It’s a true minisode this week, as we check in on a few listener comments and give an update on the unfolding Richard Simmons biopic drama, which I guess is something we have to care about now? Anyway, Jury Duty in two weeks!
If you couldn’t already tell we’d passed the glory days of Pauly Shore‘s career, well, here’s your wakeup call: Not one, but two glorified cameos in movie tie-ins to a cartoon, one of them direct to video. Luckily for our hero, A Goofy Movie (1995) happens to be a generational touchstone, and An Extremely Goofy Movie (2000) is… surprisingly watchable? Anyway, we go to some dark places in this episode, so to avoid incongruity with the kid-friendly movies’ themes, we bleeped out all the cuss words with fun Goofy sounds in the tradition of our Cat in the Hat episode. Unless we accidentally left some in, in which case, sorry, kids!
Here’s the video version:
00:00:00 Trailer for A Goofy Movie (Kevin Lima, 1995)
00:03:22 Our first of four (!!) podcast episodes on the Shrek series (you’re on your own for the other three)
Earlier this month, I noticed a comment on our Instagram that said we’d been “sleeping on MJ.” My first thought was, “sleeping on MJ?! We gave Michael Jackson our second-ever Jheri Curl June Special way back in 2014; we also wrote about his 1988 film Moonwalker for Jheri Curl Cinema! If this is sleeping on MJ, what would being awake on him be like?!” But then I realized, maybe the “MJ” in question isn’t Michael at all; maybe, in fact, it’s his older brother Marlon Jackson. If that’s the case, random Instagram person, then I owe you an apology: we really have been sleeping on MJ these past seven years–but no more.
Marlon, who once described himself as the “background Jackson,” was an original member of the Jackson 5, but didn’t get his chance in the spotlight until the group’s 1984 album Victory: writing, singing, and riding a motorcycle in the music video for the third single and closing track, “Body.” Two years later, he contributed a solo track, “(Let Your Love Find) The Chosen One,” to the soundtrack for the Eddie Murphy vehicle The Golden Child. Finally, in 1987, he released his solo debut, Baby Tonight, for which today’s song served as the lead single and title track.
“Baby Tonight” is the definition of a late-period Jheri Jam, with its busy programmed bass and electronic rhythms (particularly in the remix used for the music video). It actually reminds me, not so much of Marlon’s brothers and bandmates in the Jacksons, but of our 2018 Jheri Curl June honoree Georgio–which might be a backhanded compliment, but I consider it a compliment nonetheless! Sadly, this MJ wouldn’t achieve anywhere near the solo success of the other one (or, for that matter, his older brother Jermaine, who I’m sure we’ll get around to writing about one of these days); Baby Tonight remains his only solo album, though he continues to perform with the Jacksons to this day. Which, for a self-described “background Jackson,” isn’t such a bad thing all in all.
It’s hard to believe, but there’s only one more day of Jheri Curl June! We hope you’ve been enjoying it as much as we have. Feel free to catch up with the playlists below, and we’ll be back one more time tomorrow!
So, let’s begin with the elephant in the room. As you might recall, last year the month of June began mere days after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which made the idea of a semi-irreverent celebration of dated Black music and hairstyles by two privileged White people feel… tone-deaf, to say the least. It was also, of course, less than three months into a once-in-a-lifetime (knock on wood) global pandemic… long story short, we just weren’t in a party mood. But now it’s a year later; and, while the copsstillhaven’tstopped killing Black people–nor, despite what our respective homestates‘ governors apparently think, is the pandemic over–I think we could all use the mood lift that only the smoothest, silkiest ’80s R&B can provide.
For those of you who are new here (or just need a refresher), “Jheri Curl Music” is our name for a specific brand of glossy, heavily synthesized post-disco R&B music from the early-to-mid ’80s–it’s kind of like our yacht rock, except not even 1% as successful or widely recognized. For details, see our original introduction post from 2014, our 2016 video, or our 2018 podcast. We dedicate each June to celebrating this unsung art form: mostly because “Jheri Curl” and “June” are nicely alliterative, but also because early summer is the perfect time to roll down your windows, let the wind blow through your hair (or, if you’re rocking a J.C. yourself, let it blow kind of against and around your hair), and blast some vintage J.C.M.
