Dystopian Dance Party

Tag: time

  • 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 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!

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  • 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).

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  • 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.

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  • Dystopian Listening Party Podcast: Prince, 1958-2016

    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 Zelda series, 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…

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  • Jheri Curl June: dáKRASH’s “Wasn’t I Good to Ya?”

    Jheri Curl June: dáKRASH’s “Wasn’t I Good to Ya?”

    In one of the first posts for Jheri Curl June this year, Callie talked about how the Minneapolis Sound sprawled out from its chief originator, Prince, to encompass all kinds of solo and side projects by his ex-associates. Today, we close our last full week of the month with one of those side projects: a little-known group called dáKRASH, assembled and produced by the Time‘s Jesse Johnson.

    Johnson was a rare quasi-equal during his stint in the Prince camp; he was, for one thing, the only actual member of the Time to play on the studio tracks for their 1984 album Ice Cream Castle, laying down the classic “sexy solah” for Purple Rain hit “Jungle Love.” So it should come as no surprise that dáKRASH puts a recognizably “Jesse Johnson” spin on their own 1988 slice of Minneapolis jheri curl, “Wasn’t I Good to Ya?”

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  • Jheri Curl Cinema: Purple Rain (1984)

    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.

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  • Jheri Curl June Special: Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

    The main reason we celebrate Jheri Curl June in June is because, let’s face it, we are only human, and are as susceptible to the siren song of alliteration as the next group of hack Internet writers. But there’s also a pretty good justification for the timing, because the birthdays of two of jheri curl music’s most important innovators fall in the first week of June. We covered the first of those innovators, Prince, in last year’s inaugural Jheri Curl June Special.  So this time around, we’ll be discussing the other one: James “Jimmy Jam” Harris, born June 6, 1959.

    If Prince was jheri curl music’s architect, then Jimmy Jam and his longtime musical partner Terry Lewis were the brilliant engineers who shaped the structure to its fullest potential. Their take on the “Minneapolis Sound” developed by their former mentor added a new level of polish and sophistication; and when Prince shifted his own music away from traditional jheri-curl and toward neo-psychedelia in the mid-’80s, Jam and Lewis went in the opposite direction, crafting ever-more-flawless pop-friendly tracks that kept JCM in the top of the charts and, ultimately, evolved into the next dominant R&B sound, New Jack Swing.

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  • Jheri Curl June: The Time’s “Jerk Out”

    Well, here we are: the last day of Jheri Curl June, and I don’t think there could be a better band to go out with than the greatest band in the world, the muthafuckin’ Time. Today’s selection, “Jerk Out,” comes from the earliest of the Time’s many reunion albums, 1990’s  Pandemonium: their first release as a group since 1984’s Ice Cream Castle, and the first time the supremely talented live band were allowed to play their own instruments on record. Like Full Force, the Time during this period represented a transitional moment, bridging the last gasps of jheri curl with the rise of New Jack Swing: just check out singer Morris Day’s hair in the video below, an unholy combination of a flat-top and a pompadour with a tiny rat-tail in the back that would never have passed muster in the first half of the ’80s. But the song itself dates from 1981, when ghostwriter Prince recorded a demo for the band’s second and greatest album, What Time is It? In a way, then, we’re taking “Jheri Curl June” full circle, with a song from the golden age of one of the genre’s greatest innovators, brushed off and updated by his most accomplished disciples to mark the end of an era.

    And what a way to go out: “Jerk Out” isn’t just a standout track on Pandemonium, it’s one of the best jheri curl songs ever. It perfectly captures both the Time’s smooth-as-silk funkiness and Day’s ludicrous persona of a squawk-laughing pimp daddy who coordinates the color of his suit with the color of his BMW (though not, it must be said, in the video, which is maddening if you’re even the slightest bit OCD). The song’s glossy production demonstrates all the tricks Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis learned during their (then) seven years as hitmaking producers for the likes of Janet Jackson and the Human League. The video, too, has everything a Time fan could possibly ask for: Morris preening in a selection of smoking jackets, a bewildering cameo by a Jack Nicholson impersonator in a Batman T-shirt, and of course, the obligatory post-48 Hrs. scene of Jesse Johnson playing one of his sexy solahs in a country and western bar while angry rednecks pelt the stage with beer bottles. And yes, of course, Jerome brings Morris a mirror before it’s all over.

    So there we have it: the end of Jheri Curl June. There are a lot of great jheri curl artists we have yet to cover, and we both had a lot of fun doing this, so I’m happy to announce that we’ll be doing it all over again next year. Yep, you heard it here first: I’m committed to keeping this blog up and running for at least another year, if only to give myself an excuse to spend another month writing about jheri curl music next summer. In the meantime, we hope you’ve enjoyed this maiden voyage of the S.S. Jheri Curl. Check out the now-finished Spotify playlist after the jump, and we’ll see you again next summer! (Or…you know, later this week, since we do post other things throughout the year. Seriously, don’t wait a whole year before coming back to this blog.)

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  • Jheri Curl June: Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long”

    The Mary Jane Girls were essentially Rick James’ answer to Vanity 6: the girl group Prince constructed as the prostitute foil to The Time‘s pimp image. In this case, though, Rick James might have actually one-upped his longtime rival; for their 1983 American Bandstand performance of “All Night Long,” the girls look like they were literally picked up off the corner on the way to the studio.

    James originally conceived of the Mary Jane Girls project as a solo act for his backup singer, JoJo McDuffie. The other members of the group couldn’t sing: hence why this clip is a lip-synced performance of the studio recording. Check out that choreography, though!

    The Spotify playlist continues to grow after the jump:

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