We're Goin' to Jackson: MJ 60

We're off the wall today, with a very nice remaster of a great bootleg in honor of the 60th birthday of an ultimate icon.

Well, it would have been the 60th one, anyway. Has he really been gone nine years?

We all know the disturbing circumstances of his death and the latter part of his life. I don't think he molested any kids, having looked at the accusations and the fairly transparent motives of the accusers. But I wasn't there so I don't really know.

Probably the A1 example of how fame eats those who suffer with it alive, his music is playing in every corner of the world at all times and will be forever.

He may have suffered and been driven off the deep end by it all, but the legacy he left will make people whose lives will not overlap with his happy for ages into the future.

To commemorate the day, I worked on remastering a still-somehow-unissued show of his from the height of his solo career, before the hardest times, on his 1987 tour in support of Bad.

Michael Jackson
Yokohama Stadium
Yokohama, Japan
9.26+27.1987

01 Wanna Be Startin' Something
02 Things I Do for You
03 Off the Wall
04 Human Nature
05 Heartbreak Hotel (This Place Hotel)
06 She's Out of My Life
07 Jackson 5 medley
08 Rock with You
09 Lovely One
10 Workin' Day and Night
11 Beat It
12 Billie Jean
13 Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)
14 Thriller
15 I Just Can't Stop Loving You
16 Bad

Total time: 1:29:27
disc break goes after Track 09
Tracks 01, 04, 05, & 07-16 are from 9.27.1987
Tracks 02, 03 & 06 are from 9.26.1987

Michael Jackson - vocals
Greg Phillinganes - keyboards, synthesizers, musical director
Rory Kaplan - keyboards, synthesizers
Christopher Currell - Synclavier, digital guitar, sound effects
Ricky Lawson - drums, percussion
Jennifer Batten - guitar
Jon Clark - guitar
Don Boyette - bass, synth bass
Kevin Dorsey, Darryl Phinnessee, Dorian Holley & Sheryl Crow - vocals

2009 unofficial CD of an unidentified capture (likely a master cassette) of an original FM broadcast, merged with three tracks from a (likely master) mono VHS tape;
remastered/repaired by EN, August 2018
555 MB FLAC/August 2018 archive link

This circulates a million ways, most commonly with the tracks from the 26th inserted from a video, sourced from a mono VHS tape, that also circulates of that show. I reoriented the setlist to play in the proper order of the 9/27 performance, and remastered the three inserted tracks to match the FM-broadcast-sourced majority portion from the 27th.

I also crossfaded the transitions at the insertion points to play less jarringly haphazard, and removed the dozens of digital clips present in the 2009 source CD of the FM portion.

This now represents a complete, hour-and-a-half performance from the 1987 tour, and I think it does it justice to recirculate it in a more optimized form.

I'll be back tomorrow with something as weird and jazzy as this is legendarily poppy, but for now it's MJ's day -- he was born this day in 1958 and would only have been 60 today -- so let's be starting something up in here.--J.

8.29.1958 - 6.25.2009