The Night The Most Famous Man in the World Died

Last night was, in many ways, another normal night out in Norwich: largely uneventful, not a hugely fun and slightly depressing. We ended up in Mercy, a club I'd not been into since A-Level results day, and one that I didn't intend to go back to. It's a soulless place, populated by a) people you went to school with who don't seem to have changed at all b)dudes in striped button down shirts, too much hair gel and a sex attacker vibe to them and c)fat girls. The music is uniformly terrible, the drinks are expensive. In short, it's a dump.

But anyway, we get in there (for free luckily), get some beers down us and stand around for a while. Billie Jean comes on. Now, it's only 11PM by this point and I'm thinking that most DJs would save a tune like that for the peak hour. So I thought something might be up. Mercy has screens on the dancefloor which display either texts from punters ('LOL DARREN IS A TWAT' etc.) or, rather disturbingly, sock puppet porn. Last night it was just texts. One caught my eye. It was pretty simple: 'Michael Jackson is dead'. WTFFFFFF. I still didn't believe it. Then a friend text me confirming that the King of Pop had died. Now, I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan but thinking about him being dead bummed me out a bit. I wasn't going to have a great night anyway, but this was the nail in the coffin.

I'm still unsure about how I feel about Michael Jackson. Sure, he made some very, very, very good pop songs but it is impossible, for me at least, to seperate the music from the man. And there's no doubt about it: Michael Jackson was a complete fuck up. A fascinating one though.

So yeah, I'm donning a single glove and recording a cover of 'The Way You Make Me Feel'.