The Hulk Helps Jacko Work On His Fitness!
Filed under: Michael Jackson



Michael Jackson has been looking pretty thin lately and needs to bulk up for his upcoming 50 concert residency at London's O2 arena.

Who does he turn to?!

Lou Ferrigno, of course!!!!!

The Incredible Hulk alum has taken the role of Jackson's physical trainer to prep him for his comeback shows starting in July.

We wonder what those sweat sessions are like!!!

"Lou and Michael have known each other for a long time," says Lou's wife, Carla, who confirmed the news. "Lou first trained Michael 15-years ago."

The two-time Mr. Universe has trained other celebrity clients, including Mickey Rourke and Chuck Norris.

Ferrigno trained Chuck Norris?!

Chuck Norris isn't trained, he is unleashed!!!!

http://perezhilton.com/20...is-fitness

lilgish said:

I'm seeing him Feb 20th, 2010 with one of my good friends. She's a big fan as well.

Swa said:

So, these kind of arguments with midnightmover haven't happened only to me.


* Swa kindly voiced this line

of wisdom:

Yep.

Swa said:

I'm coming from Australia too, but I have opening night tix. I've never been overseas.

As for not watching footage, I have done it for other concerts- I didn't watch anything on youtube or news reports prior to seeing Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake.

Never got why this one was mimed either...

unique said:

By far the lowest point of the History concerts I saw on video were the ones where he was standing completely still during "I'll Be There". If anything, the singing got better when he started running around the stage in the second half of the song, so I think the whole idea that he mimes because he's focused on dancing is a red herring. Hell, let me get the word "think" out of that sentence. One only has to look at the facts objectively to see it's a red herring.

Every time I see a clip from the HIStory tour I just remember how after the excitement wore off how burned I was at all the miming among other things.

midnightmover said:

i don't think i said anything to even slightly suggest he mimes because he is focused on dancing. i'll make it clear that i think it's due to breathe control. it's harder to sing whilst doing energetic cardio vascular excersize. it you look at madonna footage of live shows she usually resorts to shouting instead of singing, that's if it's not prerecorded. one thing i noticed about prince recently was that during or just after his most energetic dancing he will sing without sounding the slightest bit different to what he would if he was sitting down. look at his dancing with the gameboys as a good example of this. what's particularly impressive is his dancing is far more energetic than MJ's or madonna, with almost acrobatic or break dancing type moves at times, flips, splits and head over toes. MJ's dance routines are all very simple foot based routines that rely more on simple synchronised moves with multiple dancers than acrobatic style moves, or when he is freestyling it's usually slow body popping style moves, like the backslide etc. a professional performer shouldn't be out of breathe with moves like that, but the point is, if he can't sing and dance, he should quit the dancing rather than quitting the singing

Swa said:

You keep switching your arguments every time I directly disprove one. In your last post you clearly said that he only STARTED miming because of the dancing (in 1988). I demolished that point by pointing out that he actually mimed songs in 1988 that didn't feature much dancing at all. I was wondering how you would respond to that point, and once again, you haven't. You've just gone back to the same argument you backed away from last time (that the miming is still connected to the dancing). A quick look through the set list to see which songs he mimes and which he sings live quickly reveals this to be a fallacy. He sings WBSS, IWYB and TLYS live (all uptempo songs which feature a lot of dancing) and mimes YANA and HTW, ballads which feature no dancing. He also mimes SIM which only has dancing in the instrumental sections (and it's robotics which isn't even that tiring). This flat-out contradicts your dishonest argument that the dancing is the reason he lip-synchs. When you say he's "become reliant" on lip synching I agree. He's reliant because his voice is shot. The phrase "become reliant" is typical of the un-clarified, ambiguous terms you guys use in order to dodge real explanations.


Interesting. You're either confessing ignorance here by saying you don't know how much miming he did on those tours or you're just feigning ignorance in order to dodge uncomfortable truths. I suspect it's the latter. You claim not to know where those two songs he mimed on the Bad Tour were placed in the set but you say "maybe they were encore tracks". Well, you're right. They were encore tracks. That's one hell of a lucky guess for someone who claims not to know.

Also your suggestion that he maybe decided to lip synch them because of "a strain on his voice" actually backs up what I've been saying. It was VOCAL DIFFICULTIES that made him start miming. You're actually supporting my case there without even realizing it. We can quite clearly hear the strain his voice was under by listening to the decline from one leg of the tour to another. He started out in peak vocal form in '87 and then got worse in '88 and much worse when the tour ended in early '89. He had to mime to ease the strain on his vocal cords. As it turned out, this damage never completely healed and got worse as the years went by (hence the increased lip synching).


