Moonwalking On The Www

In fact, one of the greatest pop icons of this century has a greater number of websites than, say, Cindy Crawford, eulogising the singer, composer, entertainer, performer and teacher, as one of the websites put it. Grope through the simplest search engines and you still end up with almost a hundred web sites where Jackson figures prominently. A quick search through Yahoo and Webcrawler revealed no official web site, but his sponsor Sony Entertainment Corp.s website (http://www.sony.com) came close enough to that.

These are exquisitely designed pages, and one surfing without the Norton Audio Player and good multimedia equipment would be sorely missing something. Click on the Enter button on the opening screen, and you have a splendid menu, which lists goodies such as A Special Message from Michael the Jacko fan can listen to an audio file of Jackson welcoming you to the site. There are separate sections for HIStory, Scream and the rest of the works. A peek into the Whats New section proved disappointing there was no mention of the concert to be held in Mumbai. Sony would do well to keep a better track of things. This was a major flaw of many of the web sites they never got the dates right, and when the did, they got it wrong. However, there is more than enough to quench the fans thirst you can download video clips, or alternatively, can listen o the King of Pop speak about his music.

 

Once you are through with Sonys website, move on to something less formal and squeaky clean like the Michael Jackson World site at http://www.ozemail.com.au. Here, all the fodder is available on the opening screen itself, and one doesnt have to dig through layers of html to find his stuff. There are downloadable song clips, lyrics galore, quality JPEG images and GIFs, links to other Jackson sites, articles on the King. You can either read a biography, or alternatively, download the entire text of Moonwalk for offline reading. The more ardent can participate in a quiz, or post a message to him. Like the page says quite hopefully, Jackson himself is known for a bit of surfing, and there is a chance that he might see it. A quick browse through the messages already posted ranging from profound I LOVE YOU!s to more serious marriage proposals would be entertaining for anyone crazed, drooling fan or not.

At ttp://www.cybercomm.nl/~mgroen/, one lands up on the Michael Jackson InterPlaza, and take a look at the Dutch Michael Jackson Fan Club. There are more fan club web sites too, the Dominican MJ homepage and the International Internet MJ Fan club at http://fred.net/mjj are just a beginning.

There are fanzines too or whatever you call them on the WWW the Black or White Billboard magazine, one of the best, too is available for an exclusive look at http://www.en.com/users/brown-mt/bowb/bowb.htm.

Surfing through a pop stars pages surely has its disappointments. Like, its taxing on the surfer as you try to figure out where to go, what to download, which multimedia files to view and finally, struggle with inadequate multimedia equipment.

There is a wealth of information though, and more than enough gimmicks to please the most die-hard buff all except, maybe, full screen video. But at Rs 1,500, a ticket for the show looks more of a bargain than upgrading your old 486 to watch Michael moonwalk on your monitor.