Remember this song? It's by Ray Parker, Jr. I think he was originally a guitar player, then he had a band called Raydio...
Raydio's first big hit was "Jack & Jill"... Ray refers to Jack and Jill in his song "A Woman Needs Love", too.
"You Can't Change That" was a popular song in 1979. I still like it today, actually. The keyboards are kind of creepy, though. I notice that Ray likes electronic keyboards a lot.
As he got more popular, his music got more torrid... Check out the sax solo in "The Other Woman", a song about Ray Parker Jr. being a slimeball and screwing around on his woman.
I kind of liked his smooth hit "That Old Song"... but then he ripped off Huey Lewis with his wildly successful theme song for the film, Ghostbusters.
Compare it to "I Want A New Drug"...
Kinda similar, aren't they? I think there was a lawsuit over this.
Someone actually mashed them together!
Ray Parker Jr. also sang the theme song for the bizarre 80s era children's show, Pryor's Place. It starred, you guessed it... Richard Pryor! Richard Pryor was an even stranger choice to host a children's show than George Carlin was. I was 12 in 1984 and I don't remember liking this show. I think I would have preferred Mr. T's kid's show.
If you weren't around in the 80s, you obviously missed out on a lot!
I don't know what Ray Parker Jr. is up to these days, but he was pretty hot in the 80s.
Richard Pryor, host, chidren's show. Didn't think I'd ever see that in a sentence. This is the same Richard Pryor we're talking about who was chased by the police with his hair on fire after freebasing cocaine? Still one of the best comedians of the recent past though.
ReplyDeleteYup. And if you need clarification, watch the clip. There he is in all his coked out glory, hosting a children's show.
ReplyDeleteHe grew up in his grandma's brothel.....where his mother worked. How fucked is that? Stir Crazy is one of my favourite movies.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_FxhE6EXuw
Iknow littl eabout him, but according to my Aunt Victoria, the soap opera "The Young and the Restless" used "jack and Jill" as its love theme when soe character named Jack was in love with the character of jill Foster. At another point, this same jack guy was in love with someone named Diane, for which they used the song "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar/John Cougar mellencamp, or John Mellencamp, depending upon what he was calling himself at the time.
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