Although for most of us Michael Jackson’s death won’t have the “what were you doing when” impact of JFK’s assassination or 9/11, I for one will never forget, because a friend of mine called and asked, out of the blue, “Is Michael Jackson dead?”, to which I replied with something like “I almost hope so, for his sake”, thinking at first that my friend was being flip. Since I don’t have TV, I spent the next few minutes on the web watching the news unfold, switching between cnn.com, bbc.com, yahoo news, and Wikipedia. What I’ll never forget is that Wikipedia listed him as dead before any of the news sites had committed.  I personally felt an odd sense of relief rather than anything like remorse upon finding out; I mean, what kind of life could the man possibly have left to live? My first experience with caring much about Michael Jackson as an artist was when his song “Beat It” – which strongly resembled my band’s song “No Soul” – was released, much to our irritation, because record labels on several occasions used the comparison to say we weren’t original though our song was written well before his. Although over the years one couldn’t argue his undeniable talent, the fact that his most meaningful relationships seemed to be with children, aging glam queens, and monkeys named “Bubbles” tended to diminish his credibility. My personal feelings about him vacillated quite a bit over time; although I was definitely in the camp that would gleefully make fun of his quirks for many years, a friend pointed out something to me in the late 80′s that gave me pause, which was the fact that on top of any stories of his father’s abusive behavior, his child stardom had put him some pretty strange situations with adult women, and his insular lifestyle simply made it impossible for him to mature in anything like a normal fashion. This left me feeling a bit sympathetic toward him for a long time, That is, until it turned out that he ultimately was a 40-ish child molesting multimillionaire who refused to give up fairyland, and whose best friend remained a monkey. Thanks for your music, and rest in peace, Michael Jackson. I’m sure you had no peace left here on Earth.