I tweet a sizable amount on my Twitter. My twitter is linked to my Facebook. I get admittedly a tad more responses there than anywhere as much as I loathe facebook.

Anyway. With the passing of Michael Jackson just 3 days before my birthday on June 25th. This left me feeling in somewhat of a funk. I was involved in other birthday plans, but his death did overshadow that.

Now I don't allow just anyone on my facebook. That's mostly a place for people who actually know my real name. This is not my myspace so debates on this microcosm of the cyber-verse become ignored. Personally I would rather they were had on the newly reformatted and wicked cool new Dark Forums but I digress.

Michael Jackson is the "King of Pop". Not that I'm a big fan of pop music, I can't deny the amazing talent, innovator and achiever he was. I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret. In another life, I was a Michael Jackson Impersonator.
I think by now, and it will eventually get out anyway, I admired who he was. I learned the music industry by living it through him. I found out how shady media and radio industry representatives can be and I learned how manic fans are. I lived parts of the life and tasted a little of what it would be like. Women threw themselves at me, men started fights with me. I began to understand a side of humanity that just not many see.

The debates have sparked a lot of great responses and thoughts to the passing of MJJ. I'm going to drag over a few of the more profound paragraphs I thought I should share in response to many of the opinions on Michael from the alleged pedophilia to his bizarre nature.Here are some points I'd like to share:

On the subject of Michael Jackson's alleged pedophilia:

It all started with this tweet (and I'm not reproducing every reply):

If people are gonna hate Michael Jackson during the worlds loss, at least do it for legit reasons he was CONVICTED for. Oh wait, he WASN'T!

Re: On being seen holding hands with children on TV.

He didn't hold them like a boyfriend. He held them with the same love a man who was robbed of his childhood and at some point, he snapped. He looked at the world through the eyes of Peter Pan and thought of love as a great best friendship. In some ways, I wish we could all do that. Instead, we put sexual tension and pressures on people, stripping ... the innocence from friendship. This sexual charging leads to the great debate over why women and men have it so hard to just be friends without the sexuality. In that way, I sometimes wish I was MJJ if nothing but to feel what it feels like to not have the stress and pressure of adult relations be no matter between whom.

The people that let their kids hang with MJ were purely opportunists as Heather said. Just like that Law & Order episode They took advantage of a man who was pretty much akin to an autistic. A genius in the music and performance department, yet a sheltered child in the social graces department.

Searching youtube for EVIL I came across this:

Oddly, as I watched it, I noticed...

...Bjork reminds me quite a bit of a modern day Eartha from this video.

Here: See what I'm talking about. Note the odd similarities and silliness.

You be the judge.

I think I've solved the worlds musical problems. Let's break it down.

Now I'm not saying that because I'm older and I like music from another time. I say this with an open mind. "Today's... music... sucks. "

It's been this way for about 10 years. Cookie cutter bands playing the same 4 chords, lackluster lyrics with no real story or message, mediocre vocal abilities and over production to compensate for under delivering music of substance leading us to this cesspool of songs filled with used riffs from classic songs resamples and reshuffled into a soured sonic salad.

There.

I said it.

I'll say it again.

"Today's music sucks."

Oddly I'm finding that more and more younger generations are rifling into the libraries of the past if not to find some older songs old hook to sample or just for something different from a time when music was better.

More of today's youth list "70's classic rock", "80's music", "new wave" or "old skool" in their profiles on popular sites like myspace, friendster and facebook. Go deeper and you'll see them listing and the influences even heavier at places like Gothopia, Sinisterspace, VampireFreaks Darkstarlings and Findagoth and you'll see the trends are leaning even more to the past in the underground world of music.

Face it, people are sick of today's music. We have been picking our idols from reality shows where basically we're voting from whatever there is available thrown into the mainstream. This is how we get stuck with more mediocre talent.

I've talked to younger age groups and they're all doing the same thing. They're discovering older music. The club DJ's are spinner classics more than the new. There are still people requesting older songs and even some of the newer albeit rare number of bands are being heralded for their throwback sound.

Here's where the problem lies. The older bands no longer have it in them to produce the hits they had before hand. They can't recreate the sound of their heyday. They actually lose it with age. The newer bands haven't got it either because they didn't live in those times so they don't know what it was like to go to a concert and have that "religious experience" at a show.

