B-52s: Classic or Dud.

Still, how do you measure up to the genius of "52 Girls"?

(See how I'm baiting a contrarian to come along and disagree?)

US/UK cultural equivalences: B-52s / Adam And The Ants??

No. I have no problem with the B-52s, but saying that is like saying "A Regular Ass Candy Wrapper / The Candy Wrapper With The Golden Ticket??"

In any event, I'm listening to Nude on the Moon right now, so REVIVE!

And look.....even Killing Joke approves! (check out Youth's shirt!)

http://www.an-irrational-domain.net/images/youth/youth15.JPG

CLASSIC

This description is so classic, it hurt my hips.

Ricky Wilson was essential.

Of course, the story is sad (literally speaking) immediately after, so I can't blame the band for Bouncing.. not being up to par (though I love "Summer Of Love").. but I only like 3 songs from Cosmic Thing and can't stand the rest and what followed.

the Fred Schneider solo record Fred from 1996 is awesome, however. (and I have Martin Mushrush to thank for turning my head to it.)

Oh and if I can make anybody feel old here, then :)

Just Fred is indeed great. letting Fred rage over Albini production with backup from Six Finger Sattelite and Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet was an inspired move.

Good to see love for Whammy!, which often seems to be overlooked. But now I'm very worried about my version of Mesopatamia.

xpost: Haha, I just listened to that goofy white funk on Gabriel's So for the first time since I was a child. Woo-hoo!

It's really grand. Both albums, actually!

I'd say Good Stuff is not their worst album. That would be Bouncing Off The Satelites.

"Planet Claire" and "Rock Lobster" are classic in the extreme. The vocal on "Planet Claire" begins like two or three minutes in, and Fred is such a delightful spaz. It is a deeply weird track.

Hearing the B52s reminds me YET AGAIN about how rampantly eclectic was the mainstream pop music in my youth.

I mean, one still hears people saying that the 80s were a time of cookie-cutter bubblegum; of Reagan-era bright conformity. But right there on the top 40 as beamed by Casey Kasem into the American heartland, there were some strange-ass records being made--records that I doubt you could get in front of the youth of today.

DAN OTM!!!! I'm shocked to hear someone else feel that way. Never heard anybody mention it before and its totally a fave.

I'm wondering if that 1989 UK compilation Dance This Mess Around has any tracks from the original Mesopotamia... hmmmm.

Oh, and obv. CLASSIC!, at least until Ricky's death. And therever after, presumably. (I've only heard the singles.) My fave: Wild Planet. (Partly out of nostalgia, since "Strobe Light" was playing when I first...nevermind...)

My pick: "52 Girls". The only thing this song is missing is Fred interjections, but even without that it screams perfection. The tempo demands that you get out on the dance floor, the guitar and bass force your ass to MOVE and the vocals grab your arms and make you do goofy swimming motions, all while your brain rattles around your skull shrieking "THIS IS WHAT AN ETERNAL ORGASM FEELS LIKE!"

My pick would be Planet Claire. Predictable, I know, but it's just the most classic song ever.

Actually, they replaced "Don't Worry," the Yoko Ono cover.

Almost impossible for me to OPO. I concur with everything about the "52 Girls" review above, but since that does not contain "Fred interjections," and "Rock Lobster" is all about same, then that's my pick, but it could just as easily be "Planet Claire" or "Dance This Mess Around." One of my favorite LP sides ever.

Huh, I thought I'd already posted something on this thread. Must have been a different B-52's thread. Oh well. Classic to the max.

I saw them at the Concord Pavillion one time in the early 90s, I think. I don't remember the show that well. All I remember is that the line to the women's toilets was too long, so after 20 minutes of waiting futilely I made a dash to the men's toilet. They pee into long troughs. A security guard made me leave, but the relatively speedy relief of my bladder was worth it.

