RHUM

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is undoubtedly a criminal thing for anyone to christen an album, let alone one as good as this. But then again, to paraphrase old Bill S., what’s in a name? Those whom we call Phoenix by any other name would still sound as sweet.

I started to scrawl this in the hours after the death of Michael Jackson, with pen and paper due to an absentee laptop. So what would probably have been some sort of factual obituary has instead by necessity become more of a stream-of-consciousness spillage. And although I hesitated in choosing this topic to write about, the impact of the death of Michael Jackson has been too great to ignore. In the short time that has passed since official confirmation of his death, I have read some 47,735 Facebook notifications, heard a hell of a lot of (mostly bad, recycled) jokes, and attended an impromptu street party/MJ tribute.