This year’s Jheri Curl June is a back-to-basics move for us. There will be no long-form artist/producer retrospectives (like we did for Prince, Michael Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, L.A. Reid, Jesse Johnson, and André Cymone), no Jheri Curl Cinema features (like we did for Purple Rain, The Last Dragon, Moonwalker, and Coming to America), and no special podcast episodes; just a J.C.M. song every weekday for the whole month, with Spotify and YouTube playlists for your listening pleasure. Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t spend our seventh year stretching the boundaries of what belongs under the J.C.M.-brella. That’s why this year, I’m kicking things off with a possibly controversial choice: Eddy Grant’s 1982 reggae-funk hit “Electric Avenue.”
On the surface, reggae and Jheri Curl Music don’t appear to have much in common, aside from their general origins in the African musical diaspora. Hell, just look at each respective genre’s trademark hairstyle: Jheri curls, as has been well established, are glossy and determinedly non-kinky; meanwhile, Rastafari locs (a.k.a. “dreadlocks”) embrace the organic textures of African hair types. Jheri curls have a well-earned reputation for being synthetic and potentially damaging to Black people’s hair follicles (not to mention their furniture), while locs are (rightfully) celebrated as a “natural” hairstyle and an expression of pan-African pride.
And yet, “Electric Avenue” is proof that even styles as diametrically opposed as these can exist in harmony. Oh, sure, Eddy Grant probably wouldn’t have been caught dead with activator in his hair; but who needs an actual Jheri curl when your keyboards are as moist and juicy as the ones on “Electric Avenue”? Meanwhile, Grant’s lyrics–a righteously angry ode to the 1981 uprisings against racist policing and systemic poverty in Brixton, South London–show that Jheri Curl Music, like reggae, can have a political point of view. As far as this writer is concerned, “Electric Avenue” belongs right next to Paul Laurence‘s “Racism!!!” on any self-respecting J.C.M. protest mix.
Speaking of mixes, below you’ll find Spotify and YouTube playlists for this month’s festivities, which we’ll update with every new track. Unfortunately, the Spotify list is currently empty, as “Electric Avenue” does not appear to be available on the service. We can’t blame Eddy Grant, if this was his choice: a banger like this is worth a lot more than the fraction of a cent a Spotify stream earns. But I think we can all agree that our playlists are a little bit weaker for its absence. See you tomorrow!
Earlier this year when we lost James Ingram, I took that as an opportunity to delve deeper into his music. Although I was aware that he was an accomplished singer and songwriter, I was mainly familiar with “Yah Mo B There” and the fact that he helped turn “P.Y.T.” by Michael Jackson into the undisputed Jheri Curl banger that it is today.
If James Ingram was behind “P.Y.T.,” I knew he was bound to have some Jheri gems in his solo career; and lo and behold, the first track on his debut solo album, 1983’s It’s Your Night–nestled right there next “Yah Mo B There!”–is “Party Animal.” With its chickenscratch guitar and synth flourishes, “Party Animal” sounds like a companion to another early era Jheri Curl June inductee, Skyy’s “Call Me.”
Now enjoy this video of James Ingram performing “Party Animal” on stage alone like the nerd at the school talent show:
It’s a poetic fluke of the cosmos that so many Jheri Curl Music innovators’ birthdays fall in June, the genre’s holiest month. So far, we’ve highlighted Prince (June 7), Jimmy Jam (June 6), L.A. Reid (also June 7), and Jesse Johnson (June 1)–as well as Michael Jackson, who passed away on June 25, 2009. Now, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, it’s finally time to induct André Cymone into the JCM Hall of Fame.
As Prince’s earliest musical collaborator, André Cymone played an integral, but regrettably overshadowed part in the creation of the Jheri Curl Music strain more popularly known as the Minneapolis Sound. On our Prince associates podcast from a couple of years ago, I described Cymone as the twin Prince (figuratively, of course) consumed in utero. So many of the more famous artist’s stylistic choices in the first three years of his career–from his embrace of New Wave sounds and fashions to the whole song “Do Me, Baby”–can be more accurately interpreted as a collaborative effort between himself and his one-time surrogate brother. By the time André, understandably fed up with the lack of credit for his work, went solo in early 1981, the persona known as “Prince” had been more or less fully formed; this inevitably did his longtime partner a disservice by making his solo career look like an imitation.
