I swear this will be my last Michael Jackson post. It seems the Jackson’s concert promoter released a clip of Jackson last rehearsal. I’m sure they have enough footage to put together a concert video of the concert that never was and make a mint from it.
I find it ironic that the clip they chose to release is Jackson’s 1996 song “They Don’t Care About Us” which is sung as “They don’t REALLY care about us.” The video was directed by Spike Lee and the song has a tremendous soul piercing beat. In fact, the music overwhelms the lyrics and the lyrics are really important and more believable in hindsight because of what would ultimately happen to Jackson relative to the legal system. The lyrics tell the story of a Jackson as an angry Black man and that was the problem. So, there are actually two videos to this song.
The first video is set with Jackson in prison and directed with a typical Spike Lee heavy-handedness, BUT the video is fantastic and clearly had the moves Jackson was going to use in his concerts. Sadly, this video was too “Black” for the MTV suits and Jackson produced a lighter toned (no pun intended) video that was shot in Brazil after pulling the first one. The second video completely took the edge off the song and led the song being a commercial failure (in comparison to other Jackson hits).
The rehearsal video can be found here.
This is the “prison” video:
And this is the Brazil video.
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Anyway, upon reflection that first concert was probably going to be really good if the rehearsal was any indication.
ETA: The prison video has been pulled, but I found another one, but no telling how long it will be around before it too get pulled. Rest assured, if you didn’t see it, it was a very good vid. 🙁
