Michael Jackson un-personing – Lister says Wacko Jacko

[By Jove its holmes]

Lister says to Kryten that something is “completely Wacko Jacko”. Now, when that episode was made, that phrase was in common use and derived from MJ.

Sooo, will that episode be edited or redubbed, now that MJ has been exposed?

Topic

[si]

Listers attempt to sing “She’s out of my life” in Marooned by Micheal from the 1979 album Off the wall
Is up for the next chop then, or he sings it so badly that no music identifying software will pick up on it?

To be honest, I didn’t even know it *was* a Michael Jackson song til a few years ago.

[Dave]

I barely even recognised it as a song.

[Ben Saunders]

I thought it was an in-universe Lister original, honestly. And Jackson definitely wrote Billie Jean, it was brought up in a court case how he came up with all the parts in his car and recorded them acapella into a tape recorder. And that’s the only Jacko song that really matters to me, honestly. I don’t think it’s very helpful or honest to attempt to discredit a man’s musical output just because he’s most likely a massive pedo.

[(deleted)]

Louis Johnson is alleged to be the writer of both Beat It and Billie Jean. Musicologists have pointed to a suspicious amount of similarities with Brothers Johnson compositions and Jackson writing credits on Thriller. Quincy Jones was openly complicit in various other authorship/session credit scams, and the idea of Michael Jackson as overnight hit songwriter happens entirely during his reign. After he goes, the Michael Jackson who suddenly wrote all those hits on his own after relying entirely on contributors again suddenly becomes unable to do so without a massive salad of co-writers and remains that way permanently.

I don’t say this as an extension of the recentness, I am just very interested in the idea of ghosting in music, which is highly prevalent. And I find the idea that Jackson vocals were likely to have been ghosted while he was alive – due to a drug-fucked voice – utterly fascinating.

[Dave]

Did they also ghost-dance for him?

[(deleted)]

For what it’s worth I don’t think any Michael Jackson work should be suppressed, nor that of Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris, Roman Polanski, Jonathan King, Eric Gill, Caravaggio etc etc.

Not just because of art being separate from the creator (obvs), but because withdrawing them actively harms the lived experiences of those that have drawn comfort or pleasure from any of that work, allowing the perpetrators an undeserved veneer of reverse-psych attention and infamy and giving them a ‘taking their ball back in revenge’ moment of power.

[(deleted)]

Also, any grown adult should be allowed the opportunity to forgive or compartmentalise the misdeeds of any other grown adult as they please without further judgment on their characters. The way some media commentators have turned on Jackson’s fanbase you’d think they were the ones that fucked the kids.

[Captain Bollocks]

Am I still allowed to play Sonic the Hedgehog 3?

[clem]

> using a soundalike for his Simpsons singing and being weirdly disingenuous about why

I didn’t know about this. Apparently he wanted to play a joke on his brothers by tricking them into believing the impersonator was him. Yeah great joke, Jacko.

[Captain Bollocks]

Yeah, that’s discussed on the DVD commentary with Matt Groening and the writers/showrunners, etc., and none of them really got the joke either.

And while we’re on a tangent about The Simpsons, DVD commentaries, musicians and people not getting the joke, on one DVD they talk about how in the early days, they had Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Paul McCartney all on the show, and someone in the recording room made a quip about how they were planning to include lines from all three over a backbeat-inspired backing track for the next Simpsons album, and then brag about how The Simpsons was so big and cool and trendy that they’d been the only force powerful enough to reunited The Beatles.

Anyway, the long story short is that it turns out that lawyers have absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever.

[si]

Can we still listen to Jackson 5 stuff? I’ve got an excellent A-B-C Remix on my MP3 player, that I got after Craig once played on his funk & soul show.
And is Janet Jackson going to get any grief at Glastonbury?

[Warbodog]

Never been interested in Michael Jackson in the slightest, so not going to watch whatever this new documentary is, but the concept of him being “a bit dodgy” isn’t exactly a newsflash, is it? All those court settlements and that.

Anyone else extremely suspicious that we can deal with now, while it might have a practical benefit, rather than a decade after they’ve died and gotten away with it, please? I’d share my harrowing celeb anecdotes if I had them. In the 90s, I wouldn’t have saved them up.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah the Jackson stuff being recent is weird, we all “knew” he was a pedo when he was still alive. And afaik there is no new “evidence” being presented in the new documentary, it’s just a couple dudes telling their stories over dramatic music.

