Dystopian Dance Party

Author: zachary.hoskins@gmail.com

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2015-2016

    With every passing week, 2016 feels more and more like a never-ending, real-life Grammy Awards tribute montage. We couldn’t even go the six days between recording and posting the podcast without losing another pop music icon: this time, Marshall Jones of the Ohio Players, word of whose death regrettably reached us only after we had finished editing. Clearly, this is a trying time to be a music fan. And, as I’ve found myself saying more than a few times in the past several months, the sheer volume of notable musicians’ deaths starts to feel overwhelming to a small site like ours. I’m not a full-time obituary writer, so even many worthy artists who passed away have inevitably gone unmemorialized.

    That’s why, in the spirit of the real Memorial Day holiday, we’re taking the time to commemorate those the music world has lost since last May. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly be a recurring feature: the cruel realities of the human lifespan, combined with the generational ebb and flow of American popular music, means that things are only going to get worse in the coming years. And sadly, even this tribute isn’t truly exhaustive–even aside from the aforementioned omission of Marshall Jones, we’re only really talking about musicians of whom we have some miniscule level of knowledge, so plenty of important people are still going unmourned (at least by us).  But we did our best, and we at least tried to do everyone justice. Here’s hoping we get a break, at least for a couple more weeks.

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  • Dystopian Video Game Party Podcast: 30 Years of Zelda

    As some of our geekier listeners may already know (oh, who am I kidding, all of our listeners are “geekier”), 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of Nintendo‘s Legend of Zelda series. We wanted to mark the occasion with a podcast, which we did in mid-April–but then Prince died, and the original podcast we recorded went back on the shelf. We’re posting it now for the most inauspicious of reasons: Nintendo has announced that the next Zelda game will be the focus of their presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo next month, so a lot of the stuff we say in the last ten minutes or so will be out of date soon (in fact, some of it already is–at one point I say that the game is “almost definitely” coming by the end of the year, when in fact we now know that it’s been pushed back to 2017).

    All that aside, however, I’m glad we took the time to talk about the Zelda games. As I say at the beginning of the podcast, this is one of the few video game series that I will consistently drop everything to play; depending on what we see at E3, it may even be the series that convinces me to buy Nintendo’s next console. A lot has changed, in video games and in life, since 1986; but for us, at least, The Legend of Zelda has maintained its luster. So join us as we share our (sometimes hazy) memories of the series–and check below the jump for notes to explain what the hell we’re talking about.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

    If it wasn’t official before, it is now: 2016 is a terrible year for musical icons. Callie and I were blindsided by the news of Prince‘s untimely death last Thursday; it hit us even harder than the news of David Bowie‘s passing back in January (and that, as you might recall, hit us pretty damn hard). It’s difficult to overstate just how much Prince means to both of us. He’s easily our favorite solo artist in all of pop music; check our frequently used tags on Dystopian Dance Party, and you’ll see that he’s the most talked-about topic by some distance. All of which fails to adequately capture the feelings we have for his body of work, and the sense of loss we feel now that he’s gone.

    Unlike with Bowie, we weren’t actually planning on podcasting about Prince this month–but we had to, if only so we could talk through all the emotions we’ve both been feeling for the last week. The podcast we originally recorded earlier in the month, on Nintendo‘s Legend of Zelda series, will be posted eventually, when it all feels a little less meaningless. But for now, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life…

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: The Gospel According to Rock ‘n’ Roll

    In American popular music, there’s always been a fine line between the sacred and the secular. On this episode of the Dystopian Dance Party podcast, we talk about a few of the songs for which that line is finer than most: nominally “secular” songs with the lyrical and/or stylistic underpinnings of gospel music. Just in time for Easter weekend!

    As always, show notes are below, along with a Spotify playlist for those of you who want to hear the songs without our standard jibber-jabber.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Je Suis Kanye

    Earlier this month, Kanye West (basically) released his seventh solo album, The Life of Pablo. And, since Zach won’t get around to writing about it for a while, we thought we’d dedicate this episode of our podcast to sharing our impressions. It’s a bit of a messy, meandering conversation, but then, that’s only fair when it comes to discussing a messy, meandering (but still great) album like Kanye’s. So join us, a couple of those “no-pussy-gettin’ bloggers” Yeezy loves so dearly, as we discuss The Life of Pablo, the meaning of “conscious” hip-hop in 2016, and why Kanye West matters.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: David Bowie, 1947-2016

    Last week, we decided that our next podcast would be devoted to one of our mutual favorite artists, David Bowie, in celebration of his 69th birthday and the release of his 25th studio album, ★: sort of a more personal companion piece to the career-spanning Bowie guide we published that Friday. We didn’t expect to be recording an elegy.