Let me clear up your misunderstanding. I don't deny that singers eventually reach a point of decline but I deny your implication that Michael is normal in that respect since both the age in which his decline started and (more importantly) the severity of the decline are unlike any I have ever seen. And by the way, there are plenty of child singers who go on singing consistently well into middle age. Stevie Wonder, Dolly Parton, and Donny Osmond are just a few examples. Dolly Parton is well into her 60s and is still note perfect, despite five decades of singing and probably even more plastic surgery than Michael.


I already responded to this point two posts ago and you ignored the response. I repeat. If every show has to be 100% perfect then why sing live at all? Why not just mime the whole thing? You also seem to be trying to have your cake and eat it too, by suggesting that the length of his tours may have played a part in his lip-synching. Your whole argument up to now has been that Michael's lip synching is a matter of CHOICE, not necessity. By blaming the long tours you seem to be agreeing with me that he mimed because he was struggling. And by the way, this argument is also a specious one, since he was miming from the very start of his tours after Bad. 2001 MSG wasn't even a tour (just two dates) and he mimed most of that.


Firstly, you're tripping if you think he still sings "I'll Be There" well. The fact that fans can't even bring themselves to put the officially recorded and broadcasted footage of him singing that song in 1997 on Youtube says it all. By the way, here's the clip I posted earlier of that song from the year before. Please do not tell me it "still sounds good". http://www.youtube.com/wa...Y4vbwMc2N0

Also, there were no live ad-libs in his "Earth Song" performances on tour, and those "extended" ad-libs you're talking about in "You Are Not Alone" actually last about 20 seconds. You call that "extended"?? But to answer your question. Michael can only sing now in short bursts. It doesn't mean he can't sing a note, but just that his vocal cords are so damaged he will never again be able to sing live for any extended period and even then it won't sound like it once did, particularly in more vocally demanding songs.
[Edited 6/19/09 6:35am]

unique said:

You just explained something that was perfectly clear the first time. You seem to have misunderstood my response. Here's what I said in my previous post. I think it responds to your point quite clearly.



Can't say it much more clearly than that. No dancing there and it sounded much worse than anything else in the concert.

The fans are so crazy for Michael, so excited to see him and be with their friends and some excited to be in a new country/arena they don't seem to notice or care. They are staunch in their support of him and that means chanting and screaming as loud and for as long as they can. Usually screaming straight through the performances. They don't know or care that he hasn't actually sung a note yet and they're 30 minutes into the show.

JackieBlue said:

That reminds me of being at the Dangerous show. There were these girls in front of me who didn't notice anything that was actually happening on stage because they were screaming through all of it. He could've dropped his pants and given the Nazi salute and they wouldn't have known.

His vocals were ok on the Dangerous tour, he did't sing in "short bursts" either he sang full songs there was only 4 /5 songs mimed on that tour.
The issue is

1)his nose jobs have messed his breathing up which affects his voice
2)When making records he is a perfectionist but he has over produced alot of his later recordings which just can't be sung live easily. He records albums with songs he could never sing live in a million years i.e Earth Song, they don't care about us and Jam being examples

However there are reports he is singing alot of this tour live, on an mj forum rumours and i do say rumours state his voice seems to have recovered a great deal and he wants to sing the majority of the tour live and is dropping songs he knows he cannot sing live. I don't mind if he mimes to smooth criminal dangerous etc thet are too difficult to sing live and YES prince would struggle singing them songs too

funksoulpop said:

Just curious, why shouldn’t he be able to sing TDCAU live? It's mostly sing-talk and throw in a few extra voices for the loud parts.

Also, I would think for Earth Song he could sing the verses and have background singers and/or choir help on the high parts and the end.

Emotional songs like ES are severely reduced when mimed. Adding kids to the stage does not make up for it, IMO. The pure rawness and natural emotion is what I want when a song like that is performed.

