HIStory on Film: Volume II

Teaser

I think that the HIStory teaser is probably one of the greatest pieces of advertising and marketing ever produced because it works on a number of different levels. It works well as a preview to draw everyone attention towards the HIStory album but it also works in a different way. As everyone knows Michael had great problems with the child abuse allegations prior to the release of the HIStory album. It threatened to wreck his career and Michael had a really big problem on his hand with the tabloid press continually harassing him and not allowing the pressure of the allegations to die down. So I believe that Michael knew he couldn�t stop the press from printing about him, but in a way he did manage to control them. He have them something else to report on. I believe Michael especially created the controversy concerning his image in the video which shows hundreds of guards protecting him from his adoring fan. Remember in the interview with Prime Time, when told it was causing a furrier, he said, �Good, that what I wanted�. He made the press report something else other than the allegations and it worked. The video looks fantastic as we have come to expect from Michael�s videos...pure genius.

I was quite suprised when I watched this video. I had previously seen it on the �Making of Thriller� video but what I hadn�t realised was that it had been edited. The video shown in this collection is unedited and complete class. The day we all realised his true class and ability.

Although this is a truly brilliant video I was extremely disappointed that it featured on volume II as well as Volume I which isn�t very good, I would have preferred to have seen something else in it�s place such Dirty Diana or another video which isn�t on Volume I.

I was however very happy to see this video in it�s full original format as I had only seem excerpts on various Michael Jackson television special. A really good video featuring almost every big star from the 80�s such as Danny Glover, Dan Akroyd, Don King, John Travolta, Olivia Newton John, Stephen Spielberg, Whoppi Goldberg, David Copperfield, Bridget Neilson and a whole lot more. It really shows the depth of his support from the entire entertainment industry.

I think everyone has seen this video a million times and some how I new get bored from seeing it. The dance sequences are some of the best we have seen from Michael and the whole video looks great as usual, however it is already commercially available on Moonwalker and all of the fan will most likely own it and watch it regularly, so again something else here would have been more appropriate.

The 1995 MTV performance simply shows that Michael hasn�t lost any of the magic he had in the Motown 25 performance featured earlier in the tape. Featuring a terrific medley of his solo work and excellent dance routines such as his 1995 version of Dangerous and You are Not Alone live. Well worth placing on the compilation a welcome return live performance from the king.

I know that this video is the video of the decade and the greatest short film of all time but haven�t we all got this video already on Volume I and also The Making of Thriller. I think that placing this video on the collection was more of a commercial move rather than anything for the fan who already own it, twice already.

Scream is of course a fantastic video and worth seeing over and over again, a true classic and an enjoyment to revel in the superb special effects featured in the $8 million short film. Shot in black and white and featuring Janet Jackson as well it looks as good as it sounds.

This isn�t one of my favourite songs on the new album but the video is. Again it looks great, however this time the video is in colour and features Michael just sat in a forest singing �Childhood� as Children float in boats above the forest all playing together. A mellow video to a mellow song. The video suits the song and it makes interesting viewing.

I was quite intrigued watching this short films as it featured extra footage not shown when I original saw it. Footage of Michael as an angel with wings, perhaps filmed to create more controversy and then scraped last minute, I�m not sure but it certainly helps the look of the video which already looks like a moving painting with Michael and Lisa Marie naked throughout.

This video is probably the most powerful video Michael has ever produced and it therefore suits the strong lyrics and important message the song �Earth Song� tries to portray. It looks great and it has some disturbing images boasting that it does not feature any actors or stages and is in fact all filmed in the intended location, many of which was destroyed after the filming of �Earth Song�. The cinematography and feel of the films creates strong emotions within the viewer and Michael should be proud of this video.

I was disappointed that only the Rio version is featured here as I have never seen the prison version of the video, also directed by Spike Lee, again the video looks great and is extended beyond the usual length to some 7 minutes featuring Michael Dancing to the drumming featured in the video. A good video to a great song, but not his best. What happened to the prison version?

This video is however one of his best and looks great. The video is directed by Nick Brandt whom also directed Earth Song featured earlier in the collection. The video really retains the feel of the song and carries the song easily through it�s 5 and a half minutes almost without noticing. The slow motion effects and great visual images show the director to show great promise. I hope to see more from Nick. The video is a great end to the collection of HIStory singles featured here.

This video is a collection of Michael�s songs and video�s remixed together to form a collage of his solo work which is some 10 minutes long and is great to tap your foot to. Very well done and well made and edited.

