In memory of a reminder that sometimes "pop" and "good music" coincide, some Michael Hutchence and what INXS once was. Pop can be good, it's hard to recall these days. It's just that most of the time they don't try.

Here they are live in Melbourne in 1983.

See? Fuck Autotune and anyone who uses it. Just TRY to keep your butt still with an INXS song on. And nobody could say INXS did not work their asses off to get where they got. These were not prefabricated pop stars, it was a band that put sweat into making pop its own.

And this was one of his better performances. It's difficult to take one's eyes off him. If you were a straight girl back then, you wanted him, and if a straight boy you wanted to be him, or kill him for being so much more interesting to your girlfriend than you could ever hope to be. Look, I'm straight and even I know he was killer sexy. Don't believe me? Okay, well, there is this with the band kicking ass on "Original Sin" at Wembley in 1991.

See, good pop IS possible. And good pop stars.

As the great Molly Kiely(a far better erotic artist, or just plain artist period, incidentally, than I am) said, "Hutchence was a masterful rock star: unconventionally handsome, with sexy phrasing and swagger." And immensely likeable. If we admire Freddie Mercury for his charisma and ability to take a stage, while never acting like he was better than his band, then Michael Hutchence has to be given his due in the generation that followed Mercury. Or Bryan Ferry, along with David Sylvian a very obvious influence on Hurchence.

I guess, besides just that my generation was INXS' audience, another reason I feel a little nostagically sad and personal when it comes to Hutchence is my birthday was last Sunday(Jan. 22). And it would have been his too. A waste. RIP, Hutchence. We could use good frontmen now. Poor guy though. It's a shame he had to die so stupidly.

Finally, just to make you smile and break your heart at the same time, "Disappear" Live in 1991.

A bonus: two songs from his underrated solo project with Ollie Olsen(and an album I somehow managed never to tire of), Max Q. "Buckethead"and "Ghost of the Year".

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