The B-52's - At the cartoon-rock party

If you mention Athens, Georgia to a rock fan, the first thing that comes to mind is: R.E.M. Wrong answer, or rather not the only one that should come to mind. Before R.E.M., and alongside them, there was in fact a band with a funny name, an amusing 50s-style look, and even funnier songs. Have you got it? Exactly: ladies and gentlemen, here they are, The B-52's!

They take the makeshift stage at a private Valentine's Day party in 1977: Fred Schneider – vocals, Kate Pierson – vocals, Cindy Wilson – vocals (and already you start wondering what's going on...), her older brother Ricky Wilson – guitar (ah... thank goodness, someone's actually playing an instrument) and Keith Strickland – drums. And they play. Hilarious, dazed, danceable, new wave, rockabilly. Everyone at that party goes wild: it's as if they'd watched living rock cartoons come to life, something halfway between The Flintstones – keep that in mind for later – and Potsie's band in "Happy Days".

So the five of them, who had formed the band almost by chance one night after having a bit too much to drink, convince themselves they might have a shot. They have a name, The B-52's, which evokes precisely the 50s and 60s they draw inspiration from, and in particular the towering, "scaffolding"-style women's hairdos typical of that era that the band's female members like to sport, so named for their resemblance to the nose of the famous bomber. They dress in flashy sheath dresses or proper boy/girl outfits straight out of the "new frontier" era, along with colorful jackets. They throw themselves into it and start playing all over town (still Athens, Georgia) and the surrounding area, growing in a fertile scene they sow well into, and one from which, not surprisingly, many bands will emerge, including their more famous friends R.E.M.

Thanks to the self-released single "Rock Lobster", the B-52's land a record deal, and with the same songs from that party they release their debut album and… what an album it is!

The B-52’s (1979, Warner Bros) is a blast, and its potential is indeed enormous: the band's unusual lineup alone, with singers outnumbering instrumentalists, is a novelty, even though Schneider actually plays keyboard-generated bass, Pierson plays organ, and the second guitar is handled by sister Wilson.

There's also plenty of fun, plenty of humor. But above all there's the music: taut, nervy new wave, danceable like rock n' roll yet never predictable. There are Mexican spices, what wasn't yet called tex-mex, and there's Pierson's thoroughly distinctive female voice, which would go on to influence countless singers (without her, some all-female groups like the Go-Go's or Bananarama wouldn't even have been conceivable, not to mention Cyndi Lauper or Italy's own Rettore). There are paranoid melodies and there are anti-melodies, as in the cover of Petula Clark's old hit "Downtown".

It's precisely this melody-versus-anti-melody antinomy, built from a handful of dry chords in rising sequences perched atop razor-short, killer riffs, with garage- and punk-flavored guitar tones, that would become a deep well the Pixies drew from extensively, along with many other bands of the '80s.

The B-52’s (the album, but also the band) would become a bible for many, while also fitting perfectly into the groove of that era (Devo, above all, are the closest kin to this sound). Their goal is hit dead-on: dredging up '50s and '60s retro-kitsch and rinsing it through punk, projecting it all into a hypothetical, almost childlike sci-fi future, exactly as it was imagined back in the '50s.

A clear sign of this is the opening of the first track, "Planet Claire", built on a sound like telegraph signals (in the style of "Astronomy Domine", so to speak), followed by the theme from "Peter Gunn", which as the song progresses gets reinterpreted and disfigured with deep slashes of punk guitar and wildly acidic keyboards accompanied by the high notes of a fantastic Kate Pierson. Over it all is Schneider's spoken-word vocal. And it's precisely on this interplay between Schneider's near-recitation in a deep voice (itself a major source of inspiration for many, just think of Stan Ridgway) and Pierson's little shrieks, or her duet harmonies with Wilson, that so much of these songs' charm rests.

If I said that the massive "Fifty Two Girls" foreshadows what, following partly the same inspirations, the Jane's Addiction would do eight years later, and that even Perry Farrell's raw vocal owes a great deal to Pierson, I'd be taken for a madman. But I'll say it anyway. The vocal harmonies of the female chorus and the sudden ecstatic/hysterical screams are the very same elements that would make the fortune of the tracks on "Nothing's Shocking" and "Ritual De Lo Habitual". And the guitars are the ones the Pixies would later take as their paradigm.

And what to say about "Rock Lobster"? For many, one of the songs that helped shape rock itself. A rock lobster already sounds like a cartoon on its own... And the nervy, exciting music is indeed inspired by cartoons: Scooby Doo, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and so on. This first single by the band is a long, over-six-minute ride, driven by an unmistakable surf-guitar theme and Schneider's spoken vocal. The hysterical shrieks and animal noises from the band's two women bring it full circle. It could end there and still be perfect. Yet as a bonus there's a syncopated drum part that keeps the tension sky-high, an organ hammered out relentlessly, and scattered cheesy electric effects (far better than electronic ones).

