the 29th of august is a day we at 'guess who's coming to radio??!!' celebrate annually as the day of teacher MICHAEL JACKSON; even though we do our annual radio celebration it's never on the day he came to this earth, so this will be the first time we'll actually be celebrating with you! from 7 PM to MIDNIGHT we will be honoring his gifts- primarily, the words and music. what makes this day even more special is that JENNIFER BATTEN will be celebrating with us, live and direct! ms. batten spent many years and several tours with teacher michael, as his guitarist. not only is she wonderful at what she does (with the guitar, with multimedia, glass art and more- making absolute sense for michael to work with her for all of those years); she is also one of the nicest, most humble people we've ever met.
from ms. batten's biography on her site (http://www.jenniferbatten.com/):
"At one point Batten was in 6 different bands, playing everything from straight ahead rock, to metal,fusion, and funk. A major turning point came when she was selected from over one hundred guitarists to play in Michael Jackson's highly skilled band which toured the world for one and a half years playing for over four and a half million people. Jennifer wasted no time after the” Bad” Tour's grand finale, diving into work on her own album with renown producer (and Stevie Wonder guitarist) Michael Sembello. The stunning results can be heard on “Above, Below, and Beyond”, the title appropriately describing the interesting diversity within. With this debut release, the world at large learned what all the excitement was about.
Shortly after the record's release in the spring of '92, she was asked again to join Michael Jackson for his upcoming "Dangerous Tour". In January '93, she joined Jackson to partake in Superbowl XXVII's half time entertainment which aired to one and half billion people in 80 nations. It was the largest audience in television history."
this is such a wonderful gift to have her here with us, as we once again take the time out on the air to honor one of the greatest artists (and for us, one of the greatest teachers) we've ever gotten to experience in this lifetime.