Turns out Meat Loaf needed a little extra time in the oven, but we’re finally back to discuss the late vocal powerhouse’s 2000 memoir To Hell and Back. Join us as we ponder Meat’s many concussions, his suitably operatic relationship with the also-recently-departed Jim Steinman, and how he’s easily in the top five of anti-maskers we would have been okay catching COVID from. We’ll be back around the middle of next month for a special Jheri Curl June miniseries on Morris Day‘s On Time: A Princely Life in Funk!
(more…)Author: zachary.hoskins@gmail.com
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Headbangers Book Club: Sebastian Bach’s 18 and Life on Skid Row (Part 1)
This month’s official Headbangers Book Club selection is over five years in the making: Callie got her copy of Sebastian Bach‘s 18 and Life on Skid Row (signed by Sea Bass himself!) in late 2016, and we’re finally getting around to reading it. This episode covers the first half of the book, give or take, and so far we’re having a lot of fun with it! If you want to read along, there’s still time to catch up–we’ll be posting Part 2 by the end of the month! And if you want to get started early on next month’s book, we will be tackling Meat Loaf‘s To Hell and Back in April!
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Headbangers Book Club: Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods and Richard Cole’s Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored
For the inaugural episode of the new and improved Headbangers Book Club, we decided to go big with not one, but two books on Led Zeppelin: four entitled manbabies and borderline sociopaths who just so happened to write (or, in some cases, steal) some of the greatest rock music of all time. Join us as we discuss the Great Dane incident, shitting incidents (plural), and all the other depravities in this 120 Days of Sodom for the hesher set. Please share your thoughts with us on Twitter, Instagram, or drop us an email; and remember to join us for our next book, 18 and Life on Skid Row by Sebastian Bach! We’ll be reading the first half of the book by Friday, March 11.
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Coming Soon: Headbangers Book Club
We promised some exciting new stuff on the horizon, and here it is: We’re launching a new podcast! For those who have been listening for a while, the format should be very familiar–it’s an extension of our ever-popular Book Club podcasts, but with some tweaks to the format that we think will make things more interesting. We’ll be cross-posting on the DDP podcast feed for the foreseeable future, but please do give the new Headbangers Book Club a follow:
Also, check us out on Twitter and Instagram! We just launched and we’re lonely. That’s all for now–we’ll be back in just a couple of weeks with the inaugural Headbangers Book Club episode on Stephen Davis‘ Hammer of the Gods and Richard Cole‘s Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored!
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12 Months of Mike Month 12: Shrek Forever After
It might have taken us 14 months, but the long nightmare that was 12 Months of Mike is finally behind us–and, thanks to the final film in question (2010’s Shrek Forever After) it’s gone out with a whimper. Come hear why it took us two months to work up the enthusiasm for one last shrekquel… and, join us again in the new year for the long-awaited return of Dystopian Book Club with Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods and Richard Cole’s Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored!
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12 Months of Mike Month 11: The Love Guru
The end of our year-long immersion in the filmography of Mike Myers is in sight; but hoo boy, is this final stretch a test of endurance. Our penultimate film is 2008’s The Love Guru: the movie that finally put Mike’s career out of its misery after The Cat in the Hat roughed it up and left it for dead. Join us as we discuss the unfathomable depths to which Ben Kingsley sinks in his performance, and repeatedly refer to Romany Malco as “Romany Falco.” But really, who cares? Nothing matters! God is dead, long live Pitka!
00:00:00 The Love Guru Theatrical Trailer
00:07:32 Entertainment Weekly: “Mike Myers: Man of Mystery”
00:12:28 WHO THE FUCK IS GRAHAM GORDY
00:14:41 Here’s the Love Guru/American Idol Cross-Promotional Tie-In, If You Dare
00:32:54 Yep, He Made That Joke in an Earlier Movie
00:38:15 Romany Falco
00:38:25 A Taste of Romany Malco’s Past Life as a Feline Rapper
00:41:52 A More Realistic Portrayal of a Man as Well-Endowed as Jacques “Le Coq” Grande
00:44:03 The First of, We’re Afraid, Several Interminable Hindustani Music Parodies in The Love Guru
00:49:55 The Love Guru‘s Obligatory Late-Career Mike Myers Nightmare Fuel
00:53:57 The Best 20 Seconds in The Love Guru by Default
00:57:27 We Guess We’ll Count This as a Catch Phrase
00:59:27 Seriously, What is Going on with Pitka and Rajneesh?
