Binging Michael Jackson

I should spend a little more time with Bing, and I’m still trying to find details of the Michael Jackson show I believe I attended. Bing told me about the site Michael Jackson Live! Apparently it allows one to “Be the first to know Michael’s next move.”

Following the link took me to the registration page. The dates page is about future shows (rather than about the long-ago show in which I am interested). Apparently “VIP Packages are still available” even though show dates aren’t. I wonder what you have to give up to get one of those tickets…

DoS: Death of Superstar

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.