Janice Williams Loves Austin

Man, what a difference a day makes! I certainly had no idea that I would be thinking and writing about Michael Jackson today. I would like to scan some photos and put them here, as well, but that may take longer. The talk of the world is Michael Jackson’s death yesterday.

Was I a fan? No, I’ve never considered myself a fan of Michael Jackson and I don’t find myself sad about his death except in the sense that I am sad about the life he led and how exploited he was from childhood and how they turned him into such a strange person. But, I did have a long interesting “relationship” with Michael Jackson in my professional life and his death and all the stories about him bring up those memories in abundance.

It surprises me when these “old” newsmen on television talk about growing up hearing Michael Jackson music. That just doesn’t seem to make sense except that they are MY age (like Brian Williams on NBC) or even younger and of course we grew up with Michael Jackson. I’ve known who he was since I was 6 or 7 years old. The Jackson 5 was regularly in our 16 and Tiger Beat magazines. When we lived in Colorado, my friend Jane was a big Jackson 5 fan and had some of their little records. Though I always enjoyed them on the radio and when they were on the Ed Sullivan Show and other TV shows, I never bought any of their music.

If you were also of that era, you know the Jackson 5 sort of faded in the mid-70s. I just got out my Billboard book of Top 40 hits to check my accuracy of memory and I was right. The Jackson 5 had Never Can Say Goodbye in 1971 (#2), Sugar Daddy in 1972 (#10 and I don’t even remember it), Dancing Machine was #2 in 1974 and Enjoy Yourself at #6 in 1977 (my senior year and I don’t remember it either)… The songs weren’t climbing as high and the hits weren’t coming as fast as their 4 number 1 songs in 1970. So the Jacksons were out of the mainstream music picture through my teenage years.

Then Michael Jackson came out with the solo album Off the Wall and the#1 song Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough in September of 1979. I had just started at KPUR in Amarillo, the Top 40 station that was THE disco station of the era. We were maybe the only station in town playing his music. Our biggest competitor, Z-93, was also Top 40, but they saw themselves more as a rock station and shied away from most of the disco hits from Donna Summer and Tavares and Earth, Wind, and Fire. But we played Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough and Rock With You and She’s Out of My Life. At the time, I thought it was just an interesting thing that “little” Michael Jackson had grown up, he was 20 now, and was going solo. The Jacksons had a hit that year, too, with Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground), but it was primarily on the heels of Michael’s hit, I think.

—  I just took at least an hour break to find my old diaries and check some facts.  Too bad my diary was sketchy… “Jackson concert was good” doesn’t quite tell me all I needed to know.—

But the Thriller album made 1983 and 1984 the years of Michael Jackson. We were still the only station in town that trumpeted the fact that we played Michael Jackson. I think Z-93 was playing his songs by then, but still trying to position themselves as “cooler” than that.

We worked out promotions with Pepsi and Delta to send winners to Dallas for the Jackson concert with Michael Jackson and we gave away jackets and maybe gloves and lots of Pepsi and other prizes. We had a Michael Jackson look-a-like contest. We had a contest where I would show up, unannounced, at a Toot ‘n’ Totum, call the station and give my location and the first person to come up and say “I want to Beat It to Dallas to see Michael Jackson with Pepsi and 14KPUR” would win tickets. That was an interesting time because people would wait at the station and follow me and I’d have to lose them with maneuvers before I got to the right Toot ‘n’ Totum. And when I would call in, I would SEE heads in cars turn and look when I said that I was at the Toot ‘n’ Totum that they realized they were right beside. That year, EVERYONE was listening to KPUR, it seemed. That year, we were the #1 station in town for the first time in a long while and the last time ever. The competitors would blow it off as being lots of teens (since we were number one from age 12 and on up) but being #1 was being #1 and we were very happy about it.

