the way you make me feel

If I'm going to be totally honest, I haven't had much use for Michael Jackson since at least the mid-90's. As far as I'm concerned, the last great piece of music that came out under his name was the AMAZING Brothers in Rhythm remix of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" during the 'HIStory' campaign when remixers were given access to early masters to update them for the dance floor. [Though the Moby "Beat It"? No thanks.] And even then, that was an update of an at-that-point 10+ year old song. So let's just say anything past 'Dangerous' is kind of a waste of time.

Even more truthfully, we lost that Michael Jackson long ago. The past 20 years or so has seen a life fall apart in bizarre and often sad ways in a very public light, each event ruining a man more and more. Not that he did or didn't do alot of it to himself, but that's neither here nor there.

You really can't take away the brilliance of his early career. All that Jackson 5 stuff - amazing. A string of four of the biggest and best pop albums of all time - 'Off The Wall' and 'Thriller' are back to back brilliance, 'Bad' hasn't aged well [time has been particularly cruel to the title track] but ultimately is an amazing album, and while 'Dangerous' is one of the first examples of patchy pop albums created to take advantage of the longer running times of CDs it has some really bright shining moments: "Jam", "In The Closet", "Black or White", "Why You Wanna Trip On Me", "Heal The World", "She Drives Me Wild", "Remember The Time" - all incredible.

So at this time, I don't remember the man whose own nose literally fell off his face or who slowly became someone who bared no resemblance to the musical genius we grew up with. I remember the man who gave us this:



Best opening track to an album ever.

The world is certainly a different place without him.

I'm fifteen all over again

File under "too good to be true": the original line-up of Sunny Day Real Estate is reforming. For a tour.

I got to see the boys a couple of times back in "the day", but sadly only after the split/reformation without Nate. I also got to meet Dan & Jeremy on one of 'The Rising Tide' dates and have a picture of my 20-year old self with them smiling like an idiot next to my computer. It still makes me happy thinking about it. Then, in the Fire Theft days, I got to meet Will & Nate as well. So I've seen em all, just not all at once. [I always wished I asked them to sign my copy of LP2 that Jeremy and Will signed when I met them, but it didn't feel right. I did get to go grocery shopping with them, however, so I suppose that makes up for it.]

Until September, that is. I haven't figured out how yet, but I will be there. Oh yes, I will.

The dates from the new website:

September 17th - Vancouver, BC/Commodore Ballroom
September 18th - Portland/Crystal Ballroom (Musicfest NW)
September 20th - Salt Lake City/Murray Theater
September 21st - Denver/Ogden Theater
September 23rd - Minneapolis/First Avenue
September 24th - Chicago/Metro
September 25th - Detroit/St Andrews Hall
September 27th - New York/Terminal 5
September 28th - Boston/House of Blues
September 30th - Washington DC/930 Club
October 1st - Philadelphia/Trocadero
October 3rd - Atlanta/CW Center Stage
October 5th - Dallas/Granada Theater
October 6th - Houston/Warehouse Live
October 7th - Austin/La Zona Rosa
October 9th - Tempe/Marquee Theatre
October 10th - Anaheim/House of Blues
October 11th - Los Angeles/Henry Fonda Theater
October 13th - San Francisco/Fillmore
October 15th - Spokane/Knitting Factory
October 16th - Seattle/Paramount Theatre

Oh, and they're reissuing 'Diary' and 'LP2' as well - with bonus discs and liner notes and all that jazz. See you at the stores September 15th for those.

har har

The challengers on Jeopardy! tonight are Damon and Naomi.

Well, I got a kick out of it.

kind of awesome

Truth be told, I am not expecting great things from the latest Depeche Mode single. The a-side itself is pretty terrible and the list of remixers is hardly top notch. As these things go, though, you suck it up and buy them anyways. At least the vinyl will be on nice white marble.

HOWEVER

An auction for the CD single set has come and gone on Ebay. There are many, I'm sure, however this particular auction has an amazing item description. Check it out.

Having not heard them yet I'm not qualified to say if he's right or wrong. [Wrong...HA!] However, my gut tells me he's hitting the nail on the head.

Amazing.

suuuuuper Tuesday!

Today is the biggest release date we've had in quite some time...for me, anyways.

It is the day that Kasabian unleash their third album - the still awkwardly titled 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' - on the US. [The UK got it yesterday...at least we're not waiting months and years this time.] Sonic Youth go indie with 'The Eternal' - hope you got yr buy early get now in for the live LP, there's a new download coming later this week and they've said they'll give us the iTunes bonus track once they have the rights to it back. Huzzah! Placebo return with the not-awful-despite-all-signs-pointing-in-that-direction 'Battle For The Sun'. After the shitfest of 'Meds', that's good enough for me.

In the digital realm, Little Boots gives us the 'Illuminations' EP while we wait for the album which was released yesterday overseas. [Bastards.] Pet Shop Boys have expanded the release of "Did you see me coming?" to include all b-sides and remixes for the US over two digital EPs which was very nice of them as there's a couple tracks not on the UK physical release we can now have.

It's only 7:42 am and my credit card is already tired.