We have talked about City Pop and its proximity to Jheri Curl Music before with Hitomi Tohyama’s “Wanna Kiss”. Today we are featuring Masayoshi Takanaka, a jazz fusion legend, guitarist, composer, and producer who is influential in the City Pop genre. He is also known for playing with outrageous, custom guitars. Here’s a picture of him playing a huge red surfboard-shaped guitar:
“Chill Me Out” from 1982’s Saudade is a perfect way to cool down on a hot summer evening, with the tinkling synthesizer that hits like ice cubes in a drink on a hot, balmy day. I also love the spoken word part that’s a conversation between Takanaka and session bassist T.M. Stevens, culminating in Takanaka shouting “CHECK IT OUT” and then ripping into a guitar solo.
Oh, by the way, Randy Jackson also appears on this album. You know. THE Randy Jackson of Journey and “it’s a no from me dawg” fame. Unfortunately, I did not figure out which songs he appears on, but Discogs lists him as a background singer on the album.
“Chill Me Out” definitely deserves a spot on your cookout playlist this summer. If you don’t have one yet, may we suggest our own here:
Surprise! I know it’s been a minute since we did… anything for Dystopian Dance Party, but the weather’s getting warmer, the days are getting longer, and the sounds of funky synthesizers are echoing in the distance; so we couldn’t resist coming back for another Jheri Curl June.
For the uninitiated, Jheri Curl June is our annual celebration of a particular strain of wet, silky ’80s R&B that defies all non-hairstyle-related description (and no, we haven’t heard of post-disco… or boogie… or electro-funk… or…). We’ve explained the term several times in the last nine years: in our original 2014 introduction post, a 2016 video, and a 2018 podcast. We know it’s never going to catch on, but damn it, we’re in too deep to stop now.
Having been at this for almost a decade, as you might imagine, we’ve begun to expand the boundaries of the pseudo-genre we coined, touching on City Pop and even reggae. This year, I think it’s finally time to unleash a new mutation that’s been sitting in my “JCJ ideas” playlist for years: I’m talking, of course, about Jheri Jazz.
Tom Browne released “Funkin’ for Jamaica (N.Y.)” in July 1980 as the lead single from his second solo album, Love Approach; the song’s irresistible jazz-funk fusion hit Number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart in October, where it remained for three weeks. This puts it more solidly in what we might call the “proto-J.C.M.” category, which is probably why we didn’t feature it until now; for one thing, the lead instrument is Browne’s trumpet, and as we all know, Jheri Curl Music traditionally lacks non-synthetic horns.
And yet, listening to the airtight groove of “Funkin’” today, it fits right in with our usual fare: particularly the razor-sharp muted rhythm guitar by Bobby Broom and that nasty bassline by a 20-year-old Marcus Miller. And did you catch that Flex-a-Tone straight out of 2017 JCJ honoree “Cutie Pie” by One Way? I rest my case.
If you want an in-depth look into the story behind the inspiration and recording of “Funkin’,” I highly recommend this excellent article from Wax Poetics. In the meantime, I’ll just say that the music video above is the most concentrated dose of fun I’ve experienced in quite a while; everyone–Browne, Broom, Miller, singer Toni Smith, keyboardist Bernard Wright, and perhaps most of all incessantly mugging drummer Buddy Williams–looks like they’re having the time of their life. Hopefully kicking off the month with this absolute heater will help bring some fun into your life as well.
Check out our growing Spotify and TIDAL playlists below:
It’s a special #jhericurljune installment of the ol’ Book Club as we dig into 2019’s On Time: A Princely Life in Funk by Morris Day with David Ritz–so, slightly less headbanging than normal, but don’t worry, there’s plenty of the important stuff (i.e., cocaine). We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with Part 2, at which point we’ll also announce our official HBC selection for July. Remember, don’t let us Meat Loaf!
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!
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!
