Latest on MJJC

Susan Fast's 'Dangerous' book is scheduled to come out in September!

HIStory

Proud Member
Joined
Jul 25, 2011
Messages
6
Points
0
2qid7ns.jpg



About this item

Product Description
Dangerous is Michael Jackson's coming of age album. Granted, that’s a bold claim to make given that many think his best work lay behind him by the time this record was made. It offers Jackson on a threshold, at long last embracing adulthood—politicall y questioning, sexually charged—yet unable to convince a skeptical public who had, by this time, been wholly indoctrinated by a vicious media. Even though the record sold well, few understood or were willing to accept the depth and breadth of Jackson’s vision; and then before it could be fully grasped, it was eclipsed by a shifting pop music landscape and personal scandal—the latter perhaps linked to his assertive new politics. This book tries to cut through the din of dominant narratives about Jackson, taking up the mature, nuanced artistic statement he offered on Dangerous in all its complexity. It is read here as a concept album, one that offers a compelling narrative arc of postmodern angst, love, lust, seduction, betrayal, damnation, and above all else racial politics, in ways heretofore unseen in his music. This record offered a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.

About the Author
Susan Fast is Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Canada, where she teaches and writes about pop music and culture. She is author of In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music and co-editor of Music, Politics, and Violence.
Click to expand...

You can already pre-order on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1623566312
 
Re: Susan Fast's Dangerous book is scheduled to come out in September!

This record offered a Michael Jackson that was mystifying for a world that had accepted him as a child and as childlike and, hence, as safe; this Michael Jackson was, indeed, dangerous.
Click to expand...

Interesting sounds like it may be a good book. She is a seasoned author. Looks like Vogel is supporting it
 
Just a reminder. Susan Fast talked about this book earlier in this interview:

Over the next few months, we’ll be profiling the authors of the eighteen forthcoming 33 1/3 titles here on the blog so you can get to know them, their writing, and what kind of twisted soul chooses to think about just one album for months at a time. Next up: Susan Fast, Professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada. Her research interests include representations of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, constructions of self and other, performance and performativity, and geopolitical violence/conflict in contemporary popular music. She is author of In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music.


In line with her academic interests of popular music and performance, Fast has chosen to write about Michael Jackson’s Dangerous for her 33 1/3 installment. Read on to discover why she gravitated toward Dangerous over some of MJ’s more popular albums, and what she thinks is missing from the oeuvre of Michael Jackson research.


What, in particular, drew you to writing about this album?
Susan Fast: I’ve been wanting to write about this album for years now and whenever I’ve thought about it, I’ve imagined it as a book in the 33 1/3 series.

It’s the right vehicle for this project. Dangerous just seems to me like such a pivotal album in Michael Jackson’s career–I know most would peg Thriller as his musical pinnacle (although some would say that honor belongs to Off the Wall); Bad was the first album he toured as a solo artist, so that’s certainly an important milestone, but some feel that *Bad* was not as good an album as Thriller. I think most feel that by the time Dangerous came out, Jackson’s best work was behind him, but I disagree. What makes Dangerous so intriguing to me is that Jackson seems finally to inhabit adulthood on this record. He deals with weighty subjects, including love and lust; he gives us a darker, less childishly optimistic vision of the world; and he often seems at an emotional breaking point. He does this with less theatricality–which is not to say less musical excess–than he displays on earlier records.

One review of the record, by Jon Dolan, compared it to Nirvana’s Nevermind. Dolan wrote, “Jackson’s dread, depression and wounded-child sense of good and evil have more in common with Kurt Cobain than anyone took the time to notice.” While we’re making ambitious statements about this record—pace rock aficionados (and I count myself among you)—I’ve long toyed with the idea of Dangerous as Jackson’s Achtung Baby, in many ways a similarly brooding, vulnerable leap into the breach. It isn’t only lyrics that take Jackson down that road, but new ways of using his voice, the embracing of new musical styles, including hip hop, and a more pronounced allegiance to the sound of black music, past and present, than his earlier work. I see Dangerous as a concept album through which Jackson explores ideas of the postmodern, of love, sexuality, spirituality, and the future. To have the opportunity to explore this underrated album in a book length study is really exciting.


