Dystopian Dance Party is Now a .com

If you're reading this and wondering why I suddenly disappeared less than a week into Jheri Curl June, it's because this address isn't updated anymore. Please fulfill all your Dystopian Dance Party needs at http://www.dystopiandanceparty.com/. Or don't. I don't care.

Jheri Curl June: Midnight Star's "No Parking on the Dance Floor"

Today's Jheri Curl June entry is the title track from Midnight Star's 1983 album No Parking on the Dance Floor. It has all the necessary ingredients of a classic jheri-curl track: a squealing synth line, bass that pops like crazy, and a camp-as-hell introduction that threatens, "if you don't get a move on that body, I'll be forced to give you a ticket--so get...WITH IT!" Plus, impossible as it might sound, the video is even better:

It's one of those great '80s videos that take the concept of the song and make it blissfully, absurdly literal. So a traffic jam turns into an impromptu dance party, with the nine members of Midnight Star--whose own spectrum of jheri-curl lengths and shapes is right up there with that of Jesse Johnson's Revue--serving as funky pied pipers, leading frustrated drivers to step out of their cars and join the fun. Then, at 1:35...is that...is that Prince? Well, no, of course not, though they sure took pains to make it look that way. But this is one party that doesn't even need a random breakdancing Prince-alike to make it awesome. Midnight Star, I'll get stuck in traffic with you any time.

Check out the Jheri Curl June Spotify playlist after the jump!

Jheri Curl June: Jesse Johnson's "Be Your Man"

Jesse Johnson's birthday was Sunday, so this is a little bit of a belated birthday tribute. "Be Your Man," from Jesse Johnson's 1985 debut solo album Jesse Johnson's Revue, is quintessential Minneapolis jheri curl funk: the pounding drum machine beat, heavy bassline, glossy synth "horns" (which he calls out in a James Brown-esque band leader style), and of course, the tiny funky guitar noodling.

The video showcases Jesse as basically the dark-skinned, pink version of Prince. Plus, together Jesse Johnson's group exhibit six variations of jheri curl shapes:

Check back tomorrow for another song, and remember to follow along with the Jheri Curl June Spotify playlist (after the jump).

Introduction to Jheri Curl June

Ola Ray in a 1980 commercial for "Classy Curl"; photo stolen from the Huffington Post

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new form of predominantly African American popular music began to take shape. Rooted in soul and funk music, but largely stripped of those genres' grit; with elements of rock and disco, and at least one eye forever resting on potential radio play; the loosely-defined style has gone by a variety of names, including post-disco, pop/funk, and the maddeningly nondescript "urban." But Callie and I have always preferred to call it "jheri curl music."

Jheri curl music is not necessarily music made by artists sporting the once-trendy hairstyle invented by hairdresser Robert William "Jheri" Redding--though obviously there is a good amount of overlap. Instead, we see it as music that embodies the properties of the jheri curl itself. Jheri curl, whether the hair or the music, is an intrinsically hybrid style: somewhere between Black and white, kinky and straight, silky and dry. It's fussy and high-maintenance. And, like the Jheri curl parody "Soul Glo" in John Landis' 1988 comedy Coming to America, it leaves a greasy residue on everything it touches. Not all R&B from the early to mid-'80s qualifies as jheri curl; but when you hear that telltale sign--usually a particular kind of muted guitar, clean slapped bass, or synthesizer squeal--you will recognize it instantly for what it is.

Dystopian Road Mix Vol. 1: Kansas City to Eastern Michigan

Editor's Note: If you've read anything at all on this blog, it should already be abundantly clear that I am a big ol' geek. As such, one of my favorite things to do whenever I take a road trip is listen to music by artists from the cities I'm passing through. Now, as it happens, today I will be driving from my current home in Kansas City, Missouri to my parents' house in Port Huron, Michigan; and next month, I'll be taking a second trip from Port Huron to my future home in the Washington, D.C. area. So I figured, since I like making mixes, and since this blog is just a giant vanity project anyway, why not turn my music-geek road trip game into a recurring feature?

I'm calling the feature Dystopian Road Mix. Similar to the previously-introduced Dystopian Dance Mix, it will be a Spotify playlist accompanied by my trademark reams of text. There will be two differences, though (other than the obvious travelogue conceit): first, no 80-minute time limit; and second, instead of track-by-track commentary, I'll be grouping the music selections together based on geography (don't worry, though, I'll still write a shit-ton--in fact, I'm pretty sure ). I'm honestly not sure how frequently this feature will recur. As mentioned above, there will definitely be another installment next month; after that, though, it's up in the air. Maybe I'll only make future installments when I'm actually traveling somewhere; maybe I'll revisit trips I've taken in the past; maybe I'll invent imaginary road trips. It all depends on how much time I have on my hands, basically. But in the meantime, please enjoy my guided musical tour through the Midwest; and, as I'm sure I left more than a few notable artists out, feel free to share whatever I've missed in the comments! - Z.H.

