Dystopian Dance Party

Category: jheri curl june

  • Jheri Curl June: René & Angela’s “I’ll Be Good”

    Musical duo René Moore and Angela Winbush had released three albums before they finally reached commercial success with 1985’s A Street Called Desire, which contained the hit single “I’ll Be Good.” Sadly, René and Angela were not good to each other, and ended their nine-year musical partnership in a mess of legal battles and physical abuse less than a year after the release of A Street Called Desire. It definitely makes “I’ll Be Good” a lot less charming when you consider that Moore allegedly broke and/or bruised Winbush’s ribs in a violent backstage altercation; the song (and that tiger-print blazer) are still hot as hell, though.

    Both René and Angela would go on to have successful solo careers, with René releasing two albums as well as writing and producing for Michael Jackson. Angela would go on to produce and write for yesterday’s JCJ subject, the Isley Brothers. Ronald Isley subsequently became Angela Winbush’s manager and the pair were eventually married, but divorced in 2001–which, to be fair, is still a happier ending than the René & Angela story.

    We’ll be back next week with another week dedicated to the women of jheri curl music. Until then, catch up with our Spotify and YouTube playlists after the jump.

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  • Jheri Curl June: The Isley Brothers’ “Between the Sheets”

    Yesterday we talked about the O.G. Bootsy Collins‘ dabble in Jheri Curl. Today we’re looking at yet another Ohio group with a decades-spanning career, the Isley Brothers.

    Formed in 1954 as a gospel group, the Isley Brothers had been making hits since the ’60s, successfully adapting their sound to suit the changing musical scenes. By the ’80s, it was only natural that they would incorporate the disco, quiet storm, pop, and R&B sounds that made up jheri curl music.

    The brothers’ 1983 hit “Between the Sheets” was composed as a direct response to Marvin Gaye‘s hit from the previous year, “Sexual Healing,” in what appears to have been a weird battle of one-upsmanship over who could make the best panty-dropper. And for my panties, the Isleys definitely won this one. Look, it just doesn’t get any smoother than “Between the Sheets.” You’ve got the bassline that hits you right between the legs, Ronald Isley’s breathy falsetto all up in your ear–for Chrissakes, the picture on the album cover is a closeup of peach-colored silk sheets with a red rose:

    © T-Neck Records
    © T-Neck Records

    If you’re not already totally nude and having a sexual fantasy by the time the beat switches up, allow me to help with some imagery: a dude slow thrusting and dripping sweat and jheri curl juice all on the pillow, flowing down the satin sheets and coating your naked body with activator and body fluids. You’re welcome.

    Spotify and YouTube playlists below:

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  • Jheri Curl June: Bootsy’s Rubber Band’s “Body Slam”

    When it comes to jheri curl music, Bootsy Collins probably isn’t the first name that comes to anyone’s mind. In fact, he and the rest of the Parliament–Funkadelic cohort were practically the antithesis of the Jheri-Curl ethos: their aesthetic was gritty, not glossy; psychedelic posters and underground comix, not neon and Patrick Nagel; weed and acid, not champagne and cocaine; unapologetically nappy, not permed and activated. But by the early 1980s, Bootsy saw the winds were changing, and gamely incorporated icy synths and sequencers into his trunk-rattling P-Funk sound.

    And, for the most part, the results were as awkward as might be expected. Bootsy’s 1982 album The One Giveth, the Count Taketh Away had its moments, but it wasn’t up to the standards of his work with the Rubber Band in the late ’70s; its use of polished, “modern”-sounding ’80s R&B markers–like the members of Midnight Star, who contributed backing vocals–felt more than a little shoehorned into Bootsy’s raw, “uncut” brand of funk. But have no dear, my fear: Bootsy had at least one bona fide jheri-curl classic up his sleeve in 1982, in the form of the 12″-only release “Body Slam.”

    What’s most remarkable about “Body Slam” is that it’s effectively an extended de/reconstruction of one of The One Giveth‘s weakest tracks: the manic, tiresome, yet mercifully short “Countracula (This One’s for You).” Bootsy salvages it by taking out the shrill call-and-response vocals from Godmama (sorry, ladies) and axing the whole “Countracula” conceit, giving the groove room to breathe and stretching out with some clean, yet indelibly funky bass solos and a muted chicken-scratch guitar riff straight out of Prince‘s Controversy album. If “Countracula” is the sound of an elder statesman of the funk taking a moment to play in the young upstarts’ toybox and not quite grasping how the parts fit together, then “Body Slam” is the sound of that same master coming back, getting his chops up, and showing them all how it’s done.

    Not surprisingly, “Body Slam” was a highlight of Bootsy’s shows on the 1983 Atomic Dog Tour with his longtime mentor and bandleader George Clinton. The sound quality isn’t great, but check out the video below for an extended jam on the song from their Washington, D.C. gig, featuring some generation-spanning synth work by the incredible Bernie Worrell.

    And of course, check below the jump for this and other tracks on our growing Spotify and YouTube playlists. I’m taking the rest of the week off to focus on my other blog; Callie will be back tomorrow and Friday for more Jheri Curl June.

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  • Jheri Curl June Special: L.A. Reid

    If you’re a regular Jheri Curl June reader, then you should already know that the first week of June holds special signifance in jheri curl music history. As we noted back in our very first Jheri Curl June Special of 2014, Prince’s birthday falls at the end of the week, on June 7. Just a day earlier, there’s also the birthday of megaproducer and Prince’s fellow Minneapolitan, James “Jimmy Jam” Harris III: the subject, with musical life partner Terry Lewis, of our 2015 JCJ Special. And if all that wasn’t enough, on the very same date as Prince, another Midwestern Jheri Curl architect was born in 1956: Cincinnati, Ohio’s own Antonio “L.A.” Reid.

