Monday, September 3, 2007

Remembering Michael Resources

Here are some of the better resources for keeping track of the outpouring of loss and celebration of Michael's prolific life; as you review you may be struck as we were by the realization of how many considered him a true friend:



Feel free to post simple urls/links of additional resources in the comments area below.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've posted a from a Michael Jackson Beer Club launch event for free public use.

Please add your own public images to Flickr, tag them with "MJBeerHunter" for easy syndication and we'll create a massive slide show in his honor.

I can imagine this slide show playing via projectors and displays at hundreds of locations around the world on the National/International Toast event in development. Get posting.

Anonymous said...

I will miss michael, my mentor in brewing, a friend and most of all a great person who gave so much you will be missed ,jon cook

Anonymous said...

The NPR program Fresh Air had an item on his passing, including part of an interview from 1991. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14154096

David McDuff said...

We'll feel the loss of Michael in the wine world as well. I've posted a memorial story at McDuff's Food & Wine Trail:

Michael Jackson's Last Grand Cru

Cheers,
McDuff

firststatebrewer said...

I was a huge fan of Michael Jackson. I was shocked at this news and posted my thoughts on my homebrew club's blog here:

Drink a beer and think of Michael Jackson

Anonymous said...

A link to an obituary on the Israeli "Bakbuk" wine beer and alcohol portal (Hebrew).
http://www.bakbuk.co.il/.

Bierpapst said...

For those who speak German - I have written an orbituary for Der Standard here in Vienna. It can be found at
http://derStandard.at/Bier
Cheers

Conrad Seidl,
Bierpapst

Anonymous said...
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Patrick Stephens said...

I did not know Mr. Jackson, but like many of his readers, he had an effect on my appreciation of beer, food, and life.

My small tribute is here.

Anonymous said...

Just found this really cool tribute by a local beer writer:

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-09-12/food/michael-jackson-r-i-p.php

Unknown said...

Michael Jackson was a hero and inspiration to me and got me started writing about my favorite passions.
Here is a link that I posted on my blog as a memorial:
http://spiritsreviewblog.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Here is my small contribution, a bit of art work:

http://www.barleylegal.ca/Cartoons/AToastToTheBeerHunter

Anonymous said...

I write a weekly beer column for a daily paper. The online version of mt column about Mr. Jackson is here:

http://www.masslive.com/beernut/republican/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/1190186894141720.xml&coll=1

Peace.

Anonymous said...

On First Meeting Michael

My wife, Sue, and I were on the first evening of our first mid-winter break in Amsterdam. We’d delayed visiting that amazing city sooner because although we knew it had lots of bars of character (see the tantalising photo of the Papeneiland in the World Guide to Beer, 1977) its reputation for interesting beer had been as low as the lie of the land. (Belgium had been our destination of choice in a previous couple of years, inspired by the blessed Michael and, it has to be said, by other pioneering writers in CAMRA’s What’s Brewing).

But direct access from our local airport and a desire to lift the post-Christmas gloom brought us in 1986 to one Amsterdam bar that we had heard plenty of good about: Cafe Gollem. It was a quiet Tuesday evening so we were able to get stools at the bar easily. My perusal of the beer list was distracted, however, by the sight of a seemingly-familiar figure on the next stool.

Fortified by a prior couple of swift jenevers at the Drie Flesches, I plucked up the courage after a minute to say “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you Michael Jackson?”

“No”, he said, to my initial dismay. “I don’t mind you asking. But yes, I am Michael Jackson”.

What a line. Accurate, witty and delivered in way which invited us to join his company if we wished!

Which we did, chatting together over the next three hours and half-a-dozen or so rounds. It transpired that Michael had promised his partner some winter sunshine and they were now en-route back home to London from, I think, the Seychelles. As part of the deal Michael had wangled a stopover in Amsterdam, and had spent the morning, he told us, at a pre-arranged tasting session, of no fewer than twenty beers.

Being a good disciple of MJ - for nine years already at that time - I kept detailed notes of our overseas trips so I can read today of the beers we drank between us that evening. Some were our choice but most were as suggested by Michael. You might be interested in what they were: La Trappe; Koningshoeven (brewed at the same Trappist monastery for Allied Breweries); Arcen Prestige; t’Ij Zatte Tripel (“from a very new Amsterdam brewery”, MJ told us); Brand Sylvester; Maisel Hefe-Weiss, from Bayreuth; Westmalle Tripel; and De Ridder Pils.

Our share of the bill, and including the sustenance of Trappist cheese, came to 58.75 guilders’ or around £14.50. Not cheap for 21 years ago (I reckon it to be equivalent to about £40 or $80 today). And I remember at one point Michael gently chiding me, when I remarked that good foreign beers were expensive when you could manage to track them down in Britain. He told me - in my clumsy paraphrasing - that beer really needed to become expensive in Britain if it was ever going achieve the recognition and social standing it deserved.

Before we left, unable to balance on our two stools much longer after a pre-dawn start to our day, Michael signed a copy of The Pocket Guide to Beer, 1982 that I, naturally, had in my pocket. (He wondered aloud how an edition originally written for the US market came to have the imprint of British book club; something to take up with his agent later, no doubt!) Considerate and precise, he included both a personal note and the place and date: “To Sue and Brendan, Keep going on tour! - Michael Jackson, Amsterdam, Jan 14, 1986”.

Not that Michael left when we did, even though he too must surely have been tiring. Thirsty members of an Australian amateur rugby league team - on their way home from a tour of England - strolled into the Gollem just as we paying up. “Another passion of mine, rugby league”, he declared. Reinvigorated. he went over to socialise with them, into the early hours!

Brendan Boyle, Darlington, England
1 October 2007