Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: debarge

  • Jheri Curl June: DeBarge’s “Be My Lady”

    We at Dystopian Dance Party are, to put it mildly, super fucking hyped about the Bobby DeBarge biopic premiering later this month on TVOne: it’s basically the equivalent of Avengers: Endgame for fans of bad music movies, Jheri Curl Cinema, and/or Party City wigs. Since the movie is airing during the High Holy Month of Jheri Curl June, we’ll almost definitely do something around its release; in the meantime, though, here’s a song by DeBarge from their 1983 album In a Special Way.

    “Be My Lady,” the album’s opening track, finds the DeBarge siblings in full-on Jacksons mode–in large part because the song’s bassline and vocal melody bear a more-than-passing resemblance to the latter group’s proto-JCM scorcher “Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).” But the swathes of synthesizers and soaring falsetto vocals–both courtesy of lead singer and producer El DeBarge–add a layer of jheri-curl grease even thicker than Jermaine’s. We can’t wait to hear the no-doubt-unlicensed soundalike on TV One in a couple of weeks.

    In the meantime, listen to this and our other picks so far on the Spotify and YouTube playlists below. See you tomorrow!

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  • Podcast: Allow Us to Reintroduce Ourselves

    The Dystopian Dance Party podcast is back, and we’re out for blood. This episode, we catch up on what’s been going on during our two-month hiatus and talk about Gene Simmons (naturally), the 20th anniversary of Final Fantasy VII, and the 70th anniversary of Marc Bolan. Please look out for more in the next couple of months–we have a lot of exciting stuff planned for the future!

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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 Cinema: The Last Dragon (1985)

    This year’s Jheri Curl June Ladies’ Week closes on a bittersweet note, because we’re talking about Vanity: a tragic chapter in the jheri curl chronicle. Born Denise Katrina Matthews in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Vanity is best known as one of the cogs in Prince‘s early-’80s machine–indeed, she was arguably the most critically reviled of his many protégées (at least until Carmen Electra came along). After her association with Prince ended during pre-production for Purple Rain, her place in the musical narrative only declined: there was a floundering solo career, a debilitating addiction to freebase cocaine, a kidney transplant due to the ravages of substance abuse, and finally a conversion to evangelical Christianity that led her to renounce everything associated with her former life.

    It’s obviously not within my power to rehabilitate Vanity’s place in the popular music canon–nor, necessarily, is it fully worth rehabilitating (I mean, have you listened to “Pretty Mess“?) But I do think she’s gotten a raw deal. The one album released under the name Vanity 6 is–like its “sister album,” the Time‘s What Time is It?–one of the great forgotten Prince records of the early ’80s; and, while the Purple One per usual ghost-wrote and -recorded the bulk of the music, it was Vanity’s sassy sex appeal that really sold it (don’t even try and tell me you wouldn’t have gotten down with Vanity circa “Nasty Girl“). And then, of course, there’s The Last Dragon.

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