Author: zachary.hoskins@gmail.com
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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Jheri Curl June: The Brothers Johnson’s “Kick it to the Curb”
1988’s Kickin‘ was an attempted comeback for the Brothers Johnson after a four-year hiatus during which co-founders and real-life brothers George and Louis Johnson pursued solo projects. Unfortunately, the album and singles failed to make a mark on the charts, a far cry from the Brothers’ previous platinum album sales throughout the late ’70s. Certainly, Kickin’…
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Jheri Curl June: dáKRASH’s “Wasn’t I Good to Ya?”
In one of the first posts for Jheri Curl June this year, Callie talked about how the Minneapolis Sound sprawled out from its chief originator, Prince, to encompass all kinds of solo and side projects by his ex-associates. Today, we close our last full week of the month with one of those side projects: a little-known group called dáKRASH, assembled and…
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Jheri Curl Cinema: Moonwalker (1988)
Like most human measures of time, Jheri Curl June is intimately tied to the cycles of birth and death. The month opens with the birthdays of two of jheri curl music’s greatest architects, Prince and Jimmy Jam, and closes with the anniversary of the death of its most anointed practitioner, Michael Jackson. So, since we…
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Jheri Curl June: Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car”
Back on the second day of Jheri Curl June, we talked about Slave‘s romantic stalker anthem “Watching You.” Today, we revisit the theme of benign-sounding pop songs that, upon closer examination, are actually about harassing women, with Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Now, before you start categorizing me as a…
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Jheri Curl June: Shalamar’s “Imaginary Love”
By 1987, Shalamar’s classic lineup of Howard Hewett, Jody Watley, and Jeffrey Daniel had disbanded. The lineup for Shalamar’s ninth studio album, Circumstantial Evidence, consisted of Sidney Justin, a former backup singer for the group who replaced Hewett when he left in 1985 to pursue his solo career; DeLisa Davis, who auditioned to replace Watley after her…
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Jheri Curl June: LeVert’s “Casanova”
Well, here we are: the last full week of Jheri Curl June. Since we try to go in rough chronological order, this is the week when things start to get a little tricky: as we went over last year, the latter half of the ’80s was a period of decline for jheri curl music, as…