Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: temptations

  • Jheri Curl June: Four Tops (feat. The Temptations)’ “Hang”

    Four Tops teamed up with labelmates the Temptations for this toe dip into the pool of Jheri curl juice, 1983’s “Hang.”

    With lyrics about working hard to get by in a difficult world, “Hang” belongs alongside Zapp‘s “Playin’ Kinda Ruff” on any Jheri curl playlist. If you too feel like your life is an endless cycle of working and paying bills as your social life, youth, hopes and dreams slip through your fingers and time continues its relentless march, well, this is the song for you. “Hang” doesn’t really provide any solutions for life’s difficulties, except not to give up and give it all you’ve got. Otherwise, the message is a bit buried in the fun-time horns, synth and ambient party noises. But, hey, between a global pandemic and just plain old exhaustion, this might be the closest thing to fun that you’ve had in over a year!

    We’re taking a quick break for the weekend, but we’ll be back on Monday with more Jheri curl goodness! Playlists, as always, are below.

  • Dystopian Book Club Podcast, Jheri Curl June Edition: The Memoirs of Rick James

    It didn’t take a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for this year’s Jheri Curl June podcast. Rick James may be the most important architect of the genre we call Jheri Curl Music who we hadn’t already commemorated with a long-term feature. He also has a hell of a story: one he told in not one, but two posthumous memoirs–2007’s Confessions of Rick James: Memoirs of a Superfreak and 2014’s Glow–which makes him a perfect candidate for the Dystopian Book Club. A “habitual line-stepper” in both life and art, James was vital in bridging the gap between 1970s P-Funk and 1980s Jheri Curl; his later decline into drug addiction and imprisonment was unfortunate, but could only somewhat dampen his boundless talent and charisma. So join us on this most sacred of occasions as we celebrate Mr. Cold Blooded himself: a man whose artistic potential was the only thing bigger than his larger-than-life personality and appetites. Gimme some ganja!

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  • Jheri Curl Cinema: The Last Dragon (1985)

    This year’s Jheri Curl June Ladies’ Week closes on a bittersweet note, because we’re talking about Vanity: a tragic chapter in the jheri curl chronicle. Born Denise Katrina Matthews in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Vanity is best known as one of the cogs in Prince‘s early-’80s machine–indeed, she was arguably the most critically reviled of his many protégées (at least until Carmen Electra came along). After her association with Prince ended during pre-production for Purple Rain, her place in the musical narrative only declined: there was a floundering solo career, a debilitating addiction to freebase cocaine, a kidney transplant due to the ravages of substance abuse, and finally a conversion to evangelical Christianity that led her to renounce everything associated with her former life.

    It’s obviously not within my power to rehabilitate Vanity’s place in the popular music canon–nor, necessarily, is it fully worth rehabilitating (I mean, have you listened to “Pretty Mess“?) But I do think she’s gotten a raw deal. The one album released under the name Vanity 6 is–like its “sister album,” the Time‘s What Time is It?–one of the great forgotten Prince records of the early ’80s; and, while the Purple One per usual ghost-wrote and -recorded the bulk of the music, it was Vanity’s sassy sex appeal that really sold it (don’t even try and tell me you wouldn’t have gotten down with Vanity circa “Nasty Girl“). And then, of course, there’s The Last Dragon.

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