Then you have the lost generations: MTV Gen/Gen X and Gen Y. These were the generations that lived possibly the coolest era of modern music. Notice that nothing today is any newer than it was. We as an entertainment culture, have stagnated. These generations did exactly what today's generations are doing today only they did it better and with more irreverence than our tamer, more subdued successors.
These older generations are the ones that refuse to grow old and die off. The young at heart. Different from the aging hippie, they are the ones that can still hang out in a mosh pit, understand how to dress with flair without looking ridiculous and can actually afford cooler gear. They could be corporate weekend warriors who still play in grunge bands and bungee jump or they could also can be bartenders like Evel Dick from Big Brother 8.

Personally, I feel the solution is this:
Get a fusion of today's youth and desire for change, then dig up the old fossils of those who probably wrote good music but were told that they were too old to keep the "pipe dream" that is a rock and roll star and put them together. We can blame the industry for this. They set the trends without consulting us. Fortunately those trends are dying. People getting record contracts are getting older and older simply because the youth pool doesn't have enough to carry it. There are no more musical demi-gods and those that were are pushing 40, 50 and 60.

Do you know what the end result is if this fusion were to be successful? Well, whatever music mogul put this into fruition would be heralded as a hero, for you'd gain the largest cross generation demographic since Michael Jackson's Thriller. Imagine, people from 14 to 45 all being buying the same music. Imagine the volume of sales, the buzz, the ticket sales for concerts... Hey you, Mr. V.P. Artist Development, and you to Mr. A&R representative.... WAKE UP AND SEIZE THE REVOLUTION!

Good music doesn't really know an age nor does it need too... It just needs to be good again.

Yes, my friends... if you're a fan of Michael Jackson, independently wealthy and haven't already collected everything he's already done before becoming disgusted in his current career and life choices... You can plunk $315.00 bucks on this.

Enjoy!

"Waiter! There's a christian in my rock!"

In the Dark Forums, a post is there about christian rock.

As reported by the NY Post, Christian rock is infiltrating main stream rock. I feel that sneaking in god rock into modern music is dirty pool and goes against both christian and rocker credos. This may sound a little silly, but lets face it, rock has always been the bad boy of music. No matter what, most "spiritual" rock songs are either hypocritical or laughable. Most of
the better ones are rooted deeply in R&B or country, not rock and roll. Rock has softened since "sex drugs and rock and roll" fell off the lips of the rock icons. Seemingly only the "drugs" part fell off.

As the forum post progressed, you'll notice that the question arose of "why can't christians like rock?". Now I didn't say they couldn't. I said that christian rockers should sing christian rock and those hiding it in mainstream rock are literally dancing with the devil for as we all know, rock has always been "the devils music". It's sinful, debaucherous and dirty. It's sexy, laced with leather and steel, angry and powerful. Pop is just so on the fence it doesn't even really count. A pop song may be all bubblegum and fluff, but rarely is it thought provoking nor god based, especially in relation to R&B. When pop sings of god, it's never anything but fluffy. There's no grit, no realism and definately no relation to life today. It's one thing to sing of hope eternal but saying that prayer alone will change the wold is ludacris.

Here's a question I want to pose to those people out there that consider themselves, christian and rockers in the same breath:

Name five of your all time favourite rock/alternative songs and list them here. No Country or R&B because it has Gospel/Baptist roots. No pop because ... Well... Pop music is non music. It's the grey area between good music and bad.

After you've listed them, we'll talk about how "christian" your choices are. Then again, after you list them, you may find that they just aren't christian at all and you may shy away in heathenistic shame.

Songs listed for the hell of it because you KNOW they are christian may be disqualified like Evanescense, Creed and Stryper. I want you most favourite songs that you feel you relate to.

(the extended entry below is the NY Post article (in case a form issue arises)

Rockstar Supernova recap

Lukas Rossi

No way was I nor the audience expecting this show to end up this way as Rockstar:Supernova chose Supernovas lead singer.

It started with the bottom 4 of Magni, Toby, Dilana and Lukas.

Now when they chose the bottom three and Dilana was the only one left sitting, everyone pretty much thought she was in control and had pulled it off.

It's amazing what changes are happening in todays world. I've been trying to figure out for the longest, just who is the oldest person to get a recording contract. You see, in the music industry, the younder you were, the better it was. If you weren't signed by 25 you were a has-been. Then the number stretched to 30. Allot of artists actually lied about their ages for the most part. No one could think of an artists STARTING a musical career in their late 30's or early 40's and that still rings true today...or at least it did.

