Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: first avenue

  • Year of the Weasel Episode 7.5: Weasel-Pilled

    Year of the Weasel Episode 7.5: Weasel-Pilled

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    It’s been almost eight months since we started on this bogus journey, and we might be slowly losing it, but at least we’re taking some of you down with us! In this extra-minisode, we share some stories about the friends online and IRL who we’ve started to slowly Weasel-pill. And there’s still at least four months of this shitshow left for you to be next! Jump on board just for Bio-Dome in two weeks!

    YouTube version:

    00:02:28 The Goofy Movie episode Disney (maybe) doesn’t want you to see!

    00:02:58 You can be the 17th person to watch our Jury Duty episode on YouTube!

    00:04:18 What Did Prince Do This Week?

    00:07:24 The Other Shore: The Diana Nyad Story (not that Shore, turns out)

    00:07:27 Whoops, didn’t mean to call Diana Nyad a “guy” — it was a very small picture!

    00:08:12 What Zach saw when he saw the poster for The Other Shore

    00:09:03 What Callie saw when she saw the Neil Patrick Harris Golden Nugget billboard

    00:09:38 California Man for our chums across the pond

    00:10:43 We talked about the surprisingly frequent intersections between Pauly Shore and Prince back in March

    00:12:04 Totally Pauly Episode 41: “Day 3 Music Awards Week”

    00:15:39 Follow us on Instagram!

    00:15:42 Follow us on YouTube!

    00:15:51 Email us! (heybuuuddy@dystopiandanceparty.com)

    00:16:32 “Jerk Out” by Prince and the Revolution (Soundcheck at the Cow Palace, San Francisco, March 5, 1985)

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast, Jheri Curl June Edition: Jamie Starr’s a Thief

    Well, folks, it’s our first-ever Jheri Curl June podcast–and before you ask, yes, we’re talking about Prince again. This time, though, we’re shedding light on a somewhat less-discussed side of his career: the series of (very) thinly-veiled side projects and ghost productions he released in the early-to-mid-1980s under various pseudonyms, most famously “Jamie Starr.” If you’re even an intermediate-level Prince fan, some of these records are essential listening; so settle in, turn up your headphones, and get ready to take a bite of our purple rock.

    But first, a word of warning, as I’m afraid there’s a factual error in this one: I was speaking from memory in the section about Sheila E, and incorrectly stated that “Noon Rendezvous” began life as a Revolution outtake. It was actually co-written by Prince and Sheila for the Glamorous Life album; the Revolution just happened to cover it in concert. Oops! Anyway, I left that bit in because I still like the song, so just enjoy the music and try to ignore the fact that I’m blatantly lying to you. Finally, if you like this kind of content (with less inaccuracies), check out my new side hustle: dance / music / sex / romance, a chronological exploration of every (known) song in the Prince oeuvre, which I expect to be updating a couple times a week until it actually kills me.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

    If it wasn’t official before, it is now: 2016 is a terrible year for musical icons. Callie and I were blindsided by the news of Prince‘s untimely death last Thursday; it hit us even harder than the news of David Bowie‘s passing back in January (and that, as you might recall, hit us pretty damn hard). It’s difficult to overstate just how much Prince means to both of us. He’s easily our favorite solo artist in all of pop music; check our frequently used tags on Dystopian Dance Party, and you’ll see that he’s the most talked-about topic by some distance. All of which fails to adequately capture the feelings we have for his body of work, and the sense of loss we feel now that he’s gone.

    Unlike with Bowie, we weren’t actually planning on podcasting about Prince this month–but we had to, if only so we could talk through all the emotions we’ve both been feeling for the last week. The podcast we originally recorded earlier in the month, on Nintendo‘s Legend of Zelda series, will be posted eventually, when it all feels a little less meaningless. But for now, dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life…

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  • Jheri Curl Cinema: Purple Rain (1984)

    Jheri Curl June is, of course, first and foremost about the music. But, as I wrote in this year’s introductory post, jheri curl is also a profoundly visual form; it is, after all, the only genre of music to my knowledge named after a hairstyle. And so it only makes sense that we should also take some of the imagery associated with the music into consideration. That’s why this year, I’m happy to announce an entirely new feature dedicated to Jheri Curl Cinema. And there’s no other film more qualified to launch such a feature than Prince’s and Albert Magnoli’s 1984 cult classic Purple Rain.

    There are a few reasons why Purple Rain is so perfect for our inaugural Jheri Curl Cinema post. First, yesterday was of course Prince‘s 57th birthday–and while His Royal Badness presumably hasn’t celebrated his birthday since he became a Jehovah’s Witness in 2001, that just means we have to celebrate it twice as hard. But second, and more to the point, Purple Rain is an important film because it captures the essence of the Minneapolis scene in the early 1980s–and thus, by extension, the essence of jheri curl music itself.

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