Who will you be reaching out to during the writing process? Why?
SF: My goal is to offer a close reading of the album; to suggest a way of hearing it that links to Jackson’s public image and to the cultural moment in which the record was produced. Since there’s been so little of this kind of critical analysis of Jackson’s work, I really want to make that the focus (much in the way that Carl Wilson made a broadly-based cultural analysis in his 33 1/3 book on Celine Dion his focus; it’s my favorite book in the series). But inevitably when I’m writing, there comes a point at which I have a question that only one of the musicians, or someone else close to the process can answer. This happened last year when I was writing an article on Jackson for a special issue of the journal Popular Music and Society: Part of the essay was about his lead guitarist Jennifer Batten, and I ended up connecting with her so that I could confirm some factual information, including whether it was MJ who designed her crazy costumes (the answer is yes, he did). So that may happen here. Joe Vogel’s interviewed a lot of the people Jackson worked closely with to write his book Man in the Music and Jackson’s longtime engineer, Bruce Swedien, published a book a couple of years ago that includes a lot of interesting technical information about the recording sessions, so much of that ground has been covered.



Describe for us the process of coming up with and pitching your 33 1/3. Did anything surprise you? Did you start with one idea and end up with another?
SF: What was great about writing the proposal is that it really focused ideas that had been floating around aimlessly in my head for a long time. I had never thought of Dangerous as a concept album before, but as I was writing the proposal, thinking through the organization of chapters, it just emerged so clearly. It was also a comment that Alan Light made in his Rolling Stone review of the record that tweaked me to this possibility. He criticized the running order of the album, commenting that he didn’t like the way Jackson had “clustered” similar songs together. It suddenly occurred to me that the “clusters” make sense if instead of resisting them, or finding them clunky, one embraces them. These clusters actually give us a compelling narrative arc (you’ll just have to read the book to see what I think that arc is!).


What do you want to explore about Michael Jackson that you feel hasn’t been adequately covered elsewhere in music criticism or academic writing?
SF: After Jackson died, I did a search for serious writing on his music and was absolutely astonished by how little there was. Everyone was so focused on what they perceived to be his crazy life (and, quite frankly, not even that was being explored in interesting ways) that somehow this incredibly rich, complex, virtuosic body of music, short films, and concert performances captured on video got neglected (as an aside: I had never even seen the DVD of the Bucharest concert, filmed during the Dangerous tour in 1992–the only official DVD release of a live show during his lifetime–until after his death; it came out in 2005 when the only thing the world cared about was Jackson’s criminal trial). It’s really difficult to fathom how one of the most important artists ever could have been so dismissed or neglected as an artist. Even when he was at his peak, there were only ever a handful of good essays that tried to get at something important about his artistry. This is slowly beginning to change. There has been some terrific writing on Jackson that’s come out since his death, but in terms of really taking apart the songs and videos, or digging into an album, this is still virtually uncharted territory. Joe Vogel’s book Man in the Music is the first, and only, album by album synopsis of Jackson’s work. Think of how many books like that exist for other important artists! And the thing is, Jackson’s work is so intricate that multiple and contradictory interpretations should exist, as they do for the work of other artists we care about.

So, there’s so much that could be covered, but in this book I really want to explore Jackson’s adulthood, the all-grown-up image he presents, the seriousness of the record–how it can be read in relationship to other *serious* musical statements that came out in that astonishingly rich year for music, 1991: not only Nevermind and Achtung Baby, but so many others. This is a Michael Jackson that has consistently been denied by critics. Many could not see him as an adult, or did not believe him as one and when he finally gave us an adult picture of himself with Dangerous, it was more or less critically rejected. It is precisely at this moment, precisely when he embraces maturity, that his aberrance becomes intolerable and that a critical blindness towards his music takes hold. Michael as quirky crossover wunderkind, fabulous; inhabiting adulthood as the dandy he was, with those looks; his steaming sexuality in performance (which many critics couldn’t, or didn’t want to see); his love of kids and kid-like things; his failure to partner up; and his failure to make blacker-sounding music–this [last point] was truly frightening to the mainstream media and to many beyond. It was a couple of years after Dangerous came out that the first allegation of child abuse was made: my view is that the album was the document that set the wheels of his spectacular fall from grace into motion.

