A "Lost" Michael Jackson Video

More and more I think VH1 Soul may be the best video channel out there. Every time I watch, I'm seeing videos I haven't seen in years, videos I have never seen, and videos rarely shown anywhere else. They are all mixed in with the videos you see all the time.

Early this morning (note the time of this post) I turned to VH1 Soul in my quest to find something to watch. When I turned, I saw a Michael Jackson video that I did not remember and a notable one at that. The video was for Michael Jackson's song "Liberian Girl" from his album Bad.

This video is about the making of a video for "Liberian Girl" and it shows everyone involved talking and doing various things as they wait for Michael to arrive. It ends with Michael on a crane looking into a camera, which lets everyone know that they were doing the video without even knowing it.

What makes this video notable (apart from the fact that I don't remember seeing it...EVER) is the fact that the people waiting around for Michael are all major celebrities from the late 80's. My eyes nearly popped out of my head at the sheer amount of well-known people in this video. Among the people I could recognize: John Travolta, Whoopi Goldberg, Don King, Weird Al Yankovic, Corey Feldman, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Steven Spielberg (!), Richard Dreyfuss, Blair Underwood, Carl Weathers (of Action Jackson fame), Jasmine Guy, Olivia Newton-John, Dan Ackroyd, Steve Guttenberg, Mayim Bialik, Lou Diamond Phillips, and a few others that I either don't remember or don't know. It was weird to hear "Liberian Girl" playing in the background as Whoopi Goldberg and Carl Weathers joke that there should be a sequel to Jumping Jack Flash and Action Jackson (called Jumping Action Jack Jackson), John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John mouth the words to the song, Weird Al being mistaken for the King of Pop (and then proceeding to say that while Michael wasn't around, Bubbles The Chimp was), Don King making a joke about his hair to a little boy, Malcolm Jamal-Warner talking to a friend on a cell phone, Steven Spielberg mug for the camera, and Dan Ackroyd and Steve Guttenberg riding onto the set on motorcycles.

I swear that if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it. How the hell did this video get passed over in the library of Michael Jackson's videos? I don't think we will ever see such a star-studded music video again. I have to wonder if any of these stars remembers being in this video. I also have to wonder if any of them regret it, given Michael's recent scandals and oddities. I bet a lot of these stars want this video buried just like Jennifer Lopez supposedly wants the video for "Jenny From The Block" to never be played again. But, if anything, this video is a look into the past. It's a look into a time when Michael Jackson commanded widespread respect as opposed to widespread ridicule. This video is a flashback into the days before child molestation charges, before two marriages that ended in divorce, before Michael looked as white as a ghost, and even before the term "Wacko Jacko" was first used. I am still a fan of Michael Jackson's music, even now, and it's a shame that his legacy is probably forever tarnished.

So, if you have VH1 Soul, please look for the video. The channel tends to repeat what they show once or twice during the course of a day. Who knows when (or if) we'll ever see this video again.