Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: klymaxx

  • Jheri Curl June Special: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

    The main reason we celebrate Jheri Curl June in June is because, let’s face it, we are only human, and are as susceptible to the siren song of alliteration as the next group of hack Internet writers. But there’s also a pretty good justification for the timing, because the birthdays of two of jheri curl music’s most important innovators fall in the first week of June. We covered the first of those innovators, Prince, in last year’s inaugural Jheri Curl June Special.  So this time around, we’ll be discussing the other one: James “Jimmy Jam” Harris, born June 6, 1959.

    If Prince was jheri curl music’s architect, then Jimmy Jam and his longtime musical partner Terry Lewis were the brilliant engineers who shaped the structure to its fullest potential. Their take on the “Minneapolis Sound” developed by their former mentor added a new level of polish and sophistication; and when Prince shifted his own music away from traditional jheri-curl and toward neo-psychedelia in the mid-’80s, Jam and Lewis went in the opposite direction, crafting ever-more-flawless pop-friendly tracks that kept JCM in the top of the charts and, ultimately, evolved into the next dominant R&B sound, New Jack Swing.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Klymaxx’s “Meeting in the Ladies Room”

    What would Ladies’ Week be without a tribute to Klymaxx: one of the few all-female, self-formed groups in pop music history? Meeting in the Ladies Room, Klymaxx’s fourth studio album, was co-produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and went platinum with four successful singles, one of which was the title track.

    The song–written by another trio of Jheri Curl June veterans, Reggie and Vincent Calloway and Boaz Watson of Midnight Star (hence the “stealth” “Freak-a-zoid” reference)–opens with Klymaxx singer/drummer Bernadette Cooper muttering about the behavior of the other women in the club who are eyeing her man, while dropping a few subtle hints at her financial status: “I had to leave my condo to come to this / Well, I’m back, but this time I’m with my man / And these women are putting their hands all over his / Yamamoto Kansai sweater that I bought.”

    Granted, the rest of the song is about dolling yourself up in the bathroom to look better than those other women, who are apparently succeeding at rubbing up on your boyfriend. These themes of female competition, beauty as a source of power, and uncontrollable male sexuality do somewhat downplay the concept of a successful woman who can buy her man designer clothes. But can we all agree that it’s pretty progressive just to have a group of women who could play their own instruments, weren’t put together by a Svengali to fit a caricatured male fantasy, and recorded songs about topics relevant to women?

    (P.S. I think it’s worth noting that the pop-arty video above was not only directed by Devo co-founder Gerald Casale, but also featured a young Vivica A. Fox as one of the “BW”s in the club. The more you know.)

    Playlist below the jump; see you next week!

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