This is about the late Michael Jackson, memory, and a few other things. I am old enough to remember the Jackson Five: their early hits, their TV cartoon show. Let’s review:
That means I’m more than old enough to remember when DOS stood for Disk Operating System. Nowadays, I think of those three letters as denoting a denial-of-service attack.
Some sites, including Google, suspected that they were under a DoS attack recently, when what was really going on was the result of a different kind of DoS: the Death of Superstar Michael Jackson. I think that he was a very talented performer, but his work was never personally important to me. (I’ll leave his own personal life alone.)
I remember seeing him live in the south of France, where I lived from 1987-89. It was my then-girlfriend’s idea/insistence that we go. It was more her thing than mine, although I was impressed by the show he put on. I also remember illustrious keyboard player Greg Phillinganes being in the band.
Doing some web research, I see that it must have been part of the Bad tour. But the only list of dates for that tour that I can find shows only two French dates, both in Paris.
Is my memory playing tricks on me? Two things make me believe that it isn’t, and that I really did see MJ. First, I see open dates both immediately before and immediately after the Paris shows, so it’s logistically plausible that there were some other French dates. Second, I do remember Greg Phillinganes was in the band – I recognized his name from his work with other musicians – and that checks out.
Anyway, RIP MJ. We’ll always have Nice, or wherever it was.