My name is Tane and I live in New Zealand. I am 39 years old and joined the site about 3 weeks ago, as I am a huge Prince and Michael Jackson fan and always gone through hot and cool phases with Michael Jackson in recent years. I always really get back into him around his death anniversary, but this year have really got into the man again and now in August the obsession is holding. Michael's music is infectious and like Prince, the more I read about him, the more I want to know. The last years of Michael Jackson leaves so many questions unanswered.
I have been into Michael Jackson music nearly all life. He was my first favourite artist ever! I was very young (About 3½, 4) when I remember "Rock with You" was being played on the radio here. I grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand, a city now known for earthquakes, but back then for racism and hearing music by Black Artists was not that common then, MJ was one of the first and I remember my family having to buy many soul/funk/disco albums as they never played the songs much on the radio until the late 1980s. I really liked Rock with you, but was so young I could not really act on it. Then I remember at the age of 7 Thriller blew up.
I was at home watching Ready to Roll on a Saturday night in 1983 and remembering MJ was always on it, the songs Billie Jean and Beat it. We had the Thriller album and my older brother had the famous Michael Jackson Thriller poster (Who knows where it is now). My next memories are of Bad in 1987 and I getting the tape and just playing it non stop for months until it broke (I have replaced MJ albums several times until I bought CDs a few years ago and made digital versions on my computers and memory sticks/MP3 players. By the Time of Bad I was a fan, but also listening to lots of other music like Madonna, Whitney Houston, Kylie minogue, all the late 80s pop music. Even as an 11/12 year I loved pop music. I taped videos and watched them over and over, especially Leave me alone in 1989, I could never get enough of it.
Then when I was 15, I discovered Prince and just got hooked after a few years of getting into stuff like MC hammer, Milli Vanilli and Color Me Badd (The wait between Bad and Dangerous seemed interminable). But I still loved Michael and remember buying the singles for Cream and "Black or White" on the same day, amking sure I taped the full length version of the video with MJ smashing the car and the usual moral panics we had here in NZ (Ice T's copkiller got banned, Sexy MF nearly got banned and the Justify my Love video was played once on New Years eve along with Party on your Pxxxy by Red Hot Chili Peppers).
In 1993 as a 17 year old, I had to deal with crap from all my friends about defending MJ with the first trial, by this stage I still liked really Poppy music but really got into gangsta rap like Snoop Doggy, 2pac and Biggie Smalls. So when MJ had Shaq and Biggie on History it was like he was going in my direction. In 1992/93 I remember buying all the singles off Dangerous, but never bought the album until the 2000s, as singles were $5 and albums were like $35 on CD then and my pocket money was like $20 a fortnight and I could only work in school holidays doing some crappy fruit picking job that paid about $3 an hour.
In June 1995 when he released History, I was back into him big time again and queued up outside a record store in Christchurch at midnight to buy it (I was 19 and at University, so my parents were fine, but they thought I was mad, as they gave me the whole MJ is guilty schtick). I listened to that album and wore it out (Tape set, getting my CD's only in 1998) and I was lucky that both had the "Stop fXXking with me" line in Scream and "Jew me, Sue me, Kick me, **** me" line in TDCAU). By 1995 as well, I was completely hooked on Pricne counting the days down to the Gold Experience being released, an album I recommend you all hear as Dolphin and Gold have a strong MJ influence.
I vaguely remember Blood on Dancefloor and Invincible, by that time not paying much attention to any music. Finally by 2004 I was back into MJ with the new trials and again I was fielding rubbish from people about his guilt. By now I had all the albums on CD except BODF and Invincible. I still can't find Invincible now. Another time I got into him was when Thriller 25 came out and I worked at a call centre then and organised a MJ lookalike and Moonwalking contest which I won, but it was great to have MJ music play all day. And of course when he died I watched the funeral and played his music all the time for a week. And to this day I maintain my love of him. So after 35 years I finally joined a board with other MJ fans, because even my Prince friends don't really dig MJ much, which is sad, because they are very similar and I always thought most Prince fans also are MJ fans.
I am a secondary school teacher now (Relieving only, but lots of work in the winter as teachers are sick), but have generally just loved his music all my life. He is a constant factor I guess. I love reading everyone else's stories about Michael Jackson and total envy and admire all of you, who have seen MJ in concert or even met him. One of my life's regreat is never being able to see Michael Jackson perform in concert as it seems his concerts were all just phenomenal.
I look forward to writing a lot of posts here and sharing my love of Michael Jackson to the world.
