocks that were thrown at him. This continues, of course. They will never let him rest in peace, which is why the fan community is so important. He rescued so many of our childhoods, and it’s our duty to protect and defend him in his death.
Michael fully assumed this stature and the associated responsibilities that come with being the most famous man in the world; using songs such as Black Or White and Heal The World as conduits to convey his message of peace. As a spiritual man, Michael used the onset of vitiligo to his advantage, he took it as an instruction from the divine that he must traverse ethnicity and spread his ethos to a wider audience. If bullied or undermined, Michael reacted by making things bigger and more obvious – the white socks, the hair, the association with children, the HIStory statue. His mystery constantly tested perceptions and preconceptions, but when forced to be, he was explicit in his own defence, “Don’t treat me like a criminal, because I am not.” He dared you to accept him, whatever he looked like – the exponential translucency of his skin eventually assisting his transcendence into legend. Yet he left a most concrete and real legacy of goodwill behind him, as evidenced by the Liberia Everland Children’s Home project (www.michaeljacksonslegacy.org). It is projects like these that make me most proud to be a Michael Jackson fan.
Michael understood jealousy as the root of all evil; that there is a plethora of truly sad and ruthless people in existence, who simply cannot stand to see success for other people, and will do anything to bring them down. It is these people that lend the inherent irony to the word ‘success’. Success, sadly, brings its own baggage. The man experienced so much vitriol and underhanded attempts to bring him down, after all his attempts to help heal the world, so who can deny him outbursts of rage such as the Ghosts film? Yet, even this was a studied anger. People have been singing the praises of the recently leaked Buenos Aires Dangerous concert, due to it being atypical; but am I the only one to see that that was an extraordinarily angry man on stage? A man, dealing with child molestation allegations behind the scenes, allegations specifically tailored to cut him to the core, a man who was having to take extended breaks between songs, even exiting the stage during some songs, in order to take oxygen? But that was as close as Michael could get to expressing rage on stage, whilst remaining professional; without basically getting up there and telling everyone he really had had enough. Good people that work hard are entitled to achieve their potential, without having to contend with the negating forces of lazy cynicism and pessimism. At least, that is, in Michael’s world.
The mission statement of the Voice As One campaign group (www.facebook.com/groups/voiceasone) is this:
“Our group was created to quickly organise and rally Michael Jackson fans for protest in the all-too prevalent occurrences of defamatory media against him. We are united in our stance against the slander of Michael Jackson, and in our steadfast belief in his innocence and intention to help heal the world; this unity disregards any other differences the Michael Jackson fan family may have, so feel free to have an opinion and discuss.”
I get chastised sometimes for my militant take on the Cascio fiasco and subsequent anti-Estate stance. It is something I am vehemently passionate about, and at times enrages me, as I see that whole debacle as a distillation of the attempted undermining of Michael’s legacy. The fact that they had the audacity to attempt to replicate Michael’s voice using an imposter simply dumbfounds me. But I’d also just like to reiterate that at my core, my personal belief is as outlined in the Voice As One mission statement above: that our community is a family, and that’s where we have strength. We are Michael Jackson fans, and we want the world as Michael Jackson saw it. There are millions of us. And we are here to change the world.
But we all know what families are like.
http://sylmortilla.com/2013/11/14/with-great-power/
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Edited by ArcoIris - 24/4/2018, 03:00
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Con Grande Forza- by Syl Mortilla |