Grity Boi: 2 Chainz Gets (Sort of) Serious on FREEBASE

From the "Trap Back" video; © 2 Chainz

Does 2 Chainz take 2 Chainz seriously?

My critical faculties have been wrestling with this question since 2012, when I first heard his solo debut album Based on a T.R.U. Story. For the record, I like 2 Chainz. I'm well aware of his shortcomings--this is, after all, the guy whose 2012 freestyle Funkmaster Flex recently called out as the worst ever on his show--but I also think he's (usually) a far cleverer lyricist than his critics give him credit for. He plows the obsessive furrows of contemporary mainstream hip-hop--namely dope peddling, conspicuous consumption, and "big booty hoes"--with a dirty-limerick wit and class-clown exuberance that, for me at least, overcomes the monotony of those well-worn themes; this might say more about my sophomoric sense of humor than it does about the Artist Formerly Known as Tity Boi, but I can't think of another modern-day rapper who makes me laugh out loud as often as he does. So yeah, I like 2 Chainz. But take him seriously? Hell, like I said--I'm not even sure 2 Chainz takes 2 Chainz seriously.

A few recent events, though, have led me to suspect that there might be more to 2 Chainz than meets the eye of even a confessed apologist like myself. First, there was the performance I caught from his 2 G.O.O.D. 2 Be T.R.U. tour this February at the Midland Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. The show was a multimedia sensory overload, with three video screens onstage blaring specially-created imagery to accompany the songs. Some of that imagery, of course, was exactly what you'd expect from a 2 Chainz show: the literally larger-than-life rumpshakers for "Twerk Season"; the extended (and ludicrous) acrobatic sex scene starring Mr. Chainz himself (in silhouette, mercifully) that introduced "Used 2"; the hood-Michael Bay action theatrics of "Riot." But then there was the montage that opened the set, interspersing narration by Chainz with footage of monumental figures from not only hip-hop, but also sports, film, even politics: from Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa to--I shit you not--Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was absurdly hyperbolic,of course, but also unexpected enough to make me sit up and take notice; this was the kind of self-conscious grandstanding one would expect from 2 Chainz' label boss and sometimes collaborator Kanye West, not from the man Pitchfork recently described as "rap's court jester of the moment." Here was the reigning figurehead for boneheaded Atlanta trap-rap, explicitly writing himself into hip-hop history, Black history, and American history all at once.

Dystopian Dance Mix Vol. 1: It's a Mother('s Day Mix)

Stolen from somebody's Pinterest, but I'm willing to bet this is Public Domain

Editor's Note: Way back in the distant past of my early twenties, I co-ran a pop culture blog similar to this one called the Modern Pea Pod. It was a great experience overall: I got some modicum of exposure for my writing, interviewed people like rock'n'roll pioneer Wanda Jackson and Kid Congo Powers of the Gun Club, and built up a backlog of content that I can now exploit for Throwback Thursdays when I'm too busy and/or lazy to write something new for this blog. Probably my favorite thing about the whole project, though, was our monthly Mixtape: an actual blueprint for making an actual, two-sided, 90-minute cassette tape of songs around a particular theme, complete with timecodes. It was, like most other things related to the Modern Pea Pod, a ludicrously anachronistic and overly complicated exercise (I'm pretty sure we were the only blog ever to advertise via black-and-white flyer, too). But it was also a lot of fun, and a chance to write about music that we loved but that wasn't necessarily "relevant" for a traditional review.

So, in my ongoing effort to strip the Pea Pod's corpse of every last bit of its salvageable flesh (ew), I'm pleased to introduce the spiritual successor to the Modern Pea Pod Mixtape: the Dystopian Dance Mix. The main difference this time around is that it's not meant to be a cassette tape, because this is 2014 and I'm not an insane person. Instead, we're taking advantage of real live 21st century technology and making the playlists streamable via Spotify. My one concession to the old anachronistic format is that each playlist will come in under 80 minutes, the idea being that you could burn it to a CD if you were so inclined (and if you owned all of the music, of course). I plan on getting these playlists out every month or so; the themes for the first two months are a little clichéd and predictable (Mother's Day and Father's Day for May and June, who'da thunk), but you can look forward to more inspired entries after I've gotten warmed up. So here it is, folks: my gift to all the mothers and motherfuckers out there reading this. Enjoy! - Z.H.