I am not too keen on this remix however the video is great and show�s that Michael can also direct well as one of his many talents. It is well edited and features footage not seen in the original version. However I can�t help wondering why the original version isn�t featured on this collection perhaps there will be a Volume III featuring the Blood On The Dance Floor singles and the rest of the HIStory singles such as the forthcoming double A Side �Ghost� and �HIStory�

Brace Yourself has now been featured on �Dangerous - The Short Films� as well as �Video Greatest Hits HIStory� it badly needs updating as it features too many close ups of the Dangerous album cover for which the collage was intended. It is however great and is tailor made for frame advance video recorders.

A very good compilation in all. However we needed a little less previously released material and much more new material such as the Brit Awards performance of Earth Song and the prison version of They Don�t Care About Us. It is however an essential buy especially for the fans, if only for the new material from HIStory.

Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix

Blood On The Dance Floor

Blood On the Dance Floor is the first single from the album of the same name. This song is very typical 90�s Michael Jackson and could be compared in it�s style to Dangerous or Tabloid Junkie with Michael almost spitting the lyrics out in such a way that it always makes intresting listening. A very good start to the album in which I hope to see more singles. A great summer dance song which is co-written with Teddy Riley known for his work on Dangerous. Watch out for the video, it�s a blast.

The second track on the album is Morphine which is totally written my Michael and features guitars by Slash and Michael Jackson himself, it also features drums by Michael and is a fascinating song to listen to although the lyrics are a little hard to pick up at first, however I recommend that you download the lyrics from my lyrics page. The song is a very hard rocking song with an unusual ballad break in the middle of the song which is perhaps a little unusual . The song floats easily through it�s six and a half minutes and is a very powerful song with a strong message within the lyrics

Superfly Sister is co-written by Bryan Loren whom I haven�t heard of before but he is clearly a very talented man. Bryan Loren also plays guitars and most of the intruments in this mild pop song. This isn�t personally one of my favourite songs from the new material and I would be suprised if it is realised as a single. The song is a little milder than the previous song and is also six and a half minutes long. This song is the replacement for the song �In The Back� which was replaced as the last minute. Again the lyrics are a little difficult to pick up by the song is good to listen to and it seems to get a little better everytime I hear it.

Ghost is a great song which really lifts the album after the previous song and is a fantastic song which could be compared to Thriller in it�s style of using sound effects to enhance the song. This song is of course the theme to his new short film �Ghosts�. This song is the second song which is co-written by Teddy Riley and is a real show stopper with fantastic lyrics which most people should be able to follow, a real treat for the fans and well worth listening to over and over again.

This song really has a long history and goes way back to when the movie "Adams Family Values" was being made. Michael had written this song for the sound track but dues to certain problems the song was never included. The song was also left from the HIStory album because Michael had to limit the number of tracks on HIStory, so it was left dormant until now. The song is a great song and I would say easily one of his best songs ever. The vocals really make this record in to the class that it is with Michael bringing is vocals up and down much like he did in �Will You Be There� with Michael almost screaming parts out of it. The interesting thing about this song is that it contains a great deal of the lyrics from the previous song �Ghost� yet it is so different. Almost as though this was a prototype for �Ghost�. Great Lyrics and a great song.

This album has been criticised for having too many remixes and not enough new material but most people seem to forget the full title of the album �Blood On The Dance Floor: HIStory In The Mix�, it was originally only going to be a remix album with a couple of new tracks to help promote his HIStory tour in Europe but of course Michael being the total perfectionist that he is felt he could give more so we ended up with five new track. I don�t personally like many of the remixes and don�t bother listening to them much, especially the �Stranger In Moscow� and �Earth Song� remixes which sound totally wrong as dance songs. However the new material is enough of a reason to own this album, so I would say go out and buy it now.

The Village Voice Review of Blood on the Dance Floor - HIStory in the Mix

Village Voice, June 10, 1997

Hear, My Dears

Michael Jackson, Blood on the Dance Floor (Epic) by Armond White

"We still don't have a word for justifiable paranoia,'' a critic reasoned in defense of the pop martyr movie Serpico. But that word is ''fear.'' A healthy response to evidence of danger and malicious assault. What we still don't have--even after the sinister undertones of Off the Wall, ''Billie Jean,'' Bad, and Dangerous--is a simple understanding of what Michael Jackson has made of his fame, talent, and sensitivity. His latest records are pop's most intense personal expressions of fear, but people don't quite get it--don't want to.

Jackson's Blood on the Dance Floor remix project might change all that. His singing on the first five tracks of new material has never been so tormented, or audacious. The title cut, an ominous dance scenario, evokes the mythic Saturday nite knife fight; it's a sound we know from the rising organ and sassy shuffle of ''Thriller'' and ''Smooth Criminal.'' But with the dozen atmospheric hallucinations that follow, the album feverishly assesses a world gone mad. These are not occult heebie-jeebies; Jackson's expressions of shock are sincere social reflexes.

