Queens fans remember King of Pop

Days after his death, local music stores were having trouble keeping Michael Jackson albums on their shelves.

It took just one day for a number of stores, including Breakdown Records in the Oakland Gardens section of Bayside and the For Your Entertainment (FYE) in the Bay Terrace Shopping Center, to sell out.

People were “looking for anything we had – records, tapes, old 45s, Jackson 5,” said Breakdown manager Anthony Cascella. “He was one of the most important figures in music of all time…You can’t deny his genius on the level of music, his influence.”

Cascella recalled one Breakdown Records shopper wearing a T-shirt with Jackson’s name written in marker.

“She was pretty close to hysterical,” he said.

Inside the FYE in Bay Terrace, on Monday morning, June 29, a new shipment of Jackson’s “Thriller” album had recently arrived and was being held behind the counter with the cashier, rather than with the regular stock.

“We sold out on the first day,” said John, an FYE employee taking inventory. “Someone spent $120 on Michael Jackson CDs; that’s after I gave them a discount card – so that’s after saving 10 percent.”

Bayside resident Rebecca Winiarski, who was browsing the shelves at FYE looking for any Michael Jackson album, was shocked when she heard the news of his passing.

“I wasn’t expecting him, out of all of them, to be dead so soon…because he was actually a young guy.”

Jackson, 50, nicknamed the King of Pop, was found unresponsive at home in bed on Thursday, June 25. A team of physicians attempted to revive him for more than an hour, according to his brother, Jermaine Jackson. He was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center at 2:26 p.m. PDT (5:26 p.m. EDT).

Jackson was about to embark on a series of 50 “comeback” concerts at London’s O2 arena. In the March press conference, Jackson stated that the series of shows was his “final curtain call;” a call that, after a reputation-tarnishing five-month child molestation trial in 2005, he never got to have.

It was after the airing of the 2003 documentary “Living with Michael Jackson,” that the singer was arrested and charged with seven counts of child sexual abuse and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent to a minor. The singer was subsequently acquitted in early 2006.

It was the second time he was accused of molesting a minor; the first was in 1993.

“He was a perv,” said a Queens man outside of Jack’s Pizzeria in the Bay Terrace Shopping Center.

“People who are sad ignore the last 15 years of controversy,” said John in FYE.

Along with his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Marlon, Jackson was part of the immensely popular singing group the Jackson 5, an act whose hits included “ABC,” and “I’ll Be There.”

They were “discovered” in August 1967 after winning the Amateur Night competition at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

Upon hearing of Jackson’s death, hordes of people congregated at the Apollo to celebrate the singer’s life and dance to his music.

In 1979, Jackson released his first album as an adult, “Off the Wall,” which went platinum. His next album, “Thriller,” in 1982, became the biggest-selling album of all time. His hit songs include “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Bad” and “Man in the Mirror.”

Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1995; they divorced 19 months later. In 1996, he married Debbie Rowe, the biological mother of two of his children, Prince Michael Jackson, Jr. and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson. They divorced in 1999.

In 2002, he infamously dangled his infant son, nicknamed “Blanket,” over the balcony of the Adlon Hotel, near the Brandenburg Gate in Germany. Following the child molestation trial, Jackson had remained mostly out of the limelight before making a July 2008 announcement of his planned concert series.

“He definitely, without judging his personal life, made a mark in the history of music.” Cascella said.