Much more of a traditional "rock song" is the following "Lava", another source ready-made for the great Pixies, where Pierson takes the spotlight on vocals alongside Schneider, while Wilson delivers his usual rock-solid riff and the great monotone fills of the second guitar. "There's A Moon In The Sky" returns to the register of naive science fiction ("This Is The Space Age" is the repeated line), with the usual great guitar flourishes.

If "Hero Worship" is much more in a singer-songwriter vein, recalling something of Patti Smith, "6060 842", with its flanger-drenched guitar, can almost sound like a track à-la Police. This is to say that these were sounds, melodies, references that were "circulating" in the rock of the time, which The B-52's devoured and chewed over, stamping it all with their own unmistakable mark. The already-mentioned minimal cover of "Downtown" fittingly closes the album.

This debut LP is genuinely explosive for the new wave scene, especially for its intellectual side championed by David Byrne (who would later want to collaborate with the band as well), though commercially it really takes off above all in Australia and Europe.

After the band relocated to New York, the follow-up to The B-52’s is Wild Planet (1980, Warner Bros), which, after the already remarkable "Rock Lobster", brings with it one of the most emblematic singles of the '80s: the blistering "Private Idaho", a dance-rock-psychedelic mix in which Wilson's gift for crafting infectious riffs hits its peak and Pierson's trills are the perfect chili pepper atop a colorful, irresistible dish. It's impossible not to instantly recall the perfect chorus, with the Wilson-Pierson duo singing in a sway: "You're living in your own private Idaho", making it impossible to stay still without tapping out the beat on the nearest surface, or shimmying along to a surf dance.

The whole album is more surf-drenched and psychedelic than the debut, and also more synthetic, more hypnotic, whereas the first one was instinctive. The B-52's confirm themselves as the party band par excellence, finding their ideal dimension in the dance-floor celebration. The record, however, fits more squarely into the intellectual new wave current of those years, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does strip them of that initial, powerful "wild" propulsive drive.

So if the peak is reached with "Private Idaho", other highlights shine too: the programmatic "Party Out Of Bounds", the punky "Devil's In My Car" with the female harmonies in great form, which recalls some of the things their fellow townsfolk and friends R.E.M. would churn out on their first albums, and the proto-power-pop "Strobe Light", full of breaks in which, as always, Schneider's "spoken voice" reigns supreme.

In 1982 came Party Mix (1982, Warner Bros), an album of remixes of tracks from the first two LPs, and the EP Mesopotamia (1982, Warner Bros), in which the long-awaited meeting finally happens with that same David Byrne, an admirer of theirs since their earliest records, here brought in to produce. In truth, what remains of what was meant to be their third full studio album, Mesopotamia, is rarefied and doesn't drive you to dance the way their previous works did. Byrne's presence looms heavy, in the "smeared" guitar mixes, in the African-tinged keyboard and percussion sounds, and in the obsessive rhythmic repetitiveness. Pierson is elevated to the rank of the band's vocal goddess, while the other two singers are shunted into a corner. A wall-to-wall sonic carpet is laid down, just when minimalism had been one of their strengths. A work utterly devoid of humor, smug and at times genuinely tedious, see "Deep Sleep" and "Mesopotamia", at a point when irony had been one of the other skills that made the B-52's great.

The follow-up Whammy! (1983, Warner Bros) allows the band to shake off the intellectual trappings that didn't really suit their nature. The light-heartedness returns, along with the 50s-60s vibe and the drag queens, even if the novelty of cartoon rock is no longer quite so novel. Still, good melodies and a certain "tasty" melancholy keep the album more or less afloat in places. A case in point is the opener "Legal Tender", wrapped in a nostalgic atmosphere. The following "Whammy Kiss" sounds a lot like Devo, especially in the almost electronic-sounding keyboards and guitars, and it's amusing to note how two bands with such influence on rock ended up influencing each other in turn. "Song For A Future Generation", on the other hand, brings back the naive future of the Fifties and seems to recall the sounds of early Prince, and while it doesn't exactly thrill, it does offer an entertaining bit of banter between Schneider and Pierson. "Butter Bean" is perhaps the track that comes closest to their earlier sound.

However, the freshness of their debut is missed even more here, along with that urge to dance that the first two albums used to spark. Weak moments pile up, as in "Moon 83" or "Big Bird", and a certain repetitiveness creeps in. Over time Ricky Wilson had come to split all the instrumental duties with Strickland, leaving the Pierson-Schneider-Cindy Wilson trio with just the vocals, and indeed on Whammy! the two of them handle practically all the instrumental work, with a few session musicians brought in for support.

