Today’s Jheri Curl June entry is the title track from Midnight Star’s 1983 album No Parking on the Dance Floor. It has all the necessary ingredients of a classic jheri-curl track: a squealing synth line, bass that pops like crazy, and a camp-as-hell introduction that threatens, “if you don’t get a move on that body,…
Jesse Johnson’s birthday was Sunday, so this is a little bit of a belated birthday tribute. “Be Your Man,” from Jesse Johnson’s 1985 debut solo album Jesse Johnson’s Revue, is quintessential Minneapolis jheri curl funk: the pounding drum machine beat, heavy bassline, glossy synth “horns” (which he calls out in a James Brown-esque band leader style),…
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new form of predominantly African American popular music began to take shape. Rooted in soul and funk music, but largely stripped of those genres’ grit; with elements of rock and disco, and at least one eye forever resting on potential radio play; the loosely-defined style has gone…