A brief summary I found on maxjax:
http://www.maximum-jackson.com/disc...with-Joe-Vogel-author-of-The-Man-in-the-Music
Anyway, for those who don't feel like sitting through a three hour long interview, here are some interesting bits I picked up on . . .
About the Will.i.am songs: "My understanding is that there's at least three or four songs that are pretty close to finished. I haven't heard them, I've heard
about them, I've heard titles. I hear that they're great. I do think that they will come out eventually. [...] It is mostly kind of dance-oriented music, and it's very, from what I understand, forward-looking dance music."
About the classical music MJ wrote before his death: "I might be doing a piece on it this summer. So if I can get lined up with David Michael Frank, we can do something. Because of all [Michael Jackson's] unreleased material, that's what I'm most excited about. I'd love to hear it."
Info about the book's promotion: "It looks like we're going to do some tie-ins with Cirque du Soleil, which will be a lot of fun. And Sterling Publisher is a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, so it's supposed to be in the front of bookstores at Barnes and Noble, displayed very prominently in stores. So that will be great for the United States [promotion]. We'll also be doing a book tour and both radio and TV interviews."
About the class Joe teaches at the University of Rochester, which incorporates MJ: "This semester, actually this whole year, I taught a course called 'Romanticism in Rock,' which explored connections between Romantic poets like Blake and Wordsworth and Shelley, and then contemporary popular music. So we explored bands like the Beatles and Arcade Fire and of course Michael Jackson, and [we] explored parallels with their work. That was a really fun class to teach!
"I pulled some sections from my book to stimulate class discussions, occasionally. We looked at aspects of [Michael's] work in the class, like we looked at music videos like 'Black or White' and 'Thriller,' and we looked at some of his more obscure works like 'Morphine' and 'Scared of the Moon.' And the students respond really well to it and really enjoy it. A lot of them didn't think of Michael in that way before, they just thought of him as a phenomenon but never really understood his art. So that's the kind of thing we explore."
Thoughts about the 'Michael' album: "I have mixed feelings about the album. There's some incredible songs on there . . . 'Much Too Soon' is one of my favorite songs ever, out of [Michael's] catalog. 'I Like the Way You Love Me' is a favorite of Stevie Wonder, and 'Best of Joy' is amazing, it's just a beautiful song. Some of my issues with the album have to do with process. I'm a purist. I want to hear music exactly how Michael left it. And after that, I love to hear different takes, like remixes or reproductions. So in some cases on this album, that didn't happen and that was a frustrating part of it."
About the Cascio songs: "In terms of the controversy, I think my position on that is that we just have to wait for more. I never talked to the Cascios. I talked to a lot of Michael's collaborators, but I just didn't talk to them, so I don't know a lot about those tracks. I reached out [to the Cascios]. They've been reluctant to do interviews and I don't know the reasons for that. I think one of the Cascios is coming out with a book, so maybe that will be a time that he can shed more light on those tracks.
"You know, the piece I did on 'Hollywood Tonight' for Huffington Post . . . I was able to call the people that were involved with that song and basically just trace it from the time that the idea came, and the various kind of stages that it went through. So it's very clear-cut. You can hear different versions of it, in terms of where it was at different stages, you can hear those different demos. I haven't been able to do that with the Cascios' songs, so I would just be speculating if I said anything about them, other than what people already know."
