‘Cause this Is Thriller, Thriller Night

I’m still not exactly sure what that line means, but I know I’ve “sung” it many times over the past decade and a half. A friend of mine pointed out that the video for Thriller turned 25 just over a week ago. Holy crappola! 25? I remember anxiously awaiting the world premier – you know, back when MTV used to make music video premiers a big deal… actually, back when they just made music videos a big deal. He summed up the feeling with this line:

I remember the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, and realizing that Thriller is as ancient to kids in high school as Woodstock is to me is making me feel ancient.

Since the driving force behind the Internet (besides porn, of course) seems to be 30 somethings who failed to notice that they are no longer 20 somethings and gasp in amazement as they realize that their childhood actually took place many moons ago, now seems like the perfect time to point him and my other aging friends in the direction of kottke’s Timeline twins post.

His Back to the Future/To Kill a Mockingbird “comparison” hits me hardest. I remember seeing that Michael J. Fox opus in the theater with my best friend and then spending the rest of the summer pretending to hitch rides on cars while sitting on skateboards (my balance on those wheels was terrible) and dodging the angry principal. Did kids spend the summer of ’62 rolling down hills in tires and pretending to defend black men in rape trials? Suddenly my childhood seems rather mundane…

Anyway, to stem the bleeding of lameness that is a 32 year-old man complaining about “feeling old” I’d rather just switch to something awesome about Thriller instead. And that would be François Macré’s 64-track, a capella version of said song:

That’s a better use of 350 hours of time than just about anything I’ve ever done. In particular, the muted guitar and bass line are incredible. My only wish is that he had used the original vocals by Michael Jackson so that I could better hear just how close the musical part sounds.