I remember that CDs and CD players came along about that time. I went to a stereo store one day just to see if the quality was that good. The clerk gave me a choice of several CDs that I could listen to– obviously I needed to hear something I was familiar with to see what it sounded like on CD. I chose Thriller and it sounded incredible through headphones on a CD.

I went to that Jacksons’ concert in Dallas in 1984. My diary did include the fact that Eddie Van Halen came onstage and played Beat It with Michael Jackson. He played it on the recording and happened to be in Dallas for the weekend with Van Halen and made a surprise performance.

I suppose it was also sometime later that year that Michael Jackson had the accident where his hair was on fire while filming a Pepsi commercial. I was taking a nap, I remember, and woke up to hear that news on the radio station. In those days I was the station program director so I was always thinking “promotions!” and I called up the station and had the jock on the air immediately announce that we were creating a giant get well card for Michael Jackson to sign. I don’t remember now if we had people come to the station to sign it or if we had remotes or what, but we tied into that tragedy, too. If it involved Michael Jackson that year, we were part of it.
I left KPUR in 1985 and was out of radio for a long while and then in country radio so his later albums didn’t have much of an impact on me and I barely knew the songs that came from them except what I would see when he sang on the Superbowl or other specials.

But along about 1988 —  exactly Sept 18, 1988, I just found the diary page — I made a trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At that time I was traveling and speaking to public groups for the Zig Ziglar Corporation. I also did seminars in Dallas where people came from all over the country. In August, probably, a girl had been in our Dallas seminar from Pittsburgh. I told her I would be coming that way in September and she said to call her and we’d get together. I did that a lot with our clients. When I got to Pittsburgh, I called her and she said, “Hey, would you be interested in going to a Michael Jackson concert tonight? I have an extra ticket.” Well, sure. I might not have gone through the hassle of buying a tickets, etc., but to have it just given to me that way, transportation provided, too, you bet. So she and a friend of hers and I went to the big arena in Pittsburgh (I think it is where the Pittsburgh Penguins played, at least then) and we had tickets on the 22nd row! Unbelievably good seats. It was really one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life. Michael Jackson was a showman and it was part circus, part concert, part stage play. I big extravaganza with lots of dancers and singers. What I remember most vividly was something like him getting in a big cage and the cage being lifted and was suspended up over the stage and then *POOF* a tiger was in the cage and Michael Jackson was down here on the other side of the stage. I wrote in my diary that I couldn’t believe that he and I were the same age, the way he moved and danced and was so athletic…. almost the same thing I wrote about Bruce Springsteen when I saw his show in April (except he’s ten years older than me and I can’t do those things).

Another Michael Jackson memory– like I said, I’m surprised myself at how many there are– was Halloween in 1984. I have a picture somewhere of me and my roommates dressed up in front of our house. Diane was a bumblebee, Beth was a bunch of grapes, and I was Michael Jackson. It was a last minute, thrown together costume, but it got the idea across. I had a shiny jacket, a glove that I sprinkled with glitter, a cap, shades, and, politically incorrectly, I blacked my face. My cousin Donna always had a big Halloween get-together for the family and I went to her party. My little cousin Trent was an adorable 4-year-old. When they told him I was Michael Jackson his eyes got big and all night long he was showing me things, “Here, Michael Jackson, look at this,” or taking me to see things, “Come see this, Michael Jackson.” When I left that night, he was waving and saying, “Bye, Michael Jackson, bye!” and his mother said, “Trent, you know that’s Janice, right?” Trent suddenly looked embarrassed and abashed and it was easy to see a dream had been crushed. I wish we had just let him think that Michael Jackson had been at his party that night.

Newscasters and commentators have said, “Who doesn’t have a favorite Michael Jackson song or a special memory that a Michael Jackson song brings back to you?” and I really can’t say that I do. Like so many songs I played on the radio, they remind me of that era, but not specific memories because I played them so many times. I certainly did like Billie Jean, but that is probably the only song I really liked of the grown-up Michael Jackson. But I guess they all bring back 1984 and that great year at the radio station.