What was your first concert?
SF: Wouldn’t it be delightful if I could say MJ? Alas, I never saw him live. My first concert was Bowie, 1976 on the Young Americans tour. I was a Bowie fanatic. Before the Internet and living outside an urban centre, I either called or wrote away to order a ticket (wish I still had it; why wouldn’t I have saved this?). I have no recollection of how I even heard about it: radio? Newspaper? Magazine? Where were concert dates announced back then? I did this having absolutely no idea how I would get to Vancouver to see the concert. My parents ended up driving me (six hours). I remember running into the Pacific Coliseum—ah, the days of festival seating, where you could squish yourself up against the stage, no security, no barriers. I thought I looked pretty glam, but it was nothing compared to what surrounded me; there were all kinds of Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dog incarnations. Bowie walked out in a black suit and white shirt. His mullet was gone and his hair, while still red, hadn’t been recently dyed. It was his new “thin white duke” look. He smirked at all of us still stuck in the Ziggy days. I remember feeling overwhelmed by seeing my idol in the flesh, just slightly out of reach. I trembled through the whole thing. I don’t remember leaving the stadium, but I do remember vividly sitting outside waiting for my ride, which seemed like a long time, breathing in the cold February air and feeling as though I had been forever changed. Magic.


How do you listen to your music at home: vinyl, CD, or MP3? Why?
SF: CD or MP3; I got rid of my turntable several years ago. It’s easier to indulge my habit of listening to the same tune over and over again (I seriously cannot move on when I get badly hooked). But interestingly, when Jackson died it was my vinyl version of Thriller that I pulled out, propped open on a shelf in my university office and which still sits there today. I’m not one of those audiophiles who insists that vinyl is better than digital recordings, but I sorely miss the richness of the album artwork that accompanied vinyl recordings. Among other losses, the CD version of Thriller omits the little drawings Jackson did for the inside sleeve of the record.


Name a lyric from the album you’re writing about that encapsulates either a) the album itself, b) your experience in hearing the album for the first time, or c) your experience writing about the album, so far.
SF: It wasn’t the lyrics that captivated me; it rarely is! I’m drawn to the sound: to grooves, melodies, the quality of the voice, interesting harmonic shifts, instrument choices, production values, how the music makes us experience time and our bodies. What’s intoxicating to me about Michael Jackson’s music is, well, the music. Especially its intensity; and while the level of intensity is always up there with Jackson, I would argue it reaches new heights in Dangerous. This record is so just so emotionally bloody.

I’ve spent my entire career trying to figure out how to write productively about musical sound, in a way that doesn’t just point out musical structure or other details for the sake of it, in a language that none but a few specialists understand, but in a way that connects the sound of the music to significant cultural ideas. If the primary meanings of music came through the lyrics, why would we need the music? Musical sound carries cultural meaning. So it’s interesting to me that this image of adulthood we get from Jackson on Dangerous is linked with such emotional intensity, in his voice (which is often at a breaking point), in the tightness of the grooves, or in the downright baroque excessiveness of the music. Much of this intensity is associated with disillusionment at the world, with feeling abandoned, or betrayed. Or angry. “Black or White,” for example, isn’t just a cute ditty about racial harmony when you start to dig beneath the surface. Dude is quite pissed off! And I suppose if I had to commit to one thing that encapsulates the album, it might be the dance at the end of the short film for “Black or White.” I know this gets away from the music, but the intense and shifting emotional landscape of that dance sums up in movement what the album delivers in sound.
Next up: Luis Sanchez on The Beach Boys’ Smile. Stay tuned.
Click to expand...

http://333sound.com/2013/04/24/the-33-13-author-qa-susan-fast/
 
Been waiting on this since we last talked about it here.

