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the past 34 years, The B-52s
went from a "tacky little dance
band from Athens, GA" to "The
World's Greatest Party Band." But
while the live shows are always a good time,
the band hasn't put out an essential record
in almost 25 years. Only a relative handful
of songs since 1986, and zero full albums,
deserve a spot next to the earliest B's mate
rial. Even the best ones ("Roam," "Deadbeat
Club," "Topaz" and, to a much lesser extent,
"Love Shack," all from 1989's Cosmic Thing)
are still several steps below the band's prime
output from 1979-1986.
But, then again, the band changed fun
damentally after the tragic death of guitarist
Ricky Wilson during the recording of Bouncing
Off the Satellites in 1985. The hiatus the
band took after his passing, working through
their grief and moving Keith Strickland from
drums to guitar, are all factors in this change.
Whereas Wilson's style was furious and deliber
ate, Strickland's is much more airy and open.
The keyboard work so masterfully displayed
on the group's calling card, "Rock Lobster,"
seems permanently gone, too, as the keys
now seem like an old friend rather than a wild
thing refusing to be tamed. The single defin
ing characteristics left from the old B's are
the wonderful and irrepressible vocals of Kate
Pierson, Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider.
It's unreasonable to expect any artists to
maintain the intensity of their earliest cre
ative bursts. It's plain undesirable for 50- to
60-year-olds to rotely mimic what they did in
their 20s. The early days of the band were just
a special and uniquely creative period that
speaks volumes about old Athens, primitive
new wave and, if you will, a certain amount of
sociologist Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock.
From the start, much noise was writ
ten about the band's "retro" characteristics
(surf guitar, bouffant hairdos, etc.,) but, if
anything, this was a jittery contradiction in
terms and more of a retro-futurism that both
embraced lifestyle ephemera yet anticipated a
wildly accelerated culture. Indeed, surf guitar
and beehives were solidly in the mainstream
a mere decade before the band's formation in
1976. The earliest known footage of the band
performing is a 1978 show filmed at Atlanta's
Downtown Cafe (find it on YouTube). It's an
intensely sweaty, live hive-mind of a perfor
mance filled with songs that would appear
on the band's self-titled debut from 1979 and
its sophomore album, Wild Planet. More than
one person has remarked that what's shocking
about this footage from today's perspective
is just how complete and fully formed these
songs are.
To be sure, the band changed incrementally
during its first nine years. The watertight
riffs of the band's debut gave way to the R&B
of Mesopotamia after the crises, existential
and otherwise, of Wild Planet ("Devil in My
Car," "Private Idaho"), which somehow seg
ued into the band's first glaring instance of
self-referential image-consciousness (1983's
Whammy!).
And, of course, the band left Athens fairly
soon after success hit, and running around
New York (and touring the world) as a success
ful band and harbinger of the American new
wave just can't be the same as cruising around
Athens looking for parties to crash. Even so,
the lyricism and musicality of the early B's
is, basically, unmatched among Athens bands
of that first modern era. The B's' first songs
were incredibly literate and punctuated with
absurdity ("Rock Lobster"), humor ("Quiche
Lorraine," "Butterbean") and an occasional
hint of sadness ("She Brakes for Rainbows,"
"Give Me Back My Man") but, significantly,
never hopelessness. A sizable amount of cri
tique and commentary is spread throughout
the records ("Legal Tender," "Hero Worship,"
"Juicy Jungle," "Mesopotamia," "There's a
Moon in the Sky [Called the Moon]"), but it's
only revealed through close listening.
These first six B-52s records (The B-SZs,
Wild Planet, Party Mix, Mesopotamia, Whammy!
and Bouncing Off the Satellites) are, to vary
ing and important degrees, composed of
meaningful layers that continue to reveal
themselves decades after their initial release.
Unfortunately, the only way to hear the
best versions of Party Mix, Mesopotamia and
Whammy! is on the original vinyl releases,
where the first's tracks run contiguously, the
second contains the original David Byrne
mixes and the third has a killer cover of Yoko
Ono's "Don't Worry, Kyoko" that was subse
quently removed. The latter albums (Cosmic
Thing, Good Stuff and Funplex) contain some
pleasant, if nonessential, material, but this
isn't really an attempt to pit the post-1986
era of the band against the old one. It's an
encouragement to throw on the headphones
and explore the sounds and themes of those
early records. Yes, the "tacky little dance
band from Athens, GA" was indeed crashing
the party, but the group did so in multiple,
thought-provoking ways that will last long
after the party's over.
Gordon Lamb
( • ^
WHO: The B-52s
WHERE: The Classic Center
WHEN: Friday, Feb. 18,8 p.m.
HOW MUCH: SOLD OUT!
V )
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