Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Cream Was Michael Jackson Your Elvis?
Posted by Steve Haruch on Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:06 AM
I know, I know. But I don't get CNN! According to one report, MJ sold over 300,000 albums last week, in the process becoming the first artist to ever sell a million downloads in a seven-day span.
(Elvis wasn't my Elvis, either, just to be clear on that.)
I've heard people say that Obama is our Kennedy, and that makes sense, in a way, just as saying Michael Jackson is our Elvis also makes sense. In a way. I guess I've just never really identified with my generation--but, if everyone has an Elvis (or a Michael Jackson) who is yours?
This question has been harder to answer than I thought it would be. Probably the first band I really got into was Van Halen. (The Van Halen of Van Halen II and MCMLXXXIV, that is.) It's not like they changed my life or anything. I just thought it was so cool that they had an angel boy smoking a cigarette on their album cover. Now you know where my piercing critical acumen comes from.
The artist who blew me away the most the first time I heard him was Leonard Cohen, but his albums were already 20 years old, and when we're talking about Your Own Personal Elvis, that means an artist who comes of age at roughly the same time you do. (My mother's Elvis, for example, is Elvis.)
With Elvis on the brain, I inevitably started thinking about the moment at Bonnaroo when Chuck D. of Public Enemy--to a mostly white crowd of thousands--got to that part of "Fight the Power" that goes like this: "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me / A straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain / Motherfuck him and John Wayne." Where the Beastie Boys earlier in the night were pulling punches and leaving out lyrics about doing this and that to the sheriff's daughter, P.E. were still true to form. The first time I saw Chuck D. say those words was when P.E. split a set with Sonic Youth at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. In 1990, it was odd for an arty rock band and a rap group to play a show together, and even though I was dressed like a fan of arty rock bands (which I was), the album that I listened to every day was Fear of a Black Planet. That record probably transformed my view of both music and the world more than any other. So I guess what I'm saying is that, ironically, Public Enemy is my Elvis.
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