    Early Monday morning, however, we got the sad news that Bowie was no longer with us. That news irrevocably changed the tone of our tribute, which we recorded on Tuesday night. But it isn’t all solemn mourning (though one of us does cry at one point–no spoilers which one). Instead, the following is a personal reflection on the many ways in which pop music–that tawdry, cheap, commercial entertainment–can shape, and even irrevocably change our lives, through the prism of an entertainer who did just that for both us. We hope you enjoy it!

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  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2015

    Well, here we are, at the cusp of the New Year: that sacred time when bloggers from all over congregate for one last chance to opine about the pop culture year that was. And we’re no exception–even though, as we note in the introduction, we’re barely up for the task, having spent most of 2015 listening to the same Ying Yang Twins records we’d been listening to since 2005. But what is pop-culture blogging, anyway, if not the chance to exercise one’s self-appointed, mostly illusory authority on an unwilling and mostly uncaring audience?

    I originally wanted this inaugural year-in-review podcast to include multiple forms of media, but quite frankly we’re even worse at keeping up with film, television, et. al. than we are at keeping up with music; and besides, seeing as music is 90% of what we write about on Dystopian Dance Party, it kind of makes more sense this way. So here, without further ado, are our favorite songs of 2015. Settle in, because this one’s gonna be even longer and more self-indulgent than usual!

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

    Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

    Last year, Zach wrote that Thanksgiving is about two things: whitewashing the brutal history of colonialism against America’s native peoples, and eating a lot of goddamn food. We took care of the latter topic at the time; so now, we’re turning our attention to the former. This month’s Dystopian Dance Party Podcast is all about the relationship between popular music and Native American culture–an often fraught relationship, as you might imagine, but an endlessly fascinating one nonetheless. Check it out, then check below the jump for a list of the songs played and an accompanying Spotify playlist so you can hear the music without us yapping over it.

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  • Dystopian Halloween Party Podcast: Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare

    Dystopian Halloween Party Podcast: Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare

    Well, here it is: coming in two days after Halloween, but better late than never, we have our first-ever podcast. This is something we’ve been talking about doing for a while, and overall it was pretty fun–even if we’re both so unprofessional that it required hours of post-editing to make us listenable. And yes, this being our first attempt, the whole thing is a little rough around the edges, sound quality-wise; but that’s all part of the charm of podcasting, right? …Right?

    Anyway, to launch this new monthly feature, we could think of no better topic of discussion than the 1987 direct-to-video Canadian horror film Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare. Directed by the late John Fasano (Zombie Nightmare, Black Roses, The Jitters) and written by/starring bodybuilder-turned-cult-metal-frontman Jon Mikl Thor, Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (also known as The Edge of Hell) was made on a shoestring budget and is still remembered today–if at all–for its cheeseball effects and good-natured Canadian butt-rock soundtrack. Needless to say, it’s a favorite of ours, and we take our time discussing everything from the infamous van scene to the absolutely bonkers climax. I hope you enjoy it. Listen below, and check after the jump for a chronological list of the music played and the scenes discussed.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Calloway’s “I Wanna Be Rich”

    Well, folks, they say all good things must come to an end, and sadly, that applies to Jheri Curl June as well. But we want to go out on a high note, and so here’s one of my favorite late-period jheri curl tracks: Calloway’s “I Wanna Be Rich.”

    Calloway was of course the solo–or, erm, duo–project of Reggie and Vincent Calloway, founding members of Midnight Star and the brothers who brought us not one, not two, but three separate Jheri Curl June tracks. “I Wanna Be Rich” comes from Calloway’s debut album All the Way, recorded after the brothers left Midnight Star in 1989. Indeed, its songwriting credits betray the fact that it started life as a Star song, written but not recorded in 1983 by the brothers Calloway, Belinda Lipscomb, and Melvin “McArthur” Gentry.

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