Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: prince

  • Jheri Curl June: Slave’s “Turn You Out (In & Out)”

    We’ve featured Slave before for Jheri Curl June, but their 1983 album Bad Enuff is the group at their most activated. By 1983, the sound of ’80s R&B had fully transitioned from leftover disco to what we all know and love as Jheri Curl Music, thanks to Prince’s Minneapolis sound taking off. Slave followed suit, though their sound had already changed slightly due to drummer and singer Steve Arrington leaving the group in 1982.

    Although post-Arrington Slave is not nearly as formidable as their earlier releases, Bad Enuff is a solid album, proving that Slave could adapt to changing times and a changing lineup. “Turn You Out (In & Out)” is arguably one of their sexiest songs, combining one of Mark Adams’ signature below-the-belt-hitting basslines with a prissy Prince-like synth riff and breathy vocals practically lifted from a Dirty Mind outtake.

    We’ll be back tomorrow with more Jheri Curl June. Spotify and YouTube playlists are below:

    (more…)

  • Jheri Curl June Special: Jesse Johnson

    For the past three years, we’ve commenced our Jheri Curl June festivities with profiles of major figures in the style we call Jheri Curl Music, timed to line up with their birthdays in the beginning of June. In 2014, it was Prince (born June 7); in 2015, it was Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (the former born June 6); last year, it was L.A. Reid (June 7 again). But until now, we’ve never managed to make time for another architect whose birthday falls as close to the beginning of June as possible: June 1, 1960. I’m talking, of course, about Jesse Johnson.

    Jesse, in our defense, hasn’t exactly been a stranger to Jheri Curl June. His “Be Your Man” was our second-ever JCJ post back in 2014, and we’ve also considered his work both as a member of the Time and as the producer of late-’80s Minneapolis funk-rockers dáKRASH. But we’ve never taken a deep dive into his music–and that’s a damn shame, because whatever Johnson might have lacked in the innovation of his former associates Prince, Jam, and Lewis, he more than made up for with some of the strongest pure Jheri Curl Music of the mid-to-late 1980s. In other words, there’s no better person with whom to launch our fourth annual celebration of all things wet and silky in ’80s R&B music. So let’s get to it!

    (more…)

  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Memorial Day, 2016-2017

    Well, here we are: for the second consecutive year, we’re turning Memorial Day weekend into a time of remembrance for the many great artists we lost since last May. But because this is still Dystopian Dance Party, and we’re constitutionally incapable of being reverent for more than a few minutes at a time, please be aware that the resulting podcast is about 70% wake, 30% roast (well, maybe 60/40). Just believe us when we tell you it’s all coming from a place of love. Hopefully, while everyone good continues to die and leave us trapped on this smoldering husk of a planet, we can at least entertain you (and ourselves) with our impressions of “The Force M.D.’s Meet the Fat Boys”… R.I.P. to Trisco Pearson. Show notes below.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian New Year’s Party Podcast: Our Favorite Songs of 2016

    So we’re a few days late, but better late than never, right? Here, finally, is our annual New Year’s Party podcast, in which we summarize our favorite songs of the last year as we make way for the new one. It’s a little less self-indulgent than the first one from 2015–by which I mean that it’s only two and a half hours, instead of two hours and 45 minutes. But we actually used real microphones this time, so at least you can hear what we’re saying! Check it out for the good music and eggnog-and-Hennessy-fueled rants; and then check out our extended Spotify and TIDAL playlists for more songs we didn’t have time to talk about, including tracks by A$AP Ferg and Future, A$AP Mob featuring Juicy J, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, Trinidad James featuring Mystikal and Lil Dicky, Nite-Funk, JEFF the Brotherhood, Frank Ocean, Mac Miller and Anderson .Paak, D.R.A.M. with Erykah Badu, 6LACK, the Weeknd and Daft Punk, and the Rolling Stones. So here’s to the one thing that made 2016 tolerable–the music–and maybe, just maybe, a 2017 that won’t suck literal ass.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Dystopian Movie Party Podcast: 30 Years Under the Cherry Moon

    Monday, July 4th marked the 240th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence; more importantly, however, it also marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the second and most underrated feature film starring Prince, Under the Cherry Moon. Today, in what will (probably) be our last Prince-related podcast of 2016, we talk about why we can’t help but like this stupid, stupid movie–and why, for a very select audience, it might just be worth a second look. Also, at one point Zach compares the film to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (don’t worry, it makes more sense in context).

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Jheri Curl June: Madonna’s “Lucky Star”

    Look, I know we called this final week of Jh3ri Curl Jun3 White Boys’ Week, but I think we would be remiss to talk about jheri curl music’s appropriators without a shoutout to the anointed queen of all swagger-jackers: Madonna. Almost a decade before she brought a sanitized version of Harlem drag ball culture to Middle America with her 1990 smash “Vogue,” the future Material Girl was attempting to crack the R&B charts with her debut single, 1982’s “Everybody”–which, in a brazen act of reverse racial passing, released with a 12″ cover designed by Lou Beach, featuring contemporary “urban” signifiers like brownstone buildings, graffiti, a police officer, a few anonymous children of color…and Madonna’s white ass nowhere to be seen.