Conspicuously missing is Jackson's most famous remix--the blitzed-clean ''They Don't Care About Us'' done two years ago in response to media protests that twisted the song's original world-weary gripe into bigotry, though he had use questionable ethnic-slur strategies previously accepted in pop stars from John Lennon to Patti Smith (''Woman Is the Nigger of the World,'' ''Rock n' Roll Nigger''). Jackson backed down from controversy as he always does (he put a disclaimer on his Thriller video, he cut off the final sequence of his great Black or White). But the sting of those media allegations, and the clampdown following them, only increased the already nervous superstar's distress. For Jackson, fighting the media--the superego of the status quo--means fighting a genuine phantom; he calls it ''the ghost of jealousy.''

''Who gave you the right to shake my family tree?'' he asks on ''Ghosts,'' retreating from the Black pop artist's good-time tradition for a highly personal statement like Marvin Gaye's now classic divorce purgation, Here, My Dear. Jackson puts private neurosis in public dance form, indignation shaping his musical structure. Blood on the Dance Floor queers the social act of celebration and yet yearns for the connection. ''Superfly Sister'' repeatedly raps ''ya dirty, ya nasty,'' full of both attack and recrimination (the vitriol is spelled by the guitar riff from ''Kiss''; Jackson has borrowed more than a little of Prince's audacity). Innocence's rebellion becomes an intentionally obscene religious and sexual struggle. ''Morphine'''s R-rated schizoid sequence leads into the showstopping specters of ''Ghosts,'' topped by the insolent power of ''Is It Scary?'' (''If you want to see eccentric oddities/I'll be grotesque before your eyes.'') ''Thriller'' was a joke, but the sweet boy inside the Halloween mask has stopped playing.

Jackson puts a finer point on the paranoia of HIStory's ''Scream,'' remixed by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis into ''Scream Louder,'' incorporating the same Sly and the Family Stone martial beat that rallied ''Rhythm Nation.'' Jackson and Jam and Lewis let ''Scream Louder'' reveal its hiphop heart in nonstop percussive breaks--the vexation of everyday people. Jackson--ruling the hiphop era without being of it--continues its alarm, even while Black pop has proceeded toward its current sexually romantic placation. Blood on the Dance Floor has the vitality of an intelligence that refuses to be placated. Its popular success would be a sign that today's audience (Black or white) is braced to fight the decade's free-floating miasma. This doesn't make Michael a ''leader,'' it only certifies his prescience, his keenness as an artist. Blood on the Dance Floor is a throwdown, a dare to the concept of innocuous Black pop.

And the remixes ring political changes on the HIStory tunes. The dance version of ''You Are Not Alone'' places the song in a social context; making it less personal (that is, less romantic) it becomes more confidential--a superstar's cry for a listener's empathy. ''2 Bad'' is a Fugees remix simplified by new vocals and a lonely guitar figure playing the bassline from ''Beat It'' that rethinks the King of Pop's 1982 ascension and gives Michael the plangent consciousness of reggae. The club mix of his eccentrically lovely ''Stranger in Moscow'' is infectious, conciliatory, urging the listener to dance to his anomie. Adding churchy piano vamps, this is as good as Billie Holiday: you cannot come away from it happy. And even without Biggie Small's guest rap, ''This Time Around'' pumps, exchanging African beats for dance thrust, significantly claiming new marginality and might. A gospel remix of ''Blood''--on the single only--undercuts the shock, hinting at redemption.

On ''History,'' Michael counsels ''Everyday create your history.'' That could be Clintonian fatuousness but this closing track begins with Jackson's Loleatta Hollowaylike exhortations--he means remake your history. "Every legend tells of conquest and liberty." Our Michael asks, ''How many victims must there be?'' In this era of grievance most victims mercilessly stop at revenge. Michael gets past fear and in the middle of Tony Moran's remix--in Francis Fukiyama's face--he raps, ''Keep moving!'' It's epiphany and advice. This great artist won't be an easy target to hit.

(New York Times, Late Edition - Final ED, COL 01, P 11, Tuesday May 20 1997)

By Neil Strauss

The least interesting music on Michael Jackson's new remix CD, "Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix," released Tuesday on Epic records, is the remixes themselves, all of new songs from his recent double-album, "HIStory-Past, Present, Future: Book I." The strength of this CD is in its five new songs, which put Jackson halfway on the road to a very interesting concept album. There is real pain and pathos in these new songs, feelings difficult to convey underneath so much studio production and gloss.

