Just like we did last year, we wanted to take a week out of Jheri Curl June to spotlight the important contributions made by women artists to the genre. And how better to kick off our second annual JCJ Ladies’ Week than with the Ivory Queen of Soul herself, Teena Marie?
Initially a protégé of Jheri Curl June alumnus Rick James, Teena Marie was an accomplished singer and musician in her own right. She wrote and produced nearly all of her own music, including her biggest hit, 1984’s “Lovergirl.”
Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking: who let this flaccid, schlocky dad-pop interloper into our pristine shrine to the jheri curl and the music it inspired? But just relax, and I’ll explain everything.
After the massive success of Purple Rain in the summer of 1984, jheri curl music went from being a trendy form of R&B to one of the dominant modes of mainstream pop, full stop. Pretty soon, everybody was starting to sound a little jheri-curl–even people who had no business sounding that way. Even people who could never actually have a jheri curl of their own. People like the incurably lame, and just-as-incurably bald, Phil Collins.
Jheri Curl June is, of course, first and foremost about the music. But, as I wrote in this year’s introductory post, jheri curl is also a profoundly visual form; it is, after all, the only genre of music to my knowledge named after a hairstyle. And so it only makes sense that we should also take some of the imagery associated with the music into consideration. That’s why this year, I’m happy to announce an entirely new feature dedicated to Jheri Curl Cinema. And there’s no other film more qualified to launch such a feature than Prince’s and Albert Magnoli’s 1984 cult classic Purple Rain.
There are a few reasons why Purple Rain is so perfect for our inaugural Jheri Curl Cinema post. First, yesterday was of course Prince‘s 57th birthday–and while His Royal Badness presumably hasn’t celebrated his birthday since he became a Jehovah’s Witness in 2001, that just means we have to celebrate it twice as hard. But second, and more to the point, Purple Rain is an important film because it captures the essence of the Minneapolis scene in the early 1980s–and thus, by extension, the essence of jheri curl music itself.
Rick James never actually sported a jheri curl, yet he inarguably made some of the best jheri curl music of the first half of the 1980s. By his 1985 album Glow, however, he had lost even his long glittery braids in favor of a curly, light dye job that made him look more like Rowlf the Muppet dog than a freaky punk funker. His music had become similarly faded, limp, and lackluster. But Glow‘s title track is still worth mentioning–mostly because the video is nothing short of amazing.
The video opens with a spoken introduction by Rick James, giving the audience somewhat of a fair warning about what they’re about to see. The next image we see is James in an all white suit, chasing the lady from the “Give it to Me Baby” video across a beach in slow motion. I guess that’s some kind of metaphor for something. Fade in to a shot of a light brown poodle laying on top of someone’s aunt’s laundry… Oh wait, never mind, that’s Rick James again, his head slumped on the table of his dressing room vanity next to a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniels. You know, like a rock star. His manager is worried about him, his girlfriend can no longer stand to see him “do this to himself,” and on top of it all, as the band plays the fanfare-like opening cords to “Glow,” James saunters out, swinging his bottle, and takes a very obvious spill in front of the microphone. This seems to be the last straw, because as the crowd jeers and his concerned girlfriend looks on, James literally kicks his alcohol problem clear off the stage with a thigh-high leopard print high-heeled boot. The crowd goes wild and the group bursts once again into “Glow.”
The whole thing just smacks of a really bad Purple Rain ripoff: James plays a tortured musician with a penchant for frilly shirts, although this time he’s struggling with alcoholism rather than just controlling artist tendencies like in Purple Rain (or with a cocaine habit, like in Rick James’ reality). Music video aside, with its background synthesizer noodling, the song is undeniably very jheri. Although “Glow” is barely worth mentioning when compared to James’ high points–such as everything on Street Songs—it’s interesting to note that it was only his second (albeit also last) single to reach number one on the dance chart, the first one being “Super Freak.” One thing’s for sure, Rick James was robbed of the Academy Award for best actor in 1985.
Playlist after the jump!