The verses of "Earth Song" are very basic, I really don't think that's an example of an overproduced song. Sure, the last part with the shouting cannot be performed live, but I don't think anyone expected that. I agree, that song is not about kids, tanks and Jesus poses on stage, it's something MJ could sing while sitting down or something and make it an emotional vocal performance.

midnightmover said:[quote]

unique said:

but was he really singing or was he mimimg? maybe he sang the first bit and mimed the bit when he was running around

LiveToTell86 said:

that's perhaps part of the problem, that everything from the 90s onwards was overproduced. he probably just sang part of the song at a time and they stuck it together on the computer afterwards. so many pop acts do that, so they sound nothing like the record when in concert as they never sang the song that way in the studio

all the tanks and kids and jesus crap onstage was an abomination. i think someone got it right when they said the fans don't care as they are too busy screaming to notice what the fuck is happening on stage

unique said:

Every pop song is recorded like that, but that's not an excuse. He could still do the verses live and let the backing tape do the chorus and the ad libs.

I'm afraid on the upcoming shows, Earth Song will be done the same way as before, because he thinks that's how fans want it...

funksoulpop said:

It seems an awful lot of people don't seem to understand my argument. The Dangerous Tour was 17 years ago. He did more live singing then because his voice was stronger then (though weaker than it had been in the past). I don't understand why some seem to be missing the point. It was a GRADUAL decline.

And please do not report fan fiction as if it has any credibility. Made-up rumours on MJ sites should not be mentioned in this discussion.

unique said:

Nah, "I'll Be There" is always done live all the way through. When he runs around he actually even shouts out phrases to the audience as well as singing. It's definitely live. That's one song that he has never mimed to my knowledge. It's always obvious when he switches from live to miming (or vice versa) in the middle of a song. The only people who don't notice it are the hardcore fans.

Here's a perfect example. See if you can spot which bits are live and which are mimed. It's a game you'll enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/wa...B2y97zaW9s

Oh, and read the comments below the screen from MJ fans who think this performance is "really cool".
[Edited 6/19/09 8:20am]

If this "MJ sounds like shit when singing live" -debate is going to continue three things need to be pointed out:

1) When the music is playing loud on the location, the vocals won't sound as bad as they might sound on a recording later on. There are many bootleg recordings of bands where the vocals don't sound that terribly good - although if I have myself seen those gigs myself it just sounded a whole lot better on location. Youtube and file sharing perhaps offers us a bit too much material to analyze, whilst the truth is a lot of performers have done bad live vocals from time to time. It often depends on the performance conditions more than the artist "having a flu" etc., which brings us to:
.
2) Monitoring on big stadiums is by rule awful, and some vocalists just can't pull off a good performance under those conditions. It's easy to play an instrument "pitch-perfect", but the overall sound can be too much for the vocalist. If you've never sang live yourself you're probably not familiar with this phenomenon, but sometimes when performing live you don't even hear much of the music yourself. Usually it's just going to be bits and pieces of it anyway: some kick drum and cymbals, some keyboard chords, but hardly all of it. Sure there is more money being put in Jackson's PA than on the average rock band's one, but the stadium factor and him moving around must make it even harder yet. When Jackson's singing got gradually worse on the Bad tour they were also moving from the smaller venues in Japan and the US to the outdoors stadiums in Europe. These days there is something called in-ear monitoring, which helps the situation a bit (I don't remember what he was using during the History tour though). But has anyone pulled that good vocals during a big stadium performance while doing choreographed dance moves at the same time? Then there is still one more incredibly idiotic technical aspect to be pointed out:

3) The headset microphone. It won't allow any microphone technique whatsoever. Surely they are using gates and those can be even automated to a click track, but in the end you just cannot control your breathing so easily. Jackson's singing sounded a whole lot better on The Dangerous tour during those numbers when he was using a regular microphone, just like he had done in the past. The headset microphone is the first thing he should ditch to improve the situation somewhat - that usually means he won't be able to do some of his dance moves..

These won't outdo the fact that his live singing could be a whole lot better, but consider them too if you choose to continue this thing. As much as I loathe the History tour, I can sort of understand his motivation for using the playback if he wasn't going to enjoy the experience himself at all (he had been complaining about this himself already on the last world tours, if I remember correctly). Of course then one probably shouldn't attempt to do hundreds of concert under those conditions anyway. The O2 should be a little bit better in that sense.

That YRMW performance was not in a stadium and he wasn't wearing a headset. Enough of the excuses already. Michael doesn't play any venues that hundreds of other artists haven't played with no problems at all. And his hand held microphones are no different to the ones thousands of other singers use either. Most of the instances of him singing badly have been when he's using a conventional hand held microphone. These illogical excuses only reinforce the impression of delusion amongst MJ defenders.

