Month: June 2014

  • Jheri Curl June: The Time’s “Jerk Out”

    Well, here we are: the last day of Jheri Curl June, and I don’t think there could be a better band to go out with than the greatest band in the world, the muthafuckin’ Time. Today’s selection, “Jerk Out,” comes from the earliest of the Time’s many reunion albums, 1990’s  Pandemonium: their first release as a group since 1984’s Ice…

  • Jheri Curl June: Full Force’s “Love is for Suckers (Like Me and You)”

    As we discussed in a previous post, by the middle of the decade the popularity of jheri curl music was waning, thus making room for both hip-hop and New Jack Swing.  Full Force, who released their first album in 1985, combine equal parts of all three genres, helping to bridge the gap between JCM and New…

  • Jheri Curl June: Roger’s “I Want to Be Your Man”

    Roger Troutman was a talented guitarist, bassist, keyboard player and harmonica player, yet he is undeniably best known for perfecting the use of the talkbox in R&B music. Between his band Zapp and his “solo career”–a term I employ loosely, as most of the personnel on his solo records were in fact members of Zapp–Roger had a…

  • Jheri Curl June Special: Michael Jackson

    It’s only fitting, as we spend the last full week of Jheri Curl June discussing the twilight years of the genre, that we pay tribute to the man whose passing five years ago today helped spark a revived interest in the music he popularized: Michael Jackson. Though Jackson didn’t play as formative a role in the invention…

  • Jheri Curl June: Was (Not Was)’ “Walk the Dinosaur”

    Is jheri curl music still jheri curl music when it’s self-aware? This is the existential question raised by “Walk the Dinosaur,” the hit 1988 single by Detroit new-wavers Was (Not Was). It has all the ingredients of a great late-period jheri-curl song: clattering synthesized percussion, a bassline that pops all over the place, soulful vocals by…

  • Jheri Curl June: Sheila E’s “A Love Bizarre”

    Way back at the end of week one of Jheri Curl June, we argued that Prince left jheri curl music behind just after he arguably perfected it with his 1984 masterpiece Purple Rain. And while that’s technically true when you consider Prince’s career strictly as a solo artist/bandleader, it’s not quite the whole truth. Because by the mid-1980s,…