01:09:34 #StinkMop
01:12:59 (It was Rob Huebel, by the way)
01:19:09 The Last (Thank God) of The Love Guru‘s Interminable Hindustani Music Parodies
01:21:34 “Sexy Sadie” by the Beatles (from The Beatles, 1968)
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12 Months of Mike Month 10: Shrek the Third
It’s an experimental episode this time around, as we try to kill two birds with one stone by watching Shrek the Third at the same time as we record the podcast. The results are… not great, especially since Zach sounds like he’s recording from a really large open bathroom (don’t worry, he’s not). Still, rest assured that the experience of listening to us watch Shrek the Third can’t possibly be worse than the experience of watching Shrek the Third alone! We’ll be back at the end of July with a more traditional (for better or worse) episode on The Love Guru.
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Jheri Curl June: Troop’s “Mamacita”
It’s the end of yet another Jheri Curl June, and of course that means it’s time to signal the end of an era for Jheri Curl Music. As we’ve mentioned many times, musical scenes have an incredibly short lifespan, and by the late ’80s, JCM was turning into New Jack Swing. Troop, a quintet discovered by none other than previous JCJ inductee Gerald Levert, have the Levert-infused, end-of-’80s New Jack sound that you would expect from… well, a late-era Jheri Curl Music group that was discovered by Gerald Levert. And just look at Troop whipping their Jheri Curl mullets around in the video to “Mamacita!”
You can check out our full playlists below, and we’ll see you next year for another Jheri Curl June!
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Jheri Curl June: Marlon Jackson’s “Baby Tonight”
Earlier this month, I noticed a comment on our Instagram that said we’d been “sleeping on MJ.” My first thought was, “sleeping on MJ?! We gave Michael Jackson our second-ever Jheri Curl June Special way back in 2014; we also wrote about his 1988 film Moonwalker for Jheri Curl Cinema! If this is sleeping on MJ, what would being awake on him be like?!” But then I realized, maybe the “MJ” in question isn’t Michael at all; maybe, in fact, it’s his older brother Marlon Jackson. If that’s the case, random Instagram person, then I owe you an apology: we really have been sleeping on MJ these past seven years–but no more.
Marlon, who once described himself as the “background Jackson,” was an original member of the Jackson 5, but didn’t get his chance in the spotlight until the group’s 1984 album Victory: writing, singing, and riding a motorcycle in the music video for the third single and closing track, “Body.” Two years later, he contributed a solo track, “(Let Your Love Find) The Chosen One,” to the soundtrack for the Eddie Murphy vehicle The Golden Child. Finally, in 1987, he released his solo debut, Baby Tonight, for which today’s song served as the lead single and title track.
“Baby Tonight” is the definition of a late-period Jheri Jam, with its busy programmed bass and electronic rhythms (particularly in the remix used for the music video). It actually reminds me, not so much of Marlon’s brothers and bandmates in the Jacksons, but of our 2018 Jheri Curl June honoree Georgio–which might be a backhanded compliment, but I consider it a compliment nonetheless! Sadly, this MJ wouldn’t achieve anywhere near the solo success of the other one (or, for that matter, his older brother Jermaine, who I’m sure we’ll get around to writing about one of these days); Baby Tonight remains his only solo album, though he continues to perform with the Jacksons to this day. Which, for a self-described “background Jackson,” isn’t such a bad thing all in all.
It’s hard to believe, but there’s only one more day of Jheri Curl June! We hope you’ve been enjoying it as much as we have. Feel free to catch up with the playlists below, and we’ll be back one more time tomorrow!