At this point tragedy struck the B-52's: during the recording of the follow-up album, Bouncing Off The Satellites, in October 1985 Ricky Wilson himself died of a cancer brought on by AIDS, effectively leaving the band with no option but to break up.

Bouncing Off The Satellites (1986, Warner Bros) came out almost a year after the guitarist's death. It received virtually no promotion, the band was obviously devastated and didn't tour behind it, so the album sank into obscurity.

The loss of inspiration is evident nonetheless. Having once been a parody of comfortable American middle-class life and the happy cartoon family, The B-52's had by now become a parody of themselves. This is decidedly an album that never takes off, remaining stuck in the same old imagery, just dressed in more mainstream-eighties sounds. Clear examples of the creative crisis are "Summer Of Love", flimsy and lacking any drive, "Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland", which is nothing more than bland 80s dance music of a kind you could find anywhere at the time, and often better, or the insipid "Detour Thru Your Mind".

It now seems as if The B-52's were chasing the music of their era, after having been ahead of it.

The end, however, was still nowhere in sight. Having recovered from the shock, the band, now reduced to a quartet, went back into the studio and, with the help of numerous collaborators, recorded Cosmic Thing (1989, Warner Bros), their fifth album, destined to become their biggest commercial success.

Sara Lee of Gang Of Four came in on bass, Strickland switched to guitar, and a mighty percussion section and an equally mighty horn section were brought in. None other than Nile Rodgers took charge of production. The songwriting and arrangements hark back more to the band's early days, and there's certainly more enthusiasm here than on the previous record, which in turn makes for a more enjoyable listen. Good party vibes flow again on the title track, "Cosmic Thing", together with Pierson's little organ and Schneider's voice, finally free to ham it up as it used to. "Deadbeat Club" is a cheerful, sunny little tune, not unlike what fellow Athens, Georgia natives R.E.M. would later do with "Shiny Happy People", for which they enlisted Pierson herself on vocals.

"Love Shack" is the album's hit single, and while it doesn't quite match the glories of "Private Idaho" and "Rock Lobster", it did allow the band to finally reach that long-chased 45 chart peak in the US. "Love Shack" also operates within the realm of surf music and beach-party vibes, though it clearly lacks Wilson's driving riffs. "Roam", another successful single, is a song with the carefree flavor of summer vacations.

In the end it's not their masterpiece, but Cosmic Thing is undoubtedly a more-than-decent album.

With the following Good Stuff (1992, Reprise), Cindy Wilson also left — someone who, within the band's "family" dynamic, had always made an important contribution to the songwriting, besides forming a nearly peerless vocal duo with Kate Pierson — and very little remained of the band they once were. The drop in quality is stark, even compared to the previous record. Decidedly a minor work.

In 1994 the band's meeting with one of their inspirational myths, cartoons, finally came to pass. The B-52's, in fact, appeared as the party band — and how could it be otherwise — in the film "The Flintstones", based on the cartoon series of the same name. Pierson and co. even sang on the famous theme song.

At this point the band really did go on hiatus, carrying on only as a live act, aside from compilations and remixes. Everyone pursued their own solo projects... until now. Indeed, on March 25, 2008, Funplex (2008, Astralwerks) came out, the B-52's new album after sixteen years.

If in some respects the album leans too heavily on today's production style, pumped up across every frequency, in others it makes a decent attempt at recovering a more garage-rock spirit that had been lost since the first two albums. Starting with the driving title track, which features a riff with a distinctly Stones-like flavor, as well as the opener "Pump" and "Ultraviolet".

While "Juliet of The Spirit" brings back the usual big female choruses, "Eyes Wide Open" and "Love in the Year 3000" spell out the electronic sounds that had already peeked through in the band's earliest work more than thirty years before, and clearly show the debt that some bands today still owe them (Scissor Sisters above all).

"Deviant Ingredient" is the usual sun-drenched, summer-reverb-drenched anthem. Over the years Strickland has learned a thing or two about how a garage guitar should sound, but the killer riffs of the late Ricky Wilson are still, as ever, what's most sorely missed on any B-52's album released after his passing.

Funplex is a clear step up from its tired, stale predecessor in the studio, but ultimately it's an album that's barely above average when measured against the band's past glories.

The B-52's have earned the title of "greatest party band of all time": they've been synonymous with fun and lightheartedness, embodying those sides of rock 'n' roll better than almost anyone. Their influence on the most disparate branches of rock and pop shows just how unfairly overlooked they are by many, how essential they are for newcomers to discover, and how they deserve to stay high in the esteem of anyone who's already had a good time with them.

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