Zach and Callie reconvene in (by our standards) record time for another Dystopian Book Club Official Selection: Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard on You? by Parliament–Funkadelic maestro George Clinton. Enjoy as we discuss our love of P-Funk and the book’s disappointing lack of hot deets on the Super Mario Bros. movie.
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Listen, I have been sitting on this Jheri Jam for a whole year, sustaining multiple burns on my ass from trying to contain this hot track. But, before we get into that, LOOK AT THAT ALBUM COVER. Larry Graham peeks out from a hot pink, palm-leafed environment, popping his collar and looking like Magnum motherfuckin’ PI. If ever there was an album cover that looked precisely how the album sounds, this is it.
By the release of 1982’s Sooner or Later, Graham was already an elder statesman of funk, having been a member of Sly & The Family Stone, worked with the likes of Betty Davis, fronted his own Graham Central Station, and oh yeah, INVENTED SLAP BASS. Sooner or Later is his foray into the new world of the ’80s, effectively saying, “Here I am, new and improved and ready to slay all the Kingdom Hall pussy.”
This is especially true of the instrumental version of the titular track, which contains some of my favorite tropes of Jheri Curl Music: a talk box vocal that sounds like a horny robot a la Roger Troutman, laser gun noises, and a bright, trilling synth line. This is a song made for cruising on a neon lit street in a Ferrari 308 GTB convertible with the top down on a steamy summer night, the warm air lightly caressing your curl and ruffling your mustache.
Week 1 of Jheri Curl June VIbe comes to a close tomorrow! In the meantime, check out the Spotify and YouTube playlists below.
(more…)Two years ago, we admitted that Bootsy Collins is probably not the first name that comes to mind when thinking about Jheri Curl Music. And while that may still be true, in the early 80s he definitely dipped an entire platform boot into the jheri curl juice. Here, he joins fellow Ohio funkateers Dayton on this Jheri Jam from 1982, “Krackity-Krack.”
Though still sounding very much like a P-funk groove thanks to Bootsy’s inclusion, “Krackity-Krack”’s whiny synths and hard robotic beat coat this heavy groove in a chrome plating that smoothes out the hard edges of its ’70s funk influence. It’s a hint of things to come: a year later, Dayton would fully embrace the Jheri Curl (in every sense of the word) with this smooth jam, complete with a Roger Troutman-style talkbox:
Remember to follow along on Spotify as we continue to update this year’s playlist. See you tomorrow!
Back in May when we did our Memorial Day podcast, I was sorely unaware of Junie Morrison’s music. Sure, I had heard the Ohio Players’ albums from the early ’70s, of which Junie played a seminal part; I had heard Funkadelic’s late ’70s music, particularly “(Not Just) Knee Deep” (I mean obviously, I’ve watched Good Burger enough times). But, while I was technically familiar with Junie’s contributions, up until about a month ago I couldn’t have told you who he was. Even after I heard Kanye’s “No More Parties in L.A.” Even after I heard Solange’s “Junie.” Even after I heard that he’d died earlier this year.
I like to think that I’ve made up for some lost time in the past month, however, because I’ve been unapologetically obsessed, and will spread the gospel of Walter “Junie” Morrison as much as possible. The man easily deserves as many accolades as Prince, and in many ways is very similar: Junie was a multi-instrumentalist who played every instrument on his solo albums; he joined the Ohio Players at only 16 years of age and was largely responsible for writing and arranging many of their earlier records. Matter of fact, after becoming familiar with Junie’s solo stuff from The Westbound Years, I can’t imagine Prince’s first two albums–much less his entire career–without Junie Morrison’s music.
Hell, Jheri Curl June as we know it would not exist without Junie. Give another listen to “(Not Just) Knee Deep,” with its triumphant synth line (one of Junie’s signature sounds), and tell me that is not a rudimentary form of Jheri Curl Music. Furthermore, Junie, along with yesterday’s JCJ inductee Stevie Wonder, predated Roger Troutman’s usage of the keyboard talkbox by several years. So, there you have it, folks: Junie Morrison is the unsung architect of our sacred Jheri Curl Music. Until now, that is.
Kleeer had a rocky road to Jheri Curldom. Originally conceived in 1972 as the Jam Band, the backing band for the Choice Four, they later became their own entity, changed their name to Pipeline, and recorded the hard rock infused “Gypsy Rider.” After the single tanked, Pipeline transformed into the Universal Robot Group, under which they recorded and toured for two years. Finally, in 1978, they became a new entity yet again, Kleeer.