    With all due respect to Mr. Reid–who, in my defense, has so much money that I sincerely doubt he cares–there’s a reason why we waited three years to enshrine him in the Jheri Curl June Hall of Fame. If, as I suggested last year, Prince was Jheri Curl’s principal architect and Jam and Lewis its most successful engineers, then Reid and his longtime colleague Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds were more like JCM’s property developers, building on the blueprints of the Minneapolis Sound to considerable success without ever really innovating on the formula. When we think about L.A. and Babyface, we think about…well, LaFace, a label synonymous with early ’90s R&B. Their achievements in the previous decade were decidedly more modest.

    But that doesn’t mean they weren’t, in their own way, important. Dystopian Dance Party has love for Reid’s and Edmonds’ early band the Deele, and last year we highlighted one of the pair’s late-era jheri curl productions, “Rock Steady” by the Whispers. There’s plenty of room in pop music for songs that refine and iterate on existing formulas, rather than reinventing the wheel; this is especially true in jheri curl music, a genre that existed pretty much exclusively as a vehicle for up-and-coming artists to bite from Prince and Michael Jackson. This, then, is our tribute to L.A. Reid: maybe not the most innovative of artists, but a shrewd businessman, a talented musician, and a gifted producer and songwriter who could, let’s not forget, buy and sell all of us in a second.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Lakeside’s “Turn the Music Up”

    Best known for their 1980 pop-funk hit “Fantastic Voyage,” Dayton, Ohio’s Lakeside were full-blown Jheri Curl by the release of 1983’s Untouchables, which included the single “Turn the Music Up.” There was even a music video expanding on the theme of the album artwork: members of Lakeside as 1920s Chicago gangsters, complete with tommy guns, in a speakeasy/disco that looks more like someone’s cool dad’s wood panel basement than either of those establishments.

    Regardless of where this party is supposed to be taking place, however, it’s definitely a party I would want to attend. We’ve got bathtub moonshine, people busting out of cakes, and even the cop who came over (probably due to a noise complaint) is seduced by the atmosphere. Although I wish that the members of Lakeside would quit recklessly waving those guns around. Guys, please. You’re gonna hurt somebody.

    Spotify/YouTube playlists below:

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  • Jheri Curl June: Ebonee Webb’s “Something About You”

    If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Prince must have flattered as hell by Memphis, Tennessee’s Ebonee Webb. Obviously, more than one artist of the jheri-curl persuasion has made a career out of jacking His Royal Badness’ high-heeled swagger, but this 1981 gem is truly uncanny: from the main riff–a straight rip of the Purple One’s “Head“–to the breathy, fey falsetto of singer Michael Winston, to the brief synthesizer breakdown around the three-minute mark, which sounds painstakingly recreated from a similar moment in “Uptown.” Still, the wheel of artistic theft is ever-turning, and soon a new generation of artists were biting from Ebonee Webb: like electro-hop DJ/rapper–and fellow Jheri Curl June alum—the Egyptian Lover, who later admitted to copping his own heavy-breathing schtick from, you guessed it, “Something About You.”

    And besides, why cast aspersions? Ebonee Webb may not have been the most original group out there, but “Something About You” remains a stone-cold groove–a perfect slice of Minneapolis-via-Memphis lite-funk that is all the more attractive in the wake of Prince’s passing. Prince may have been a one-of-a-kind artist, and his absence still stings; but in a strange way, it’s almost comforting to know how thoroughly his groundbreaking style was looted, even less than a year after the release of Dirty Mind. Like Felix da Housecat once said, “We All Wanna Be Prince“;  Ebonee Webb just happened to want it more than most.

    Listen to “Something About You” on our Spotify and YouTube playlists after the jump:

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  • Jheri Curl June: Skyy’s “Call Me”

    The Brooklyn-based funk/boogie octet Skyy formed in the mid-1970s and had three albums under their belt–each titled with a play on the band’s name–before their fourth album, Skyy Line, was released in 1981. “Call Me,” their biggest hit on the album, helped it reach gold status in the U.S., and continues to be a mainstay R&B radio. I hear this one in 105.9 KISS’ Friday Old School Mix Show every week without fail. It’s clear to see why; “Call Me” is one of those great songs from the early ’80s transition period between disco and full-blown Jheri Curl that includes all the best facets of both genres: chicken-scratch guitar, slick keyboards, a triangle enunciating each word in the chorus, hell, even a spoken word portion.

    The video is a classic, too, with Skyy’s trio of frontwomen the Dunning Sisters (Denise, Bonnie, and Delores) providing very clear “picking up the phone” gestures just in case you were confused about the whole “call me” part.

    Spotify and YouTube playlists after the jump!

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  • Jheri Curl June: Imaginary Genres – Jheri Curl Music

    It’s finally here! In case you weren’t aware, Jheri Curl June is our most sacred holiday season here at Dystopian Dance Party, and we wanted to do something special for its third annual observance (“Jh3ri Curl Jun3”). So, instead of resurrecting the same hoary old introductory post from 2014, we thought we’d offer a concise introduction to the genre we call Jheri Curl Music in the form of a short video. Please enjoy; transcript and video/audio credits are past the jump. And come back tomorrow for some more traditional Jheri Curl June fare!

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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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  • Jheri Curl June: The Brothers Johnson’s “Kick it to the Curb”

    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’ does not hold up to the Brothers’ earlier music, such as hits “Strawberry Letter 23,” “I’ll Be Good to You,” and “Stomp!,” yet the album retains the signature cool funkiness of the Brothers Johnson’s sound.

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