The only example of bands/artists whose later work improved markedly with maturity that I can think of is Pulp. I hated the stuff that came before His'n'Hers. Well, maybe not hate, but I have no desire to listen to that. I'm glad they persevered to go on to make A Different Class, though.

You guys are leaving me alone tonight. Planet Claire and the whole first side of the first album vinyl "52 Girls" etc. are killing me to the core right now. So many clueless people have not even heard this delicious slice of funky post-punk groove.

Where are you Jeff W. when I need you? You know even Pretenders can't hold a prayer to the first B-52's album. And "Dance This Mess Around" is STILL my favourite, even though I love you if you say "Rock Lobster".

EVERYBODY GOES TO PARTIES THEY DANCE THIS MESS AROUND

hippie shake

ROCKZ LOBSTER IS STILL THE MOST CLASSICKEST

The music sounds like an Addams Family theme. Monster Mash. I mean what else do you want out of US post punk than the B-52's?

I have a black long sleeved shirt with the yellow sleeve for this on the front.

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:IrF69RtMDg1MBM:http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00002632M.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

b-52s being teabagged by sherman hemsley

Funplex wasn't that bad

Until this thread I didn't know that they released two versions of Mesopotania. I love the original but my vinyl is fucked.

My kids totally love 'Wig'. They shout 'What's that on your head?' at random moments.

yeah I'm still listening to Funplex on shuffle. Pretty much the best thing they could have come up with at this stage

Didn't we have a thread specifically discussing the different versions of Mesopotamia? I recently go the 'Nude on the moon' comp and the "1990 remix" of the title song on there kills me.

I have recently rediscovered, thanks to the Diplo/Santogold mix-CD, that I love "Mesopotamia" very very very much.

(I still think "52 Girls" is the best song they ever did, though.)

I"ve really grown to love Mesopotamia, although I'm still not sure which version I own.

I think I have the original Byrne one, but judging from that 1990 remix, the new version seems more to my liking

Too lazy to go upthread to read the Mesopotamia stuff, but there are three versions, and here's how you can tell which one you have.

* If you have the Mesopotamia/Party Mix two-fer CD from 1990, you have the 1990 Remix version, i.e. "the rock mix"
* If you have the Warner Brothers vinyl EP (the most common one on vinyl) or the Island CD-EP, you have "the original official mix"
* If you have an Island EU vinyl EP, you likely have "the accidental mix" i.e. "the byrne mix". You have to listen and see if the songs are more sparse and dubbed out, but I haven't encountered an Island EU vinyl version that wasn't the accidental mix.

I'm so late on digitizing the accidental mix. Sorry guys. :( Once i get the vinyl I kept sorted, I'll let you know.

An online quote by Keith Strickland I stumbled upon today:

A friend of ours in the journalism department back then – which was also journalism-slash-TV-slash-media – had access to this studio and he invited us over and we did this performance. And we were using these tapes. It was actually the way we performed in Athens at the beginning, using reel-to-reel playback on some of the stuff. I played congas, Ricky played guitar, we had second guitar on tape, and Fred, Kate and Cindy would sing. So that’s how we performed for this video that a friend of ours, Spencer Thornton, made. And so a couple of clips from that have surfaced.

Discovering these two primordial B-52's videos on Youtube this morning made me happier than a (giant) clam! These predate the first album by a year.

Lava: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG70rsLUjfQ

Devil In My Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpYRnVcNPto&feature=related

One more, Hero Worship; brief snippet, but maybe my favorite of these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_KKZhA9sPw&NR=1

awesome

My friend Scott's band opened for the B's last night in Charlotte. OPENED FOR THE B-52's! I realize this isn't as big a deal in 2009 as it would've been in the past, but he's been a gigantic fan of theirs for the 17 years that I've known him. I can't even imagine what that would feel like.