It seems that's starting to change. Take Dan Powter. Nearing what most call "middle age" this man at 34 got signed to Warner Brothers Records. Now at 35, he's having great success with the American Idol "dammit, I got voted off" theme song, "Bad Day". This is his first release and recording contract. Technically, he's a complete newbie.

I like PInk... to a degree. She's got brass ones. When she decided to get the former writer/lead singer from Four Non Blondes to write her last album, the sound was better than that bubblegum crap she started with. I saw the new video for "Stupid Girl" at her site's home page and found the sound returned to the bubblegum pop tone. Perhaps she's attempting to sway the devolved mind into making some sense.

However, "Stupid Girl" actually has a few valid points about the materialistic society that is today's modern millenial mentality. Women have objectified themselves and painted themselves into worse stereotypes than ever.

So according to the following article from the New York Daily News , Pink is now attempting in her own way to be the Tony Robbins of the music industry. Whether she can pull it off is one thing. Whether the public will take her seriously and accept her newfound penchant for preaching is another.

I'll give it to her...it takes allot of moxy to re-invent yourself as a preachy authority...but that didn't work for Tom Cruise now, did it?

Saving the world musically is NOT an easy task and it won't happen for everyone... but the more musicians that actually make the valiant attmpt...the better. Somewhere, a song will touch the right person and stop them from cutting, from blowing up classrooms or shooting their classmates or doing drugs or committing crimes... Who wouldn't want to know that their song stopped someone from an assassination attempt? Or even if you knew your song just stopped one person from committing suicide...or better yet... a suicide bombing? Wouldn't that just make it all worth it? Who wouldn't want to know that their music unified a movement and created something great?

The extended entry below is just a reprint of Jim Farbers article if the link suddenly goes dead one day.

I would never have thought that anything like this existed... nor could I imagine the band that uses them... But I'm a guy, so I never got the whole "hello kitty" thing.

Ok... First, click on the link, read the rest in the extended entry and you'll see why I'm ranting below. Then when your blood boils, we'll discuss it at the end.

From the
New York Daily News Article
Full article in Extended Entries

Are you reading yet? Don't come back here until you've read the article.

Done? Good... now let's all rant like rabid dogs together:

This is SO wrong in so MANY ways. What the Hell happened to "ROCK AND ROLL"? When did it become pansy Pat Boone shit? Rock used to stand for rebellion...for defiance... for freedom of expression. Later, they added sex and drugs... then the drugs got sucked out of the equation.

No wonder Europe has better rock than we do. The religious right government is screwing with our cajones. God damned Conservatives shove religion down our throats like it's bad tasting medicine. Now it's leaked over to music.

Hmmmm... Here's a good plan Take two little blonde haired blue eyed girls. Give them cutesy singer names: Lamb and Lynx. Market them like singing Olsen twins. Get them a record deal. Give them a website. Market the DVD. Have them sing hate filled white supremacist songs and opine over the death of Hitler. What a great i.....*
WAITAMINUTE!!! Have them sing WHAT?!?!?

Well.. It seems the truth always comes to bite the industry in the ass... More on the Sony/BMG payola scam continues. It makes me wonder, if after I sign...will I get a fair shake?

Read all about it in the extended entry.

Well...what can you do. It seems I can never pick a winner. I rooted for Bo Bice to win American Idol. He lost. Now my streak of picking the second place guy continues. Y'know... you don't win the Silver, you lose Gold. This time it's Marty.

Now I started rooting for Marty after Ty was booted and now HE has lost. I just can't pick 'em. Marty losing may not much matter. He's better off with his own creative freedom. INXS told him they wanted to talk to him about opening for them when they tour with the winner.

Oh yea...the winner you ask?

Have you ever gotten one of those wierd musical cravings? Lately, I've been fighting the burning desire to buy a best of Violent Femmes. I don't know why... I just want to own some. They had great songs that were fun and odd... But I can't believe in all my years as an alternative/new wave DJ, I never bought any. Go figure. Mental note: Go get some.

Sony fined

Gee... Like it hadn't been done before. It makes you wonder who was complaining so much that they could get Sony whacked $10 Million for payola to radio stations. Like this is a new practice?

Now we see why the music industry has nothing to offer. How many great bands could have been shot up the media ladder had their deserved airtime parking spots NOT been taken by mediocre groups being pushed by big companies?

We always understood that radio and music television is nothing but a big commercial for their products to be purchased (not stolen via illegal download), but the fairness is lost with this tactic. It's deplorable.

