The twittering, the facebook updating, the blogging, the youtube searching, the googling, it’s all been one giant Michael Jackson social networking fest. Three generations know who Michael Jackson is and his fame has such a global reach. I wonder how many people got a news update on their smart phones and learned of Michael’s death that way.

In the midst of this wall to wall coverage of his passing, some of my favorite things said have been from the facebook pages of friends, as opposed to journalists and people who were well acquainted with him. I am actually surprised by how much I felt affected on the news of his passing. I think that I feel the connection because we are the same age and traveled through life together and partly because he was a single parent and so am I (though the circumstances and situations are completely different). I can remember where I was when I saw him moonwalk on that Motown special, and who was with me when I ran to Tower on Sunset and bought Thriller (for Eddie Van Halen’s guitar parts, of course). It’s a lot of mixed emotion because he was loved, he was reviled and his persona was such a mystery, and his journey was so bizarre. If the music didn’t have the impact that it had, we would all have moved on long ago.

The business shakeout from all of this is going to be the real story. In terms of the canceled shows, I don’t know if AEG will get very many refund requests, as most people will probably be inclined to keep their tickets to the London shows as souvenirs. I wonder how much AEG had advanced him directly and how much they had expended on the show itself. And does Neverland Ranch now become a museum/amusement park site open to the public for a fee, like Graceland?

One can’t help but wonder what would have happened had these shows go on as planned…

The non stop analysis and commentary are overwhelming. I think I need to spend some time reflecting on this without the constant feedback.

6/23/09

I have decided that I will blog. Really I should be tweeting, but in my quest to always remain at least one step behind the times, I shall blog.

My blogs won’t always have a theme like Cazzy’s do. They will just express whatever is coming out of my brain at that particular moment.

I haven’t been spending a lot of time here at Velvet Rope HQ lately, largely because I have tired of this BBS format for what we have going here. I am convinced that what we need to do is get Google wave to help us transform this community into an open source format so we can be reborn as a social networking community for the music industry.

Now, onto my debut blog…Today I am thinking a lot about Perez Hilton. I am embarrassed that even one of my brain cells has devoted any time to him, and even more ashamed to be spending time on him in my debut blog, but as much as it pains me to admit it, I am thinking about Mario and how he invented this persona for himself. I’m wondering — how did he fool everyone into thinking that his opinion of music, life or anything else matters. Really he is just a gossip conduit who somehow has elevated himself into some higher status. His true colors showed through at the Much Music Awards. A gay man, calling Will.i.am a faggot because Will did not want his music covered by Mario on his web site. Then tweeting after getting slugged by someone loyal to the Black Eyed Peas. The very idea that Interscope may pay this man money to hype Lady Gaga and that Warners considers him label worthy turns my stomach. I don’t have a lot more to say about him today.

Another thing that’s been on my mind is that anyone should be fined $1.92 million dollars for using Kazaa to file share on 24 songs. Whatever happened to that saying I learned to help me remember the statutory rates, ‘music is a penny business’? Is this really a good business model for the record companies to use going forward — to sue the hell out of the fans? It really is hard to believe that this play list is worth all that dough:

UMG
Vanessa Williams - Save The Best for Last
Sheryl Crow - Run Baby Run
Reba McEntire - One Honest Heart
Janet Jackson - Let’s Wait Awhile
Guns ‘n Roses - Welcome to the jungle
Guns ‘n Roses - November rain
Def Leppard - Pour some sugar on me
Bryan Adams - Somebody
Aerosmith - Cryin

Warner Bros Records
Linkin Park - One step closer
Green Day - Basket case
Goo Dolls - Iris

Interscope Records
No Doubt - Hella Good
No Doubt - Different people
No Doubt - Bathwater

Arista Records
Sarah McLaughlan - Building a mystery
Sarah McLaughlan - Possession

Sony BMG Music Entertainment
Gloria Estefan - Rhythm is Gonna Get You
Gloria Estefan - Here We Arere
Gloria Estefan - Coming Out of The Dark
Journey - Faithfully
Journey - Don’t Stop Believin
Destiny’s child - Bills, Bills, Bills

Capitol Records
Richard Marx - Now and Forever

I would not pay 99 cents for even one of those songs and no one in my circles would want to share those, but that’s what makes the world go around…