It was payday for many people. It was also a bad day for any other celebrity to choose to die - like Farrah Fawcett. It was a day similar to May 16, 1983, when something was done that people thought was so cool that a world frenzy was ignited unlike any other before.

Or maybe the true parallel to June 25, 2009, ought to be August 29, 1958, the day when the King of Pop was born. I was not born then, and, from all reports, to all but the relatives of the Jackson family, it must have been an ordinary day, and they even gave him what they must have then thought was an ordinary name - which it is - Michael Jackson. But that is the beauty about life isn't it. How extraordinary things happen on just ordinary days.

So, in years to come, millions of people across the world will be relating exactly what they were doing, where they were going on June 25, 2009, when something extraordinary happened - the death of Michael Jackson. Just like how I remember very vividly where I was and what I was doing on May 11, 1981, when the reggae king, Bob Marley, died.

Jackson mania

I was a teen in the height of Jackson mania, but as a lover of music I was turned on to the magic that was Michael long before the release of the incredible Thriller album that got a record-breaking number of awards and will forever be etched in history as the highest-selling album of all time. This record can't be broken again, courtesy of the Internet and the sale of downloaded songs rendering albums near obsolete as a purchase option - people just buy songs that they want.

Actually, the preceding MJ album, Off The Wall, is a sweet package but for those who observe marketing we know that the product is more than just the product.

Michael Jackson's appearance at the Motown 25th anniversary show on May 16, 1983, where he first performed his rendition of the dance named the 'Moonwalk' reconfigured the product known as Michael Jackson to something that was to be explosive and laced with mystique for people across the globe for a lifetime and some more. The impression left on teenagers such as me and My Friend P, though he will deny it, was profound.

critical ingredient

Truth is though, that like a lot of other exceptional marketing experiences, it was a collusion of events that produced the cocktail that became MJ. A critical ingredient in that cocktail was the birth of the concept called a music video. New and exciting to the world, the presentation of the video Thriller defined MJ and his music in a way that no other artiste has done or will do again.

seize the moment

Music videos are par for the course now, so even if one is produced superior to Thriller, and we are sure there have been many, it can never seize the moment as MJ did, because the moment of awe about a music video is gone forever. Pretty much like the blah blah blah it will be for the next black president of the United States, whoever he will be, unless it does not happen again for another 100 years and no one is alive who remembers Obama!

Everything about the Thriller album became magical as the months passed after its release and people just bought more and more and more. It had the words to all the songs on the inner sleeve with a cartoon of MJ in the centre. As a teenager, you just had to have a piece of that album in your household, and you would touch that needle down on the last track on Side A, or would it be the second track on Side B? It was one of those albums that you knew every vinyl grain of.

The catalogue of music left behind by MJ is mindboggling. Thriller was certainly a high-quality product, but it was also an ordinary record that left extraordinary records after its release in November 1982. In MJ's music chest there are so many other classics, so many others. I am happy to have been young and experienced the gift that was Michael Jackson, and while I am saddened at his passing, it probably is an equally amazing experience to have been alive when he died.

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