Music

Context is incredibly important with so many things, which I've wittered on about in previous posts.

This last week Michael Jackson died. The way the media's been carrying on in the UK you'd really have to be out of the loop completely to have missed the news. I'm not really going to talk about that, but his death and the media histrionics made me think about a few things to do with music.

When I was a kid turning into a teenager and thus finding my own musical tastes, I listened to an Australian radio station called 2JJJ-FM. I started listening in 1980, attracted by a repeat airing of the original radio series of The Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. It was a radio station that appealed to my eclectic tastes even then. While I enjoyed ABBA first time round, I didn't really get the obsession of my classmates with AC/DC and the Angels (amusingly misspelled in graffiti as the Angles). 2JJJ-FM was the stereo version of a radio experiment launched under the auspices of the Australian ABC in 1975 to address the youth market. They were radical, really, and had the attitude of playing pretty much anything that would broaden the minds of the listeners. Towards the end of the 1990s 2JJJ-FM went national and became known as Triple-J, and ceased being what it had been due to the pressures of modern broadcasting demands. (I wrote my BA Hons thesis on that sorry saga.)

2JJJ-FM weren't really into the Jackson 5, or Michael Jackson at the height of his musical powers. I was aware of him - like now, it was very difficult to avoid the juggernaut of his fame - but I looked at him and most really popular 'pop' with disdain. I was of that age. Kids a bit younger than me loved him, and those older did, too. He wasn't the only one, mind. Kylie Minogue was worse. Then.

See, context.

I've seen Kylie in concert a few times now and she's a consummate performer. I have quite a few of her songs in my iTunes, but I can't call myself a fan. I recognise that Jackson's hits are amazing bits of pop history, but while I can recognise this, it still leaves me a bit cold. My teen-cynicism is at play there, even now.

I feel for those who care about Jackson's death (within context), but I don't share it. And it's naught to do with those matters that obsessed the media until his death this week.

And, yeah, I realise I have ended up wittering about Jackson when I hadn't meant to.