Topic Plunder: The John Oswald
and Michael Jackson Story

In 1989, Canadian record-industry reps claiming to represent Michael Jackson forced Toronto artist-composer John Oswald to turn over hundreds of copies of his landmark Plunderphonics CD (see cover above) to be destroyed. You can find out what happened next and Oswald’s reaction to his former antagonist’s death in my piece today in The Globe and Mail. I’ve also put together a list of other MJ-inspired art.

That list was trimmed down by the paper for space, by the way. Here are the other Jacksonian works that were left out:

Obscure FM, Michael Jackson is in Heaven Now (1992). This techno anthem consists mainly of beats and blasts along with an announcer proclaiming that Jackson has been shot “in front of a live studio audience” and then the title. It was part of a brief fad of dancing to celebrity-death announcements sparked by Dutch duo L.A. Style’s 1991 “James Brown is Dead.”

Kent Twitchell, Michael Jackson (1993). The well-known Los Angeles photorealist mural painter completed a 100-foot-tall portrait of Michael Jackson for the side of what’s now the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, but it was never installed, and was shown to the public for the first time in a gallery show this April.

Mister Lonely (2007). In Gummo creator Harmony Korine’s most recent movie (his first after a long hiatus) a Michael Jackson impersonator in Paris falls in love with a Marilyn Monroe imitator, and emigrates to a colony of celebrity lookalikes.

Rhymefest, Man in the Mirror (2008). One of last year’s most popular hip-hop mixtapes came with an MJ theme: The critically acclaimed Chicago rapper (and Kanye West protege) interspersed his freestyling with (illicit) Jackson samples, imaginary dialogues with The Gloved One, and a closing cover of the poignant title song.