True Believers

Concerning my post about the New Kids on the Block concert, I recently received the following comments from a true believer whose faith has flagged:

“Sounds like it was awesome. . . . Sometimes I dream of attending an MC Hammer concert, but I think you're right that, even though it would probably be fun, it would also be kind of sad just trying to relive the past. And, unlike the New Kids, I don't think Hammer has any comeback in him.”

The last New Kids album before they faded away, Face the Music, with tracks such as "Dirty Dawg," was an attempt to go hard in a musical landscape that had outgrown boy pop and embraced gangsta rap and Seattle grunge. Predictably, the attempt was in vain, as was Hammer's lamentable name truncation (considering his vocal chops, or lack thereof, some thought it appropriate that he dropped the “MC”) and ill-fated final turn toward the hard, The Funky Headhunter. That he released music after that leaves me bewildered.

Gentle reader, don't give up hope! What were the chances of a fourth Indiana Jones movie coming out nigh 20 years after The Last Crusade? For a more germane example, who ever thought the New Kids would return? Their whole appeal was based on their youth, and their old hits, huge as they were, now don’t even get any play on “Friday Flashback” or “Nineties at Noon” segments on the radio. Yet here they are.

Finally, think of this: Michael Jackson is supposedly making a new album, with hot-as-cinders, can-do-no-wrong, craps-out-gold artist Akon on board as producer/collaborator (among other hip-hop and R&B luminaries). If something this obscene is to happen, then I see no reason why MC Hammer can't be revived, in the same way he himself revived (or recycled, or stole, as some would have it) many a 70s funk staple for use as his own songs.

Please Hammer, don't hurt us! We know you have a comeback in you! True believer, I promise you that if the man in the parachute pants returns, you and I will be at that concert.