Curtis Jones (1968 - )
Lifespan: 1968 -
Related: American music - Chicago - house music
Cajmere is held by many to be one of the revitalising forces in Chicago Houses's rebirth of the early 1990s. Most of the 1980s generation were burnt out by bad contracts or had moved to New York or Europe. Cajmere started the Cajual and Relief labels (amongst others) offering a home to any producer in Chicago, no matter the style. By the early 1990s artists such as Cajmere himself (under that name as well as Green Velvet and as producer for Dajae), DJ Sneak, Glenn Underground and others were bringing out fresh records at a furious pace. [Jan 2007]
Green Velvet (2000) - Green Velvet
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Biography
Curtis Jones is an electronic and house music singer, songwriter and producer born April 26, 1968 in Chicago, Illinois. He is highly regarded in the dance music community as a prolific artist, releasing tracks, albums and remixes under the names Cajmere and Green Velvet.
He began having chart entries in 1993 when, as Cajmere, he hit #2 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart with "Brighter Days." "Only 4 U" followed, peaking at #15 in 1997.
Jones's biggest success has been as Green Velvet. "Flash" (with the tagline cameras ready / prepare to flash!) was a #1 US dance hit in 2000 and has been included on many DJ-mixed compilation albums. Other hits of his include "Answering Machine," (a darkly funny house track consisting of actual taped messages from his answering machine, including a bad news message from a girlfriend and a noise complaint message from his landlord), "Genedefekt" and "La La Land," instantly recognizable by its refrain something 'bout / those little pills / unreal / the thrills / they yield / until / they kill / a million / brain cells.
Green Velvet has released the albums Constant Chaos in 1999 and Whatever in 2001. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis Jones [Sept 2005]
see also Gene Farris
Profile by Simon Reynolds
Green Velvet's Curtis Jones single-handedly brought the creepy monologue back to house in the mid '90s. This Berkeley dropout founded two Chicago labels: Cajual, for effervescent disco cutups (including his own Cajmere releases), and Relief, for cranium-denting beats and drug-noise delirium. Jones first made an impact with 1995's "Flash."Green Velvet (2000) - Green Velvet
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Chicago's Curtis Jones (a.k.a. Cajmere and Green Velvet) is, by far, on of the top producers of house music in the world. In the mid-'90s, his self-run record labels, Cajual and Relief, spearheaded the continuing renaissance of the genre with distinctive tracks that delivered a powerful dance-floor rush and gave DJs a deep arsenal of guaranteed crowd pleasers. While his Cajmere tracks are upbeat vocal workouts, it's his work as Green Velvet that continues to fascinate and gain legions of new devotees. Jones sets his GV material on a bed of dark, relentless, dirty beats, while adding his own twisted vocal flourishes that are one part Gary Numan and one part Bauhaus. Each track has a distinct narrative (i.e., a tour of a night club or an imagined reincarnation as a drop of water); the results are both frightening and hilarious. Long out-of-print on vinyl, the new Green Velvet CD combines such "classics" as "Flash," "Leave My Body," and "Answering Machine" with more recent material, including the fantastic Giorgio Moroder-inspired drive of "Coitus." --David Prince for amazon.com