The Day I Saw MJ & My ‘First’ King of Pop’s Cassette Tape

Weeks before Christmas 1996, I got wind that Michael Jackson was to appear at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. I remember dragging myself there and got a seat in the second row. Seated next to me were a bunch of Aussie girls who must have been a few years younger than me. They were very excited. I remember thinking that they were more excited to see the boy band supporting Jacko’s appearance because they sang to their songs with gusto. Their enthusiasm attracted the TV cameras and I found myself on Australian TV that evening. LOL. I think the boy band was Human Nature and I thought they were like an Aussie version of New Kids on the Block at the time. LOL.

When the man finally appeared on stage, I was quite surprised to see such a shy person. His stature was also quite small, not quite what I had expected. I can’t remember much of what he had said when he was on stage. I guess I was totally taken in by his presence. His songs were my introduction to the pop music world and I never dreamed that he would be standing only a few metres away from me. It was very surreal.

One year in the 80’s, my brother, who is a decade older than me, played the Michael Jackson Thriller album when he came home (not Australia) for his Summer holidays. That coincided with the time when my English was starting to take off and I fell in love with that album, but I was not allowed to operate our family’s or my brother’s record player. I remember having to wait till my brother came home from all his so-called social commitments before I could beg him to put the music on. Then one afternoon when nosey me went to annoy the people working for us, I found a crappy looking cassette with Lionel Ritchie on its cover. I didn’t know who he was then but I could tell from the cover design that it must have featured music similar to Michael Jackson’s. So I asked someone where they bought the tape and they told me that they got it from the Pasar Malam (night market). I planned to talk someone into taking me to the market but I knew no one would have dared to because I was pretty small then. Then one day my mum took me to see the GP because I was running a fever. As we were returning to the car, I walked past a man selling a few items on top of a box. My mum was busy talking to a parking officer and I went over to see what the man was selling. He was selling cassette tapes and one of them featured a picture of Michael Jackson. Wow! I wanted that. My mum didn’t listen to my pleading at first but when I suggested that I would use the record player after my brother had returned to Canada, she gave me the money. She even dropped me off in front of the man, double parking in front of the parking officer that she was talking to earlier. I was so happy on the way home because I thought that I finally had my own Michael Jackson album. Up till then I had only been listening to Disney cassette tapes my father had ordered from overseas. I felt really grown up. LOL. When I got home, I dashed in to try my new tape in my own tape player. I was totally disgusted to learn that even though the tape featured the King of Pop’s songs, he sang on none of them! When I was older, I suspected that the songs were sung by ‘artists’ from a neighbouring country. So, there you see, fakes existed even back then! I did learn from that experience. I became a snobby little consumer instantly. It was also an embarrassing moment that I tried to hide from my family because I didn’t want them to ridicule me. Eventually my brother did teach me how to handle the record player before he left for another school year abroad and I had access to his huge collection that I could dance and sing to ‘til I dropped. LOL. It didn’t matter that I got most of the words wrong when I sang and didn’t even understand most of the lyrics.