François Macré - Thriller (64 tracks a'cappella version)

Apologies for the no-post yesterday--been out-of-the-ordinary busy. Enjoy this inventive tribute to one of Michael Jackson's most famous songs.

Frank Rich Explains This Moment in Gay Rights, June 28 2009

Forty years after Stonewall.

It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws.

Michael Jackson - She's Out Of My Life

One more. This is an early video, and the lip-syncing and camera-work are not of the almost perfect level that would be seen in MJ videos a few years later, but so what. The music here is beautiful work, from a young artist beginning to understand what he was capable of doing. He was nineteen years old.

Sky Saxon RIP

More posthumous praise. Sky Saxon was the leader of the Seeds, a proto-punk Sixties band. I still remember hearing these songs come out of the AM radio into my ears, into my brain, into my soul. He never struck those chords of the zeitgeist again, but most of it never do it once. Here's "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Can't Seem to Make You Mine." "Pushin' Too Hard" was supposedly written in fifteen minutes while he waited in the car for his girlfriend, who was grocery shopping. One side note: along with the Kingsmen's "Louie Louie," this was some of the earliest electric piano work that many of us ever heard.

RIP Michael Jackson

There's a lot of things to be said about a life full of magic. But magic in the end is a form of power, and power can be used to any end. He deserved to be happier, but who doesn't? Best to remember that once, and for a long time, and always at least a little bit, he was something special.

Gus Cannon - Poor Boy, Long Ways From Home

Not everybody likes this sort of music, an attitude I can understand in an abstract sort of way. But I love it, and wish it were more widely available. I'd like to help that process of wider dissemination along; ergo, this post.

Joe Jackson - Not Here, Not Now

The breakup could have been worse, I suppose, but it still hurt. A lot. Joe Jackson understands. This is the kind of song you listen to over and over while slowly ingesting a lot of wine or ice cream or whatever your poison of choice is.