Pre-ordering now.
 
I think that Is so great to focus beyond thriller and bad etc. Michael did grow as an artist but all tabloid crap and everything overshadowed the work. I hope this will continue in the future.
 
Dangerous is my favorite MJ album, so I was happy to hear about this book. Looking forward to it! :D
 
I love the Dangerous album. Definitely interested in getting this book. I'd love to see someone like her or Joe Vogel do one on the History album as well.
 
SarahJ said:
I love the Dangerous album. Definitely interested in getting this book. I'd love to see someone like her or Joe Vogel do one on the History album as well.
Click to expand...

Yep, she should do HIStory album next.
 
it is refreshing to see a book about the music! and Dangerous is my favorite album:)
 
Yep, dying to read it. I have read a few of her articles on MJ before and she is very positive -- will be wonderful to see more respectful and intelligent analysis of the music.

If anyone is interested, the article she wrote in 2010 is here:

"Difference that Exceeded Understanding: Remembering Michael Jackson (1958–2009)"
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007761003640574#preview

However, you will probably need to belong to a university or institution to get access -- I figure there might be some of you out there.. I'm sorry I couldn't find any other source.
 
Last edited:
It seems to be more of a cultural analysis rather than a factual book about how the album came to be and how MJ worked. I tend to be more interested in the latter (and think there is a big need for this about MJ's work too), but this nevertheless seems like it could make for an interesting read as well.

pain-is-thunder;3975012 said:
Yep, dying to read it. I have read a few of her articles on MJ before and she is very positive -- will be wonderful to see more respectful and intelligent analysis of the music.

If anyone is interested, the article she wrote in 2010 is here:

"Difference that Exceeded Understanding: Remembering Michael Jackson (1958–2009)"
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03007761003640574#preview

However, you will probably need to belong to a university or institution to get access -- I figure there might be some of you out there.. I'm sorry I couldn't find any other source.
Click to expand...
Thank you for posting! Not a spectacular article imo, but she does touch upon some interesting things and makes some nice points.

(Btw, feel free to PM me if you would like to read it but do not have access to it)
 
I'm very happy to see Dangerous getting its due respect and admiration. That album is a masterpiece. Michael went on his own with this one after three albums with Quincy, like this author states, he wanted to fly the coup and enter adulthood. He did an amazing job with this album.. I am always astonished at the fact that no one (critics, media) seemed to appreciate it at the time. I know it is surely a fan favorite more so than the previous three.
 
I think more people are now willing to see things beyond Thriller and Bad with Michael's work. I think maybe more attention can be given and hopefully more appreciation for Michael and his work.
 
Dangerous has always been my favorite album. I listen to the Bad album and then watch several performances during the Bad Tour, and then I do the same thing with the Dangerous album and Tours. I can hear and see MJs growth as an artist by the time Dangerous came along. I wonder, being the perfectionist that he was, how he perceived himself as an artist and his creativity during this time of transition. I look forward to reading this book.
 
Joyce said:
Dangerous has always been my favorite album. I listen to the Bad album and then watch several performances during the Bad Tour, and then I do the same thing with the Dangerous album and Tours. I can hear and see MJs growth as an artist by the time Dangerous came along. I wonder, being the perfectionist that he was, how he perceived himself as an artist and his creativity during this time of transition. I look forward to reading this book.
Click to expand...

Bad will always have a special place in my heart, being the first MJ album I had. But looking back now I feel Dangerous was such a big step forward compared to Bad. And I think he needed to leave Quincy for that because I think by Bad Quincy was holding him back.
 
Bad is my favorite album but I agree that leaving Quincy was one of the best things Michael ever did. I often wonder if Michael was ready to leave Quincy after Thriller but because of contract obligations he had to make one more album with him. The stories about MJ and Quincy arguing a lot during the making of Bad might suggest this
 
I absolutely love Dangerous (dangerous, the girl is so dangerous). It's like the best road trip music to listen to to keep you pumped up on your journey. Susan's description of "Dangerous," is so eloquent!


221EEF425201BE3512F70C
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top