/personal babble

"Is that you Moe-dean" is godheadlike. honorable mention, not seen mentioned, for godheadlikeness:"Give me back my man"

"Ain't It a Shame" = secret highlight.

they had so much cool around the first two albums im surprised they didnt precipitate a black hole

Based on "Love Shack", I pretty much ignored and avoided the B-52s for the past fifteen+ years. Listening to the first album, I guess that was a bad decision. BUT, aren't these songs too long for their own good?

No.

they're long-ish, yeah, but b-52s were always emphatically a dance band, i think they wanted to keep the grooves going.

If the first album went on forever it would still be too short.

The remixes on Party Mix are so awesome.

Looks like a concert from just after Wild Planet went up on the YouTubes recently. B-52's obsessives are going to be DELIGHTED.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhnmhDNF1JJiUMOz9qZgeiAFySF6R3lwX

ooh!

fuck they sound amazing in this.

I'd kill for some unreleased B's from that era, I'd love to see those first 2 get the deluxe treatment.

To continue the "Do I have the David Byrne mix version of Mesopotamia?" discussion from 6 years back, the UK vinyl Byrne mix has longer versions of 3 tracks:

8:33 vs. 5:00 - Loveland
7:45 vs. 5:48 - Cake
5:46 vs. 4:30 - Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can

Holy cow, that show is AMAZING. If anything, watch "Strobe Light"

This is SO FUCKING GOOD.

WoW i watched those music vault video's this morning and now someones posted them here.. strange anyways lately i've been listening to the Party Mix/Mesopotamia pack alot

Thanks, campreverb, this is indeed amazing! I saw this tour back then, but I don't remember the synth freakout in "Strobe Light."

Sick stuff.

Ricky Wilson was such a great guitarist.

y'all our own Tyler Wilcox has posted an amazing B-52's bootleg, with near soundboard quality, and a much tighter performance than recently released iTunes show.
Get caught up-http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/118118850842/b-52s-edenhall-amsterdam-the

Nice! I'm usually not a big fan of live boots, but I'll make an exception for early B's.

This is super hot! Cindy seems ready to levitate on "Give Me Back My Man."

Been listening to Mesopotamia/Party Mix a whole lot lately

holy shit i just noticed i posted that last year lol

Lyrically this is one of the most subversive bands out there... hope any "duds" are from people who consider their lyrics plain silly. Wave that esoteric flag.

http://georgiamusic.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/B52s_Athens_04.78_kb.jpg

(at their first gig, Valentine's Day 1977)

I'm actually really impressed they got such a good shot for their first gig. I'd have a big ol goofy John Prine smile.

But come on my straight brothers and sisters, you realize even their most straight-ahead novelty song is an ode to bathhouses, right? Approach the B-52s from that direction and you'll latch onto the substance behind the tinsel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs

Glitter on the mattress
Glitter on the highway
Glitter on the front porch
Glitter on the hallway

etc etc etc

I hear a wind
Whistling air
Whispering in my ear

Boy mercury shooting through every degree
Oh girl dancing down those dirty and dusty trails
Take it hip to hip rocking through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

(sorry to those that knew first time around, but believe me it ain't obvious to all)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwC0sp-uA4

im missing the subtext in Roam

Although they split credit equally, Roam is mostly written by Cindy, the only heterosexual in the band.

their most straight-ahead novelty song is an ode to

lol. Pineapples also come into play. And limburger.

That first gig photo is so sweet.

What can you do to save a party?
Parcheesi, charades?
A spur-of-the-moment scavenger hunt
Or Queen of the Nile?

from Party Out of Bounds. What is Queen of the Nile?

Good question!

Cleopatra?

Is that a party game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjyJ7pSUnYU

Planets pulsating, constellations creating
Voices are guiding me to the cities by the sea
Yes, I see cities by the sea

Amazing song. This and Deadbeat Club and Dry County forever.

When I finally ventured into Cosmic Thing when I was around 25, I was absolutely floored by 'Topaz.' How did such an incredible song not get released as a single?

sometimes my favorite b52's song! did they do anything else quite like it?
New cities by the sea
Skyscrapers are winking

'Roam' is fucking all-time.

