RIP Michael Jackson 1958-2009: One Year Later

It's hard to believe a year has already gone by without the King Of Pop.Where were you when it happened?

I was at work at the record store. In the mid afternoon around 4 (NY time), my co-worker, Joe, was reading the online news mags and was hit with the painfully brief report that Michael Jackson had been hospitalized. The key phrase that shook us to the bone was that paramedics had arrived and he was "not breathing". "Oh my god", was all Joe could say. I quickly rushed to the computer to check other websites for any other info. For the next hour and a half, people would walk into the store giving us what they heard. Reports kept conflicting. First a report said he was dead, while another quickly defused that saying he was still critical. People began calling the record store for information on it as if we were the best news source because we sold his albums. Finally at a few minutes before 5:30, Joe got the call and gave me a thumbs down. At this point, we had already put on Thriller as maybe a way of giving his spirit strength to pull through, but it was no use.

After it was announced, we made a makeshift RIP sign using a copy of Bad (which we played next). People began coming into the store and buying his albums. Since our main source of income is used stock, we had lots of copies of just about every Michael Jackson release known to man. That night was karaoke night at a local bar in my town. I got my friends together and we gave a rather loving tribute to MJ, covering around 15 or so of his tunes. Other people in the bar began joining in to which we all finished with a rousing rendition of "We Are The World". I didn't have work for another two days, so when I returned on Sunday I couldn't believe what I was seeing, or should I say not seeing. Our store which had been overstocked with Michael Jackson records, CDs, tapes, etc. for years, was now bone dry. We had sold everything save for one used vinyl copy of Thriller which was now marked up to $30 (before his death we were selling it for $5 - we just had way too many copies to charge any more).

Some would complain that people thrive on tragedy and it takes someone's death for people to regain their interests in an artist's work. I don't look at it that way. I think we all loved Michael Jackson's music, but we had been doing just that for so long that it became such a normalzed part of our lives. It was in knowing now that he was no longer with us that we were again reminded about how much we loved him. I always feel that sharing memories bring people together, and Michael Jackson has been a part of just about everyone's memory. I am still very sad to see his life in the past tense, but I'm also glad that his music has experienced this rebirth, and that people now remember why he was so great. It was the way he made us feel.