Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: george clinton

  • 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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  • 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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  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2015

    Well, here we are, at the cusp of the New Year: that sacred time when bloggers from all over congregate for one last chance to opine about the pop culture year that was. And we’re no exception–even though, as we note in the introduction, we’re barely up for the task, having spent most of 2015 listening to the same Ying Yang Twins records we’d been listening to since 2005. But what is pop-culture blogging, anyway, if not the chance to exercise one’s self-appointed, mostly illusory authority on an unwilling and mostly uncaring audience?

    I originally wanted this inaugural year-in-review podcast to include multiple forms of media, but quite frankly we’re even worse at keeping up with film, television, et. al. than we are at keeping up with music; and besides, seeing as music is 90% of what we write about on Dystopian Dance Party, it kind of makes more sense this way. So here, without further ado, are our favorite songs of 2015. Settle in, because this one’s gonna be even longer and more self-indulgent than usual!

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  • My Type of Hype: A House Party Series Retrospective

    My Type of Hype: A House Party Series Retrospective

    Last month marked the 25th anniversary of the release of House Party: the definitive early ’90s African American teen comedy, starring pop-rappers Kid ‘n Play and directed by Reginald Hudlin. So what better time than now to look back and recall the classic film, the sequels it spawned, and the moment in urban youth culture it inimitably captured and preserved? If you have fond memories of the House Party films, read this post and you just might learn something new–especially about the franchise’s lesser-seen third and fourth installments.

    The original House Party, an expanded remake of a student film Hudlin made while attending Harvard University in 1986, structures itself loosely around a single day in the lives of a group of high school seniors. Peter, a.k.a. “Play” (Christopher “Play” Martin), is throwing the titular house party while his parents are out of town. His friend Christopher, or “Kid” (Christopher “Kid” Reid), wants to use the party as an opportunity to showcase his “dope lyrics” as an M.C., but his plans are jeopardized when he runs afoul of the school bullies: hulking “Stab” and “Zilla” and diminutive, squeaky-voiced “Pee Wee,” played respectively by real-life brothers Paul Anthony, Brian “B-Fine,” and Lucien “Bowlegged Lou” George of the R&B group Full Force. Also attending the festivities are Tisha Campbell as the “bougie” upper-class girl, Sidney, who harbors a crush on Kid; A.J. Johnson as her worldly friend from the projects, Sharane; and Martin Lawrence–in only his second feature film role, after Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989)–as Bilal, the party’s irascible D.J.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Was (Not Was)’ “Walk the Dinosaur”

    Is jheri curl music still jheri curl music when it’s self-aware? This is the existential question raised by “Walk the Dinosaur,” the hit 1988 single by Detroit new-wavers Was (Not Was). It has all the ingredients of a great late-period jheri-curl song: clattering synthesized percussion, a bassline that pops all over the place, soulful vocals by singers Harry Bowens and “Sweet Pea” Atkinson. But it’s also coated with the thick layer of ironic detachment that comes with the territory of white art-school types like David and Don Was (born David Weiss and Don Fagenson) interloping in African American culture (see also: Beck, Jack White, Dystopian Dance Party). Indeed, the campy, Flintstones-inspired music video, whose line-dancing cavegirls set off a short-lived late-’80s dance craze, threatens to take the song directly into novelty territory.

    Fortunately, however, the “brothers” Was were both dedicated pastiche artists and certifiable pop-music geeks with a genuine love for the styles they imitated; these are the same guys, after all, who employed P-Funk musicians years before Talking Heads, and sounded more like the real thing in the process. So yes, “Walk the Dinosaur” is both an arch postmodern jest that uses contemporary R&B as a vehicle for ironic visions of nuclear apocalypse, and a goofy novelty dance number; but it’s also, at least as far as I’m concerned, a good-ass song, and a worthy addition to the annals of jheri curl music history. Let’s, uh, just try not to think about that 1993 cover by George Clinton.

    We’ll be back tomorrow with another Jheri Curl June Special about the other titan of jheri curl music. In the meantime, check on that playlist after the jump!

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