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There is plenty to write about, and I suppose I will get to some of it over the course of the summer, but the topic that has been in my mind of late has been the passing of Michael Jackson.

Perhaps a little more so than others in my generation, Michael Jackson was woven into different phases of my life because I felt a lot in common with him. First, in the Jackson 5 and my own initial attractions to playing music. I taught myself how to play drums while listening to and playing along with the early J5 records. I realized that Michael was close to my own age and it was easy for me to imagine being in a group like him.

Later, in the mid-70s, my father took me to see the Jackson 5 – by then, touring as The Jackson Family, with Janet and Randy and all the siblings on stage, in a vegas-like act that both featured and oppressed Michael. It was the “Dancing Machine” era, and Michael had graduated from James Brown moves to astonishing robot pop-locks, and it was clear that his aspirations were more “with it” than the rest of the family.

At the dawn of the 80s, after years of hanging out at Studio 54 and the golden years of disco, Michael released Off The Wall and it clicked for my little group of white boys looking for some funk. We got the fresh popiness, but the underlying core was R&B that he did so well. Quincy Jones put a sheen and a beat to it that had been lacking before, and we grooved all summer to it.

In 1982, Thriller came out. And all our punk pronouncements were swept under the rug while we taught ourselves dance moves and went to nightclubs, making ourselves and our friends giggle and laugh at the joy in dancing we discovered.

That same year, I was invited to join a great 10 piece funk-R&B band, the only white on stage. And it was pretty clear that everyone felt more comfortable with that because of Michael Jackson. He desegregated our tastes and opened our minds to playing across genre and race, and served as a soundtrack for our own explorations into dance, androgeny, and culture merging.

As with all super successes, his became overwhelming – for him, and for his audience. The military costumes alienated, and he withdrew as the audience turned to first alternative and then grunge. His music became displaced to a generation that saw him as a cartoon. Some prominence restored during the rise of the boy bands, who clearly owed much to his choreagraphy. HipHop, which grew out of early raps on top of his 80s hits, treated him as a visiting saint but he mostly stopped creating.

It was sad to see him become addicted and withdrawn and it wasn’t too surprising last week to hear the first reports of the ambulance, then cardiac arrest, and then death. I needed to consider how far reaching his impact as an artist had been on me over the years, and the background role he played in all music for the past several decades. I remembered a quote from Fred Astaire, who after seeing Jackson perform his famous moonwalk (a slighter version of what Jeffrey Daniels famously perfected), proclaimed him “the greatest dancer of the 20th century”, including even himself.

Through dance, and music, Michael Jackson gathered up a multitude of influences that had converged in post Martin Luther King America, and found a way to bring them all to the party and have a good time.  That one summer, we all danced to Beat It and Billie Jean: punks, rednecks, geeks, metal heads, jocks, whites, blacks, latinos, asians, gays, straights. Without thinking about it, we all got along. He did all of this with amazing artistry, incredible skill that only a lifetime professional can summon, and alluring taste that is the hallmark of genius.

It’s hard not to feel sad at this passing, though no doubt his life was very difficult and he deserved whatever rest this grants. Because there aren’t any candidates for artistry of such magnitude, even waiting in the wings. No one grasps the power to bring together such disparate elements. It may even be the death of popular culture as we know it, and the birth of the long tail culture.

For now though, it’s enough to enjoy a lifetime (for me anyways) of really solidly good memories and great fortune at having been alive to experience it firsthand. Inspirational.

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