Similar to One Way, Kleeer released a consistent output of minor hits in the late ’70s and ’80s, but they were immortalized by being extensively sampled by G-Funk artists, like DJ Quik. “Tonight,” from their 1984 album Intimate Connection
We have one more day to go for Jheri Curl June this week–see you then! In the meantime, Spotify and YouTube playlists are below.
The last post of Jheri Curl June is always a bittersweet one to write. On the one hand, there’s the satisfaction of knowing we have another solid month’s worth of writing about classic 1980s R&B under our belts; but on the other, there’s the sense of emptiness that comes when we realize we have to wait another whole year before we can start the festivities again. Luckily, Scritti Politti’s ebullient 1988 single “Boom! There She Was” is here to take out some of the sting.
Scritti Politti’s leader, Green Gartside, is a man after my own heart. Like many British art students in 1977, he was inspired to form a band after catching the Sex Pistols on their legendary “Anarchy” tour; the name “Scritti Politti” was chosen as a play on the political writings (“Scritti Politici”) of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, mixed with Little Richard‘s “Tutti Frutti.” So far, so cool, right? Well, in the early ’80s, Gartside went home to Caerleon, Wales, where he started listening to his sister’s R&B records; then, around the same time, he heard Black radio while visiting Florida. “[T]hat’s where I first heard ‘the funk,’” he later told The Quietus. “The System, Zapp… artists like that. There was a rapid change of influences combined with a disgust at big-I ‘Indie’ being born. It didn’t take long to say, ‘Fuck that, let’s do this instead.’” And by “this,” he of course meant this:
I know what some of you are thinking: going from hip, underground post-punk rocker to goofball blue-eyed soul singer ain’t exactly everyone’s idea of an enviable career trajectory. But speaking as a fellow overeducated white boy who rejected the “indie” aesthetic in favor of slickly-produced schlock-R&B, I understand exactly where Gartside was coming from. And besides, “Boom! There She Was” has Roger Troutman on it. Roger! Who doesn’t love Roger?
So yes, Jh3ri Curl Jun3 is over. But before we know it, boom! There June 2017 will be. I hope to see you again then. In the meantime…you know where to find the playlists.
Last June, we talked about Roger Troutman‘s “I Want to Be Your Man“–a classic jheri-curl ballad, completely worthy of inclusion in the annals of JCM history. But the song I really wanted to talk about was “Heartbreaker,” the 1983 hit by Troutman’s band Zapp. The reasons for this are obvious: first, because it’s a Zapp classic–a song scientifically engineered to be bumped as loud as one’s car speakers will allow, preferably while rolling through South Central L.A. in a 1961 Impala like Big Worm from Friday. And second, because it’s one of the few jheri-curl songs to make lyrical reference to an actual jheri curl: as Troutman croons through his vocoder at the beginning of the third verse, “Everybody thinks that you’re a nasty, nasty girl / Wearing short dresses and that sexy jheri curl.”
The fact that Troutman and company knew a little something about “nasty” is obvious just from “Heartbreaker”‘s patented bass-heavy bounce. And as for whether they knew a little something about jheri curls…well…
Roger Troutman was a talented guitarist, bassist, keyboard player and harmonica player, yet he is undeniably best known for perfecting the use of the talkbox in R&B music. Between his band Zapp and his “solo career”–a term I employ loosely, as most of the personnel on his solo records were in fact members of Zapp–Roger had a string of hits between 1980 and 1983 that helped to put synth-heavy Ohio P-Funk on the map, and made the talkbox a mainstay in jheri curl music.
By 1983, however, Zapp’s popularity was waning, and Roger began to focus more and more extensively on his solo career. 1987’s “I Want to Be Your Man,” written by Roger’s brother and Zapp percussionist Larry Troutman, reached number three on the Billboard Charts, becoming the most successful hit for either Roger or Zapp.
The video, which stars Roger’s cropped jheri curl, features Troutman hamming it up for the camera and showing off his ability to play multiple instruments in the best way possible: with a backing band of tiny Roger Troutmen, all on stage at the same time.
By this time, the talkbox had become less of an element of Roger’s work, both solo and with Zapp, and more of a defining feature. While the use of the talkbox as a lead singer was interesting on such Zapp tracks as “Dance Floor” and “Heartbreaker,” it soon sunk into novelty territory. “I Want to Be Your Man” manages to avoid this fate, at least at first, by being a good R&B song in its own right, with Roger singing a lot of the song in his own tenor. By the end of the song, however, the talkbox becomes an irritatingly tinny soprano that sounds like a very seductive mosquito. Still, it deserves a place in jheri curl history as one of the genre’s best slow jams.
Two days left of Jheri Curl June…Spotify playlist after the jump!