a fleeting stay ...

Guest blogger Jehan Mohd writes about what she thinks about the promotional stunts for the late King of Pop's DVD release of the concert that never was.   Screenshot from Dancing Inmates - Michael Jackson's This Is It GETTING a bunch of convicts serving time at a maximum security facility to promote the launch of your latest DVD may not seem to be the brightest of ideas…unless you’re a recently deceased-cum-former-King-of-Pop and the prisoners are those at Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, a maximum security prison in the Philippines. The inmates who made waves globally in 2007 when a video of them dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller hit YouTube aren’t exactly unknown (collectively, anyway) – videos of them dancing to other songs have received tens of millions of hits in total. Nevertheless being visited by longtime MJ choreographer Travis Payne and dancers Daniel Celebre and Dres Reid who taught the inmates the moves to a sequence from MJ’s This Is...

Those who danced to the hits of Boney M in the mid-70s and mid-80s are now a lot older, visibly rounder and arguably wiser. All that didn't matter when they gathered at Sunway Lagoon Hotel on Saturday night to see the pop and disco group, which was originally based in West Germany, performed for charity at a show organised by Lejadi Group. The moment Liz Mitchell came on stage and showed off her vocals with Amazing Grace, fans poised themselves for a rush that would last for several days. The audience was easily persuaded. Before they knew it, fans of Boney M were clapping their hands and getting off their seats to gyrate to Sunny, Ma Baker, Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday!, Daddy Cool (the group's first number 1 hit), Rasputin, Rivers of Babylon, No Woman No Cry and Bahama Mama, among others. "We want you to get really happy ... we want to encourage you to dance so that your blood gets hot," coaxed Mitchell, the group's original lead si...