You can keep listening to whatever the fuck you want because even the idea that you’re monetarily supporting abuse by streaming their stuff doesn’t fly when the person is dead. For example if you want to avoid John Lennon stuff because he beat his wife, you’re a bit late. Any money given to “John Lennon” goes to his widow and estranged son, so if anything you’re doing charity work.

[tombow]

for me, I think the way he acted with boys he befriended was emotionally unhealthy enough, even if he never physically abused them. How he would pull one kid into an intense friendship, spend a lot of time with them, then dump them when he met a new interesting kid. (I’ve read a couple of books about MJ). And there’s enough stories about him doing inappropriate stuff to impress kid friends, leaving porn and beer around etc. And all the stories from employees about bizarre stuff he’s done, like the story that after Oprah left his house (after interviewing him in his living room), he unzipped his fly and peed where she had been sitting, to “reclaim his territory”. There’s so much bizarre stuff if you read a lot about MJ.

I remember Quincy Jones saying that MJ can’t read music or contribute much technical stuff, but in the early days he did come up with melodies and lyrics. I always think of MJ as being kind of like Ozzy Osbourne, in that their band/producers come up with the music but it’s just a backdrop for their dancing/stage show/wild behavior.

[Hamish]

Being WAY too young to have known of Micheal Jackson at the peak of his career, my first exposure to him was a Shockwave Flash animation mocking his plastic surgery where his fake nose falls off and lands in his drink.

Growing up all I knew is that people thought he was a creep. Then he died, and was the untouchable king of pop for some reason. Ten years later, and he is a creep again.

[(deleted)]

In the UK at least, Jackson was full-on persona non grata from around the time of the Bashir documentary right up to the announcement of the O2 shows, and was then sanctified in death, though that’s kind of lost to time now. The mainstream stopped taking him seriously around Earth Song time. It was all cumulative, the child abuse allegations were only a small element – the Christ complex, the baby dangling, the surgery, the records themselves turning crap, and the sinister weirdness of his public appearances and interviews were much more instrumental in the wrecking of his image. People had been mocking him ever since the skin colour change but it really came to a head after the Brits/Jarvis incident as it instantly deflated the hypnotic bubble of PR gloss around him and the public mood really changed.

Another thing that’s forgotten – when he died there were a lot of editorials along the lines of ‘hang on, what about the child abuse?’ but there was a wide consensus response to them of ‘not now’. How different the world was ten years ago!

[Warbodog]

Derek Acorah held a televised seance tastefully soon after Jackson’s death and confirmed he was in heaven, so he can’t have been too bad. Comedians at the time mused, “well if he can get in…”

[MANI506]

The first series of AIOTM has some hilarious Jackson Seance stuff and Emma Kennedy’s Jackson impression is peerless.

[Warbodog]

“Now a song from Michael Jackson, in happier times before his mauling from Martin Bashir that led ultimately, and directly, to his death (and to Diana’s)” – Alan Partridge

[By Jove its holmes]

The reason “crap” got bowdlerised to “whacko jacko” in that old BBC promo was so the promo would be suitable for an all-ages audience and wouldn’t raise any hackles from ostrich parents.

[Stephen Abootman]

Sixty Seconds with Craig Charles

Craig comments on Jacko (so this thread seemed liked the best place to put it). They don’t ask about Dwarf though if you fancy a game of ‘spot the quote from it’ then you’re in luck.

[si]

My word, what a flattering photograph.

[By Jove its holmes]

I remember the MJ/Harry Potter parody:

“Hello, Harry!”

“Vulgar Wart?”

“No, Harry. Something. much, much, scarier!”

“Michael Jackson! So, the Secret Chamber of Secrets is really… Neverland!”

[bloodteller]

“Kris found out about the shower thing; she went ballistic. It’s just a little present to say ‘sorry’.”

“A bag of albino mouse droppings?”

“No, two bags.”

Yes, I know the part of the thread where we all make jokes has long since passed but hey, whatever

[Spare Hand One]

By the way, when the VHS finally materialises in that advert, the “Timeslides” and “Backwards” titles appear on the same box.

They must have beamed it in from another universe — one with longer-playing tapes — using the Holly Hop Drive.

[Ridley]

<blockquoute>Yes, I know the part of the thread where we all make jokes has long since passed but hey, whatever

No, that’s the problem:

<blockquoute>Hey, y’know, whatever

You spend your whole life just steady and avoiding irresponsibility. We can’t be in a relationship like that.

[Ridley]

Still a good joke.

[Author]

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