My 2010 twilight-of-the-summer-jam was an electro curio released on Tommy Boy Records in 1983 called “Pack Jam”, by a group calling itself The Jonzun Crew.
I first came across this electro-funk gem in Dave Tompkins’ How To Wreck A Nice Beach, a twisted history of the vocoder—that most mysterious of musical instruments—from World War II, when it was used as a U.S. intelligence tool, up to the futuristic hip-hop voice altering machine it is known as today. (My review of Tompkins’ book and the weird history of the vocoder will appear in BOMB magazine later this year.)
Dave Tompkins’ tome, with a KORG VC-10 vocoder on its cover
According to Tompkins’ book, The Jonzun Crew was is essence a creative front for a man named Michael Johnson, who dubbed himself Michael Jonzun (eventually going on to produce “Candy Girl” for New Edition). Jonzun was a fairly straightforward R&B and funk session musician who got tired of the INDUSTRY and went off on a solo futuristic funk tangent that led him to create one of the first albums completely done with a vocoder, Lost In Space.
Jonzun, in full “French aristocratic” Jonzun Crew performance regalia
The song’s full title, “Pack Jam (Look Out for the OVC)” begs clarification. Jonzun was understandably worried about being sued by Namco, makers of the video game Pac-Man, for his vocoder manipulated song, changing the title from “Pak Jam” to “Pack Jam”, with accompanying “P - A - CK” chorus. The “OVC” (Outer Visual Communicator) was an eclectic, even-weirder-than-the-vocoder instrument created by producer Bill Sebastian to accompany outré jazz musician Sun Ra’s stage show (you could not make this stuff up). The OVC, according to How To Wreck A Nice Beach, was something of a mix between an organ (or keyboard), a rock light show, and an interior onstage “performance environment” attuned to musical expression—remember this is Sun Ra. The OVC created “spacescapes” and operated in the “Suboptic Shadow World”. Sebastian would need close to a full week to set up the OVC at tour stops before Sun Ra and his band arrived. The reason “Pac-Man” needed to “look out for the OVC” is because the game was a passive experience sucking up the minds of Reagan-era youths, structured around someone else’s rules. With the OVC you created your own environment with your own rules, a total experience, rather than playing a game and following someone else’s rules. The OVC allowed one to actively interact with one’s environment, it would—“destroy all Pac-Man machines”.
The OVC in concert
Remnants of Bill Sebastian's OVC, from How To Wreck A Nice Beach
How To Wreck A Nice Beach is a fascinating read with a larger theme—the weird connection between eras and nations and purposes. As described, the vocoder was both a very important tool that may have helped win Big Wars, and a silly little instrument that rocks the party.
“Pack Jam” sounds eerily similar to a number of eighties songs you might know—the orchestral organ, techno arpeggios, funky analog bassline. Perhaps it is itself a rip-off of electro pop songs from the time. It’s a quiet electro masterpiece either way though—Najela and I rock to “Pack Jam”.