At this point you really should be just considered to be banned.

I have pointed out above factors that contribute to a bad vocal performance, if you'd only bother to pay attention to anything others write your replies could make at least some sense. Don't accuse people of being "illogical" when you cannot form even basic coherent arguments yourself - you seem to do this each time you get into argument with anyone. Seemingly, you've also done that a lot lately.

I'm hardly myself a "Michael Jackson defender" as on the other previous Jackson thread I have almost ridiculed his crippled songwriting technique and his need to resort to session musicians to play basic three-note chords that he hasn't been able to play on the keyboard himself - an instrument that he is commonly claimed to be able to play and studied already as a child.



This is plain incorrect. Most stadium gigs are hardly considered successful by the performers themselves. Jackson's own performances during the Bad Tour were not as good on the open air stadiums as they were on the smaller venues. That should be something of an indication already.



He gave far more improved performances on the Dangerous tour during the numbers when he was using a regular microphone. If the headset microphone was such a great invention you'd think it would be more common amongst performers, but no,it is mostly used as a prop for pop artists who lipsync.

When Jackson performed the MSG he was under heavy medication. The performances are bad and embarrassing to watch, but you're completely confused in your own articulation when attempting to prove your "points". If the point is that he isn't able to sing too well anymore, then yes, many individuals would agree with that. Myself included.

novabrkr said:

i wouldn't pay any attention to him anymore. he's rude and disrespectful as hell. there's nothing wrong with agreeing to disagree but when you start insulting other's intelligence then that's where u've crossed the line.

Everybody agrees his voice live has diminished but why? we haven't even discussed this. When was the point during the Bad tour when it got so strained as he didn't cancel too many concerts if i remember.

Multiple rhinoplasty, grunting and yelling, lack of breath control from lack of aerobic fitness is my only guess.

novabrkr said:

Hundreds of artists have sung in stadiums. The conditions may not be ideal, but none of them sound as bad as MJ. None of them. In fact many of them, like Tina Turner, sound fantastic. This is a red herring on your part.

You're talking complete nonsense about this headset thing too. I posted two clips of Michael singing terribly and in both of them he is using a hand-held microphone. In fact, all the worst instances of Mike singing live are when he's using a hand held mic. The fact that you are having to hark back 17 years to the Dangerous Tour (which doesn't even feature his worst performances) only shows how selective you have to be in order to defend this illogical point. I think everyone agrees Michael was completely out of breath on the two songs he sang with the headset there, so that does not prove your point. It just shows you being selective.

As for your not being an MJ defender I've read enough of your posts to know you will criticize him about his recording methods and whatnot, but go into full loon mode when talking about everything else MJ related. I recall a clear example where you posted a clip of MJ supposedly singing YRMW live at MSG and made some bizarre excuse as to why they hadn't used this fantastic clip in the official broadcast. Actually the clip WAS in the official broadcast and was CLEARLY not live. The real footage of that MSG gig has only leaked onto Youtube recently and I posted it earlier. It is AWFUL. The fact that you were claiming he'd given an excellent performance which hadn't been broadcast clearly puts you in the "loon" bracket. Your bizarre excuses about headsets and illnesses which no official source has ever even mentioned before, and outdoor gigs also put you in that bracket. I've discredited every one of those excuses, but I don't expect you to see it.

And just to confirm how confused you are, you even agree that Michael nowadays "can't sing too well". If you agree with me on that then all you need to say is "I agree". Your attempts to suggest mitigating factors are contradictory and deeply confused.

It's also worth pointing out that there are shows like Live Aid and Live 8 where dozens of different artists perform in outdoor stadiums on the same day and often sound great. This really DEMOLISHES the idea that Michael sounds bad because he's in a stadium. If people are being honest they would have to admit that.

I've also got DVD footage of Queen performing concerts in outdoor stadiums and sounding great. When a voice is cracking and losing the note it's not because of the equipment. It's because of the singer's vocal cords.

I heard rumors that he doesn't want to mime songs this time around.

He'll just take out the songs, he doesn't want to instead.

I think it'll be very interesting to see how he does.

midnightmover said:

What do you mean made up rumors? Apparently one of the sources is extremely reliable and was the first to report about how Michael changed his hairstyle, and it turned out true. He knew about this way before anyone even knew.
[Edited 6/19/09 9:41am]