As a kid born in the early 80s, a young black man, and DJ, when I heard that Michael Jackson died I was floored. It’s really hard to put into words what his run in 80s meant to me and other kids like me. As a DJ, Michael was the ultimate back door, a key that would fit every locked dance floor, to be reached for only in emergencies and handled with great care. As a dancer, when Fred Astaire calls you his heir, there’s not much left to say. What he did with his feet seemed impossible. Sometimes it was.
Never more mystifying was his impossible lean from the Smooth Criminal video (@ approx. 7:15). At first I thought that it was camera tricks, but then I heard that he did it live at shows – no wires, no cables. Just lean. How does a man defy gravity like that live on stage? In the posthumous craze, one of the more interesting bits of information that shook loose was the innovation that made that possible:
Michael invented and patented a special shoe and rig. Google Patent Search provides the details.
Richard has often talked about his interest in music as a “fruit-fly” industry. That is to say that the the study of the music industry is analogous to the scientific study of fruit flies to better understand more complex biological systems. Through studying music we can understand how innovations flow through other creative industries. Musical creatives don’t just innovate musically, but they’re often linked to technological innovation. This is true about individual innovations, from Jimi Hendrix to Grand Master Flash, as well as system wide innovations, as was evidenced by the MP3 revolution. This is just another example of the same from arguably the greatest of all time.
R.I.P. Mike.