Topaz is one of my top 20 songs of all time. One of the prettiest melodies ever recorded.

It's a truly beautiful song. I hadn't heard it until the other day.

have i ever weighed in on this thread that Dirty Back Road is the best B-52s song? if not, here i am, and it is

I think there could be compelling arguments for so many B-52s songs to be the best B-52s song.

Did you hear the Veruca Salt song from two years ago that references Dirty Back Road in the chorus though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMeYDS9kZcE

ha no! unsurprisingly the best part of the song by about a million miles!

They were here in concert on Sunday but I didn't go. I thought about about starting a TS: B-52s vs. King Crimson, since they were here recently too, and I didn't go to that either. Seemingly polar opposites, prog vs. new wave, both hugely influential to me in their heydays, both led me into rabbit holes of unfamiliar music (KC: classical and jazz, B-52s: surf music and Henry Mancini.) And I don't listen to either a whole lot these days, although I always love 'em when I do.

Glove slap, baby, glove slap.

Fripp played in the B-52s once!

http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_Robert_Fripp_in_Best

whoa and The Screamers?!?!?

damn

Ruby Ray JUST posted all her pics of the night Fripp played with The Screamers https://www.facebook.com/ruby.ray.752/posts/10214036279682579?pnref=story

saw them last night in L.A. -- they still sound amazing. It wasn't a super long set, they were on a bill w/OMD and Berlin (Berlin was decent, only caught the last couple songs, OMD was astonishing as per usual), but they played all the key hits. Rock Lobster closed it out. They had someone in a lobster suit dancing around onstage with them. good times!

Cool. Was Tracy W on bass?

yep! that band was super tight.

"Some say she's from Mars or one of the seven stars that shine after 3:30 in the morning. WELL, SHE ISN'T!" just jumped out at me. Never really noticed the last part before.

Listening at work, no one can see me laughing under this COVID mask.

I only just noticed this morning that for their formative (pre-mainstream) days, the B-52s didn't have a bassist!

There's a Bass in the Band (And It's Called the Bass)

the gypsies had no home and the b-52s had no bass

https://www.vintagesynth.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/sb100.jpg

iirc ricky wilson tuned the bottom two strings down, removed the middle two strings, and played "bass" on the low strings simultaneously with guitar on the high strings.

A number of songs are CFxxFF, where x is missing string.

and Kate Pierson handled the rest on her keyboard xpost

I just tried experimenting with the CFxxFF tuning for the first time, and it's amazing! Taking the bottom strings down that far makes them ridiculously slack and floppy, but you instantly get *that* sound. (I'm guessing Ricky used thicker gauge strings for this?) And then tuning the top two to the same F is similarly weird, but it is the magical sound of the "down! down!" part of "Rock Lobster." The way he combined bass parts and lead parts on only four strings was wonderfully eccentric and original.

yeah, that's amazing! i didn't know that at all

I would assume one would be playing mostly unison on the top two strings, rather than a lot of minor and major seconds?

Yes, the "down!" riff is literally just placing one finger over both strings at the 12th fret, descending each step down the fretboard. The two unison strings create a sort of wavery sound, probably aided by just a touch of reverb, and voila.

“Without anything but the love we feel”

otm

bought "Good Stuff" on CD at Half Price today, but listened to another acquisition ("Chorus" by Erasure) on the way home instead

Waiting for bus number 99
Goin to the store for hot dogs and wine

A number of songs are CFxxFF, where x is missing string.

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, October 6, 2021 8:25 AM

imagine if he had gotten his hands on one of those guitars with moveable frets.

Cracked case copies of Good Stuff (probably harvested from long boxes) were staples of late-'90s Walmart cutout bins.

yeah, that album was made for cutout bins.

I remember buying it the day it was released at Peaches Records in Seattle and being disappointed.