Sure, I admit, I'd probably want my music promoted with lot's of zeal and effort on the part of my label, but I don't want to think I was force feeding crap to the masses if my music wasn't really good enough. There are far too many "Johnny Bravos" out there simply fitting into the suit that you have to sit in disgust over it all. Record companies often fear trying to make trends in big leaps over fear of financial loss.

There have been so few avante guard acts with even the slightest bit of airplay. Record companies think that we must stay as cattle and just deal with what they churn out over and over...

When I think about the last 30 years of music, I try to list those groups that changed the face of music. Unfortunately, not all got super group status.

Enigma changed the shape of music when it introduced the world to the ethereal sounds of the Gregorian chant.

Moby confused us with his eclectic electronic sounds that never seemed to keep a constant grasp on a steady concept.

Depeche Mode set the tone for 25 years of new wave/ alternative, yet never took the world by the storm they could have. The same goes for the Cure.

Marilyn Manson became more of a circus act than a musician... especially after he lost Twiggy. Was he setting the groove or like Korn, Limp Bizkit and Linken Park, merely staying in the media trough of cookie cutter edgy rock bands? His hype was more smoke and mirrors than anything else. This labeled him as an oddity.

Prince created the Minneapolis sound. He was an oddity also, yet his consistency was more stable in the icon status. I still say the other Minneapolis bands where more fun. Morris Day and the Time were my favourites. Janet Jackson benefited from their sound with the "Rhythm Nation:1814" album.

Dave Matthews. Not my kind of alternative, yet he did seem to spark a huge following and cross over into pop culture. Sort of a modern day Jimmy Buffett, the following he has is rather Parrot-head like.

I digressed slightly. How many people could have made a greater influence on music if they weren't thrown into the similarity bin and churned out for the purpose of making a payola paid back buck?

It makes no sense to complain. What exactly can we the consumer do? Boycott all together? Stop listening to radio? Stop buying CD's?
I don't think that would work somehow.

Why won't record companies stop spending on payola and fines and put the money into getting us something better to listen to? Take that money and take a chance on someone for once...Oh well...wishful thinking.

Here's the article from Spin magazine on the Sony Payola scam.

I was given a compilation/best of cd the other day. It was a dual disc of sorts. It was somewhat a "best of plus rising stars" pack.

The music varied slighty from song to song. Bright, bubbly in a Hanson sort of way. A few songs were mildy on the hard side. The singers were talented.

Only one problem: the lyrics. It's not the subject matter mind you... It's fact that as you read the lyrics sheet, you'd notice it's the same 10 lines reworked over and over and over and
over and over and over and over and....

Nothing touched on any issues or offered any thought provocation. No philosophy, no comment on the state of the world, not even a reaon to back up the lyrical rhyme... But still, tune after tune, the lyrics were naught but mere empty fluff to repeat the same brain washing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and....

Allow me to give you lyrical examples:

From "Jesus Lover Of My Soul" performed by Kara

"Worship You my Lord
Until the very end
Worship You my Lord
Until the very end
Worship You my Lord
Until the very end

I will worship I will worship
I will worship I will worship
I will worship I will worship
I will worship I will worship"

From : "Let the Praises Ring" Performed by Lincoln Brewster

"O Lord my God in You I put my trust
O Lord my God in You I put my hope
O Lord my God in You I put my trust
O Lord my God in You I put my hope

In You In You I find my peace
In You In You I find my strength
In You I live and move and breathe
Let everything I say and do
Be founded by my faith in You
I lift up holy hands and sing
Let the Praises Ring"

I could go on... But it's the same repetitive sentiment over and over again.

Where's the challenge to the mind? Where is any statement to substantiate the existence of said "Lord"? Where is the lyric that shows how great this god is that waves his merciful hand and creates such glorious miracles like killer tsunamis and mudslides? Where is the lyric that sells this god? Where is the lyric that addresses issues, promotes change in ones self, and convinces us that this faith is sound? Where is the variety of lyric that doesn't merely sound like the same flower drum song but into a blender.

I'm sorry, but "Godspell" and "Jesus Christ: Superstar had far better lyrics.

I was curious. I needed to see what it was all about.... This song genre that is "becoming popular". These "Songs of Worship".

I'm sorry... It just seems like bible thumping, mind programming, propaganda mongering gone bubble gum pop.

The lyrics alone are geared for mindless sheep. I'm sorry, but I prefer creating music for those of us with free will and a thought process.