Jackson's pain is often the world's merriment, and this is probably true of his new songs, which fret about painkillers, sexual promiscuity and public image. In many of them, Jackson seems like the elephant man, screaming that he is a human being. Of course, the public is willing to accept Jackson as a human being. But is he a human being like everyone else? "Am I scary for you?" Jackson asks in "Is It Scary," sounding more like the ghoulish rocker Marilyn Manson than the Motown prodigy that he is. "If you want to see eccentric oddities," he continues, "I'll be grotesque before your eyes."

A character named Susie stars in two different songs, most notably in the title track as a woman seducing and then killing men on the dance floor. Lyrics like "every hot man is out takin' a chance" point to Susie as a metaphor for AIDS, but she also seems to represent a fear of sex. "You're dirty," Jackson squeals at a someone making love in "Superfly Sister." "You really don't want it." More chilling is the song "Morphine." Like Nancy Sinatra in a song about the same narcotic, "Some Velvet Morning," Jackson sings seductively from the point of view of the drug itself. "Close your eyes and drift away," he intones sweetly. Then he chants, "Demerol, Demerol," referring to the opiate that Elizabeth Taylor used to take regularly for headaches and that Jackson was reported in court papers to have been addicted to.

In keeping with Jackson's darker mood, the music has grown more angry and indignant. With beats crashing like metal sheets and synthesizer sounds hissing like pressurized gas, this is industrial funk. And it's a lot more innovative than the remixes by the Fugees, Todd Terry and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis that follow. From such studio wizards, it's disappointing to hear old 80s tricks used to extend songs and turn ballads into club anthems --weak bonus raps, stuttering sampled vocals and extended passages of boring drum-machine beats -- especially since, creatively, Jackson has entered a new realm. In the song "Thriller" 15 years ago, Jackson played a narrator describing a beast jumping off movie screens and into real life. In "Blood on the Dancefloor," Jackson confronts that monster, which turns out to be himself -- or at least his image as he sees it reflected in the mirror of other people's eyes.

Stripped of the pre-release hoopla that has preceded every Michael Jackson album in the past 15 years, and happily devoid of the lyrically misguided moments that marred "HIStory," Jackson's collection of remixes and new material comes across as a refreshingly back-to-basics work. That should be good news to fans yearning for a more dance-oriented sound, of which they'll find plenty on such slammin' new cuts as the title track, "Morphine," "Superfly Sister," "Ghosts," and "Is It Scary." Similarly, the remixes offer lots of hip-shaking action, especially the new versions of "Scream," "2 Bad," and "HIStory"-remixed by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the Fugees, and Tony Moran, respectively. A step in the right direction for an artist whose talents have been overshadowed by controversy.

"Jackson has played it safe by collaborating with Teddy Riley on production (of the single), and the original version of the song cruises at a mildly pleasant funk/hip-hop pace, allowing for an ear-grabbing spree of dry-heaving grunts and a thickly layered, deliciously infectious chorus... On the groove tip, Tony Moran, Farley & Heller, and the Fugees ride to the rescue with remixes that push "Blood on the Dance Floor" over the creative top. The Fugees float the song's melody over a chilled, finger-snappin' classic-funk bassline, while Farley & Heller sharpen the warmly harmonious hook with a rubberly Euro-house bassline. Moran hits the home-run of this package with another of his disco-baked post-productions, molding the song into a roof-raising epic that is destined to dominate turntables and saturate radio airwaves within seconds" - Larry Flick - Dance Trax (Billboard April 12, 1997, p. 23)

"Produced by the artist [Michael Jackson] with Teddy Riley, this track chugs with a pleasant jeep-styled groove that provides a firm foundation for a lip-smacking vocal and a harmony- laden hook that is downright unshakable. In keeping with the theme of the album, a batch of remixes is also offered, effectively refashioning the song to suit a wide variety of radio and club formats. The Fugees strip the track down to its most basic elements, shining a light on the song's raw funk leanings, while Farley & Heller fly in the opposite direction by revving the party up to a spirited Euro-pop pace. By rebuilding the song into a hands-in-the-air disco anthem, Tony Moran provides the remix that will appeal to many listeners. Regardless of the version, expect to hear a whole lot of this winning jam over the next couple of months." - Robert Miles (Billboard, April 12, '97)

"Clubgoers have not been consumed with the negativity that a lot of media has continually heaped onto Michael. They can't be bothered with it. They just want to dance to his music. That's what this album is about -- giving people something great to dance to, which has always been one of Michael's greatest strenghts as an artist." - Frank Ceraolo, director of A&R/marketing at Epic, and largely responsible for the coordination.