I remember spending a summer almost wearing my cassette copy of Good Stuff out, even though I knew in my heart that it wasn’t quite as awesome of the prior album

This one's been stuck in my head all weekend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpKEzFZYqBg

It’s a good track. The 9 minute Shep Pettibone one works really nicely if you are a fan of 80s extended mixes.

nice, thanks, I do love extended 80s/90s mixes

I like the Good Stuff remix too

I had Bouncing Off the Satellites on tape in high school (I took my car in for service and it was in the cassette player when I picked it up) and I think it's kinda slept on... has some of their very best songs (Summer of Love, Ain't It a Shame, Girl from Ipanema, Wig). She Brakes for Rainbows kinda points the way to Cosmic Thing, too.

yeah it's a solid LP imo, better than Whammy (which, in turn, sounded MUCH better when I revisited it recently)

Bouncing Off The Satellites has been out of print for ages. Don't remember ever seeing a copy in the UK.

Good Stuff forms part an extremely incongruous 2-for-1 CD package.

https://countrymusicusa.com/cdn/shop/products/20190320_123_740x.jpg

Ahahaha!

Well, there are too many horn arrangements on Good stuff imo

That’s the Blood, Sweat and Tears album where Fred Schneider joined as lead singer

Revisiting Whammy a few days ago, I was struck by how tinny and crudely programmed those sequencers and drums are. The songs are okay.

By contrast, Bouncing Off the Satellites bounce off the walls. "Ain't It a Shame" is their Secret Best Song. Sinead O'Connor killed it a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUF5mrKUOVA

can't be doing with any version of that song that doesn't have the Galaga samples

I totally love Whammy. Alfred, have you heard Plastics? I’ve written this elsewhere but the second time I saw the B-52s Plastics toured with them, and I’ve long thought the “tinny” rhythms on Whammy may have been Plastics-inspired. That period after Wild Planet that yielded Party Mix and Mesopotamia they were obviously casting about for what to do next.

I thought Bouncing off the Satellites was a minor letdown on release, but I’ve come to love that as well. It lacks anything that rocks me like “Trism” or “Queen of Las Vegas” though.

…which is crazy because Plastics were certainly inspired by the B-52s; Whammy seems to me like returning the favor.

I think I've said it before, but I love the Mesopotamia outtake version of Queen of Las Vegas (from the Nude on the Moon anthology):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4SAclO9JAE

Absolutely, it’s wonderful. I wish there were more outtakes like that, but there really aren’t.

yo I like The Plastics!! I have their Rough Trade 7"

Yay! I often use ilx threads to decide what to play. This afternoon: Good Stuff, Whammy, and Welcome Back Plastics.

Good Stuff needed to be 20 minutes shorter, resequenced, and preferably done with other producers.

That "Queen..." outtake is what I heard in my head that the Whammy version doesn't produce.

i completely forgot bouncing off the satellites even existed until we were listening to a b-52s mix in the car the other week and Wig came on. What a great song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mPCLvsB5GQ

Awesome.

“Whammy Kiss” live, sans rhythm box, rocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIEobB7JDkA

FYI, they're playing a one-off show at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago in November.

Was talking with some friends yesterday about (the lack of) Mexican food in the UK and that you don’t see e.g. tamales.

I mentioned the line, “Hi, my name is ricky and i'm a pisces. I love computers and hot tamales” from Song For A Future Generation and was informed there is a candy brand called “Hot Tamales” and now I’m not sure which one he loved. Any ideas?

I was just watching Twin Peaks and remembered that Julee Cruise joined to perform Cindy’s parts during her hiatus. Still doesn’t compute for me.

Not the candy. xp

Before the 1986 album Bouncing Off the Satellites was released, Ricky Wilson died of Aids-related illness, having kept his illness secret from all of his bandmates except Strickland until just before his death. “We saw Ricky get thin and asked, ‘Are you OK?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I stopped eating Mexican food.’ He loved Mexican food.

Thank you :)