We opened this year’s Jheri Curl June with a socially conscious Jheri Curl song. Well, here’s an entire album of Social Justice Jheri Jams. Appropriately titled Listen to the Message, Club Nouveau’s second album is an overt political statement that you can dance to. The opening track, “It’s a Cold Cold World,” has lyrics about poverty, homelessness, war, and racism over a knocking beat.
Listening to this song, recorded over 30 years ago, really drives home the fact that things aren’t getting better and the hour is surely getting late, both for humankind on this planet and for Jheri Curl June. We only have two more days in June, folks! But don’t worry, we will (probably) be back next year.
In the meantime, check out the playlists below and stay tuned for the final days of Jheri Curl June 2021!
As we round the corner into the last days of Jheri Curl June, today’s pick is another repeat induction into the JCM Hall of Fame. You may recognize Curtis Hairston as the lead vocalist for the 1985 album Genie by the B.B. & Q. Band, who we spotlighted back in 2016. This time, however, we’re talking about Hairston’s 1987 solo track, “The Morning After”: the third and final single from his self-titled Atlantic Records debut–and, sadly, his last single as a solo artist. “The Morning After” wasn’t a hit in the U.S., but it did chart in the U.K., where Hairston remains better known; and the combination of the singer’s soaring tenor with those slick keyboards makes it the perfect song to slide into the weekend with.
You can listen to “The Morning After”–and the rest of our picks so far–on the Spotify and YouTube playlists below. We’ll be back next week for just three more days, after which we must sadly return our ceremonial Jheri curl wigs to the Dystopian Dance Party Vault for another year. Still, we’ve got some more great songs in the pipeline, so we’ll see you again soon!
This year’s Jheri Curl June has leaned heavily into harder go-go beats and electro grooves. Sure, we had Atlantic Starr‘s grown and sexy “Love Me Down” at the beginning of the month, but after that it’s been back to back Jheri Jams. So, I felt it was again time to relax into something as silky smooth as the sheets that Angela Winbush rests on in the music video for her song “Angel.”
We previously spoke about Angela Winbush and her abusive working relationship while she was a part of René and Angela. On her first solo album, 1987’s Sharp, Angela really shines as a powerhouse vocalist and multi-instrumentalist. Her credits on this album include drum programming, keyboards, synthesizer, bass, and percussion.
Another fun thing of note is that on the vinyl release of Sharp, the A- and B-sides of the album were titled the “Slammin’ Side” and the “Quiet Storm” side, respectively. On our own playlist, we’ll probably return back to the Slammin’ Side tomorrow, but Angela Winbush’s “Angel” was like a nice cooling summer rain on a hot day.
Over the years, we’ve talked a lot about how Jheri Curl Music evolved over the decade: taking on associated sounds like electro and freestyle, before finally being subsumed by the emergence of New Jack Swing. On the other hand, there’s Midnight Star, who continued to plow more or less the same furrow throughout the whole Jheri Curl era: from their breakthrough in 1983 until the departure of creative nucleus, brothers Reggie and Vincent Calloway, three years later. Listen to 1983’s No Parking on the Dance Floor back to back with 1986’s Headlines and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were recorded during the same sessions: pretty much the only thing that changed, in fact, were the group’s actual J.C.’s, which had blossomed from the relatively modest coiffures of the former to the baroque salon lookbook lineup of the latter.
But hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; and the title track of Headlines shows that, if nothing else, Midnight Star’s signature sound was still good for a decent groove. If we’ve heard these tricks before–right down to Vincent’s Vocodered rap, which sounds copied and pasted from the No Parking club hit “Freak-A-Zoid“–it’s only because they proved so effective the first time around. Just one word of advice: while “Headlines” hardly necessitates a 12″ mix–the damn album track is already almost eight and a half minutes long–it’s still my preferred version, if only because it contains the hilarious breakdown where singer Melvin Gentry demands we “take a memo” and then spends the next 45 seconds rapping the words “type” and “backspace.” Also, Reggie plays a flute solo. Who knew journalism could be so funky?
We’ll be back tomorrow with more latter-day Jheri Jams. Meanwhile, check out our growing playlists below!
