News Roundup: 6/30/2009
June 30th, 2009 | 3:55 pm est |
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The weekend after Michael Jackson’s death saw the King of Pop take over the Billboard charts. Though the numbers aren’t final yet, it’s estimated that Number Ones, The Essential Michael Jackson and Thriller each sold 100,00 copies last week; the week before, his entire solo catalog sold 10,000 copies total. Jackson may hold six to nine of the slots in the Top 10; the Beatles and AC/DC have both had five albums in the Top 10 at the same time. In other Jackson news, photos from Jackson’s final tour rehearsal taken two days before his death have been released. His body will be returned to Neverland Ranch on Friday for a public viewing. [Billboard.com, PopEater.com, CNN.com]
Since Michael Jackson’s passing last week, a great deal of nonsense has hit news programs and the Internet. (Here is a case where 
Michael Jackson was honored at Sunday Night’s BET Awards by celebrities and family, including his sister Janet and his father Joe. Said Janet, “My entire family wanted to be here tonight but it was too painful. To you, Michael is an icon. To us, Michael is family. He will forever live in all of our hearts.” Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé, Marlon Wayans, and LeBron James were among the other stars who paid tribute. In other Michael Jackson news, his 
If a death from a cardiac arrest seems too small and sudden a death for Michael Jackson, the biggest superstar in the world, it’s because no death would seem appropriate for the self-proclaimed King of Pop. At his best and at his worst, Michael Jackson never quite seemed to belong to this world -his talent too enormous to comprehend, his self-imposed fantastical seclusion too odd to understand - so envisioning an end never quite seemed possible, although in many ways the final chapter in his tragic rise and fall was written years ago. The Michael Jackson the world loved so dearly hasn’t been around for almost 20 years, starting to fade sometime after the coolly calculated 
Let’s put aside all the inevitable talk about personal lives, scandals, and alleged (and documented) weirdness for a minute (which is admittedly pretty hard to do) and go back to the beginning of Michael Jackson’s career when he was a member of the Jackson 5. We know now that times weren’t exactly perfect for the brothers back then, but you’d never guess it from their music, which was undeniably just about the most joyous and ecstatic pop music around as the ’70s began. The songs were perfectly formed nuggets of bubblegum soul, and the performances were brilliant, but most of all, the Jacksons’ voices (especially Michael’s, with his bursting-at-the-seams, impossibly soulful sound) were so full of life-affirming energy that it was impossible to hear them and not feel good deep inside. The hits they cranked out are amazing enough (”ABC”,”The Love You Save”, “I Want You Back”, “Dancing Machine,” and more), but even a quick listen back to their albums finds a wealth of wonderful deep cuts.
R.I.P. Sky Saxon, singer for the cult classic ’60s garage-rock band the Seeds. Saxon, born Richard Marsh, suffered from “a brief illness” before his death and was in his 60s when he passed. The Seeds’ tough sound — exemplified by their 1967 Top 40 hit “Pushin’ Too Hard — was dominated by Saxon’s snarling, Mick Jagger-esque vocals and helped blaze the trail for punk in the ’70s. Saxon had recently moved to Austin and formed a new band, Shapes Have Fangs, and had planned to spend the summer touring with the California ‘66 Revue. [