    © Sire Records
    © Sire Records

    The ruse didn’t last long, of course; when a music video for “Everybody” was released in early 1983, it became evident that the newcomer who’d been burning up the “Black” charts was as white as the driven snow (I mean, those dance moves alone). But even later that year, when she released her self-titled debut album sporting her now-iconic peroxide-blonde New Wave Marilyn Monroe look, it was easy to hear why so many early listeners had her pegged as an African American artist. Just listen to “Lucky Star,” the album’s fourth and highest-charting single. All the ingredients for jheri curl music we described in our video back at the beginning of the month are present and accounted for: from the crisp, clean-sounding guitar and bass to the Oberheim OB-X synthesizer and Linn drum machine–two tools of the trade that should sound very familiar to fans of Madonna’s 1980s dance-pop peer, Prince.

    So yes, Madonna did jheri curl, and she did it well. But like many a swagger-jacker before and after her, it didn’t take long for her to move on; by her next album, 1984’s Nile Rodgers-produced Like a Virgin, she was taking her sound in a more self-consciously pop-oriented direction. But I have to admit, I still have a soft spot for Madonna’s short-lived jheri curl era–and for the days when the words “Madonna” and “Black” didn’t produce an instant wince of second-hand embarrassment. Go ahead, white girl. You really were the luckiest by far.

    Spotify and YouTube playlists below:

    (more…)

  • 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.

    (more…)

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

  • Jheri Curl June: Wendy & Lisa’s “Satisfaction”

    In our upcoming podcast (posting Monday!) on the musical side projects of Prince, we discuss the weird kind of Stockholm Syndrome that seems to have gripped everyone who collaborated with the little guy. André Cymone, Morris Day, Vanity: all fought tooth and nail to get out from under Prince’s lacy-gloved iron fist; then, when they were finally free, they started making their own music–which sounded exactly like Prince. Wendy (Melvoin) and Lisa (Coleman), Prince’s right- and left-hand women in the Revolution, were no exception; and on “Satisfaction,” from their 1989 sophomore album Fruit at the Bottom, they even enlisted two more escapees from the purple prison in Wendy’s sister Susannah and former Time guitarist Jesse Johnson.

    Coming out as it did at the beginning of a troubled era for His Royal Badness, “Satisfaction” has the distinction of sounding more like Prince than a lot of actual Prince songs from the same period. And, while its booming live drums and touches of acoustic piano and guitar (!) belie its origins as a post-jheri curl track, it still has enough vestigial Minneapolis electro-funk in it to qualify for this month’s festivities. Check it out below, along with a U.K. morning television interview–conducted, judging by their hairstyles, mere seconds after Wendy and Lisa had stuck their fingers in a light socket next to an exploding can of Aquanet–with a host who has no idea how lesbians work:

    See you next week! Spotify and YouTube playlists after the jump.

    (more…)

  • Jheri Curl June: Patrice Rushen’s “Breakout!”

    Like several of the other artists we’ve been discussing this year, vocalist and keyboardist Patrice Rushen had a significant career before jheri curl (B.J.C.). She recorded three well-regarded albums for jazz imprint Prestige Records in the 1970s before switching over to R&B with 1978’s Patrice—a move that, perhaps understandably, alienated much of her existing fanbase. That same year, Rushen played keyboards (uncredited) on For You, the debut album by Prince–which means, in a way, that she was present for the birth of jheri curl music/the Minneapolis Sound. Prince returned the favor by writing two songs for Rushen: the first, “I Feel for You,” for her to sing (she passed); the second, “I Wanna Be Your Lover,” because he genuinely wanted to bone her (she passed on that, too).

    Rushen released her eighth album, Straight from the Heart, in 1982: her most successful to date, largely on the strength of hit single “Forget Me Nots.” Because we’re willful obscurantists here on Dystopian Dance Party, however–or maybe just because we’ve already spent the last 20 years of our lives trying to get the Men in Black song out of our heads–here’s the less-well-remembered “Breakout!,” a frothy lite-JCM concoction with a bit of a 1980s Stevie Wonder feel. I’m pretty sure the music video below is about media oversaturation or urban desperation or something, but I’m mostly enamored by its opening moments: a full 25 seconds of Rushen in closeup bobbing back and forth to the music and making awkward eye contact with the camera, intercut with shots of newspapers hitting the floor. Truly, the early music video was an art form all its own.

    We’ll be back tomorrow with more tracks from the women of jheri curl music. Keep up with the Spotify and YouTube playlists below:

    (more…)

  • 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.

    (more…)