Macy’s Band Playing It Safe Skipping ‘Thriller’ Performance

During Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade next week, the trombonists, sousaphonists and mellophonists will not play the piece they rehearsed for months – Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. Band director Thomas Wilson said that he felt that ‘Thriller’ no longer fit the bill as “appropriate for the morals and the ideals and the sense of pride that the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade represents.” Jane Weiser, the vice president of the band boosters and the mother of a clarinetist in the band remarked, “The only thing I could understand about that was it might present a predicament for the commentators. The song, to me, is valid, it’s popular and you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. I was sorry to see that it had been struck, not to mention that the kids have been practicing it for weeks.” Read more.