But today we celebrate André Cymone not as an imitator, but as the innovator he was. While he may not have scaled the critical or commercial heights of his musical other half, his efforts–both behind the scenes and in the spotlight–left an indelible mark on Jheri Curl Music, and on the last 30 years of pop and R&B in general.
There are certain Jheri Curl songs that just hit you in the solar plexus with their energy. “So Emotional,” the third single from Whitney Houston’s 1987 sophomore album Whitney, is just such a song. As soon as the powerful synths come in, I imagine jheri curls bursting into flames like Michael Jackson’s in the Pepsi commercial. Thankfully, “So Emotional” didn’t actually cause anyone’s hair to spontaneously combust, as it was a huge hit in dance clubs in 1988, and playing it would have been a liability for club owners.
Every year there’s at least one artist who I eagerly anticipate writing about for Jheri Curl June. This year, without question, that artist is Georgio. I already told the story on our latest podcast about the first time I encountered Georgio, flipping through the racks at my local record store (shout out to Purple Narwhal Records in Rockville, Maryland). I took one look at the sculpted cheekbones and tastefully-applied makeup on the cover of his 12″ single “Tina Cherry,” and somehow I knew that this would be my JCJ discovery of 2018. I promptly picked up not only “Tina Cherry,” but the whole stack of Georgio records, and took them to the counter.
Since then, I’ve made it a habit of picking up whatever Georgio I can find at the record store–I got a copy of “Lover’s Lane,” another single from his 1987 debut, from Electric Fetus in Minneapolis this April. The thing about Georgio I should establish at this point is that his music isn’t great. It’s perfectly competent, on the club/house-ier side of the late-decade JCM spectrum, but there’s a reason why it’s usually priced so cheap that I can routinely afford to walk out with a stack of five or six of his records. My affection for Georgio has a lot to do with my conviction that the best Jheri Curl Music, or at least the most characteristic, is often the most mediocre. It also has to do with the tragicomic history of the man himself, Georgio Allentini.
In some ways, it’s surprising that it took us this long to feature Colonel Abrams (real name, no gimmicks) for Jheri Curl June. He was born in Detroit–always a big plus for us proud Southeastern Michiganders. He had connections to the architects of the sound, having sung on a few tracks by 94 East, a Minneapolis-based studio band that briefly featured an 18-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson on guitar. And, while the Colonel is better-known as a house artist, one listen to the whining synthesizers and flanged drum-machine claps on his 1985 debut album should be more than enough to get your Jheri Curl sense a-tingling.
Like JCJ Class of 2015 member James “D-Train” Williams, Colonel Abrams distinguished himself by layering a soulful, gospel-infused baritone over his futuristic soundscapes. Indeed, “The Truth” from his debut album basically is a gospel song, with Abrams testifying “Let’s stop all hatred / ‘Cause love is what we need,” a bank of synthesizers taking the place of the church organ. I’m not a church-going man, but if it was anything like the music video above–featuring the Colonel in a graffitied alley, rocking Sgt. Pepper marching-band chic years before Michael Jackson and flanked by what appear to be the dancers from Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” video–then I’d be in that bitch every Sunday morning.
Last Thursday, June 7, would have been Prince’s 60th birthday had he: a) not passed away in April 2016, and b) believed in concepts as prosaic as “birthdays” and “years.” Last week also happened to mark the underwhelming conclusion of the beef between rappers Pusha T and Drake, which just a few short weeks ago felt like the only thing anyone on the Internet was talking about. So, I thought, why not make today’s Jheri Curl June post a diss track about Prince?
Released on Gap Band VI(actually, confusingly, the eighth album by Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Gap Band) in December 1984, there’s nothing about “Disrespect” that directly implicates Prince–except, of course, for the sound, which pairs Minneapolis-style sustained synth chords and a “Controversy”-esque bassline with call and response right out of the P-Funk playbook. The lyrics, by Gap Band frontman Charlie Wilson, are aggrieved but non-specific, excoriating some unfortunate “sucka” who “had the chance” but “disrespected” him.
