Can you believe it’s been two full months and we still haven’t dropped the biweekly schedule? Looks like it’s high time to rest on our laurels for a bit. In this “mini”-episode (that is basically the exact same length as a regular episode), we answer listener correspondence, make some corrections, read some relevant passages of Vince Neil‘s section of The Dirt (see, now we have your attention!), and finally get our hands on a (digital) copy of Stoney’s Encino High Journal. Join us again in two weeks as we go deep on 1993’s Son in Law!
When we last left our hero, it was 1989 and the world was teetering on the brink of full-blown Weaselmania; now, we’re picking up for a deep dive into the peak of Pauly Shore‘s pre-movie fame, including his MTV show Totally (Different) Pauly, his two (!) imperial-era standup comedy albums, and his 1992 victory-lap HBO special Pauly Does Dallas. Next time, we’ll finally talk about Encino Man! Sound good, buuu-ddies? Cool.
Video version (with much better audio syncing than last time) below:
00:00:00 Pauly’s Totally Buff Special
00:02:30 A representative example of the Totally Different Pauly opening
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.
As you may have heard, we recently launched a physical magazine, the first issue of which is dedicated to eclectic art and writing inspired by the music of Prince. So, to celebrate a successful launch–and to get us back in podcasting mode after an unplanned six-month leave of absence–we invited Erika Peterson, a friend and contributor to the magazine, to talk about her work and the most funny/surreal moments of Celebration 2018 at Paisley Park. We also talk about Dystopian Dance Party’s ongoing beef with Questlove, and do our best to try and beat him at his own game of guessing Prince songs from their opening seconds. It doesn’t go well.
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 Zeldaseries, 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…
