Disco de The B-52's: “B-52's”

I can't say how much I love this album! It has so many gems, the most successful being "Planet Claire," "52 Girls," and "Rock Lobster." The album has 6 other gems to spare, which means that I can't say how much I love every song on this LP. I purchased it yesterday at a flea market, and it's stayed on my turntable since. From Kate Pierson's trashy organ cords, to Cindy Wilson's intense screaming on "Dance this Mess Around," and the rather disrespectful cover of "Downtown," the album remains a gem in its own right, and should be purchased by everyone! It's just one of those albums, like "Thriller" or the "Flashdance" soundtrack. Anyway, the bottom line is, buy this album on whatever you can, whether it be vinyl (on which it sounds wonderful), cassette, or CD, you need to own this!!!!

R.E.M. might be the most famous musical act to come out of the supposedly sleepy college town of Athens, Georgia, with the Indigo Girls being a close second, but the B-52's were the first group to come out of that now infamous hotbed of alternative music. Next month I get to see the B-52's in concert, so I am trotting out their albums and getting ready. If you do not know that the group took their name from the Southern slag for the big buouffant wigs sported by signers Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, then you probably have not checked out the Broadway cast album for "Hairspray" (but you should). I remember once hearing the group's look described as "campy, thrift-store aesthetic" and I certainly could not improve on that appellation. This 1979 self-titled debut album remains their best, harkening back to the day when the group was a quintet: add to the mix Fred Schneider, guitarist Ricky Wilson, and drummer Keith Strickland. Using their first single "Rock Lobster" as the springboard to success, this album offers up songs that are first and foremost quite danceable. Of course, if you listen to the lyrics you will find the songs somewhat bizarre, but that is half the fun. Nobody is more manic than the B-52's, and this album proves the truth of that statement from day one.

Do not try to put the B-52's into the categories of either post-punk of new wave, because they were over in the category of silly fun all by them selves. Who else could match Schneider's flamboyantly campy vocals or the quirky harmonies of Pierson and Wilson? But this album works because the songs are pretty good, especially the first four tracks: "Planet Claire," "52 Girls," "Dance This Mess Around," and, of course, "Rock Lobster." Every student of American Popular Culture has to fall in love with "Planet Claire" with its bizarre blend of the themes from "Star Trek" and "Peter Gunn," while Schneider sings about a planet where no one ever dies and no one has a head (makes you wonder if there is a link between the two). "52 Girls" has Pierson and Wilson chanting the names of 24 girls in what it probably the catchiest dance tune on the album. "Dance This Mess Around" is another Pop Culture tour, with its references to various dances nobody remembers the names for, let alone the moves. Then there is "Rock Lobster," the glorious ode of communal towel coordination. This remains the best B-52's album simply because most fun things are most fun the first time around.

Formed in 1976 as a lark, the five-member Athens, Georgia band made a hit on the dance club scene with their unexpected tongue-in-cheek lyrics and weirdly retro "Twilight Zone" sound. But they didn't really get off the ground in a big way until 1979, when their self-titled debut release pretty much put the "new" in 1970s and 1980s New Wave--and even today it's hard to think of that era without contemplating it.

Opening with the memorable "Planet Claire," with its retro-rhythms, electronic pings, and truly off the wall lyrics, the band puts you on notice: it will be quite unlike anything you've heard before. And that holds true through virtually every cut. Of course, whether you like it or not is an entirely different matter: it can be difficult to relate to music made with such instruments as smoke-detectors, toy pianos, and a stripped down guitar-bass-drums combo, not to mention lyrics that often seem to be thrown together from the first rhyming words the band could think of. Quite a few people will find that a little of it goes a long way.

But it grows on you. It really does. "52 Girls," with Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson spewing out female names very much like you'd recite state capitols in high school, is wickedly funny once you manage to tune into it--and when you move on to "Dance this Mess Around" you're hooked, plugged into Cindy and Kate's alternately strident, alternately harmonic vocals and Fred Schneider's unexpected rap-like interjections.

For all its weirdness, this is music designed to get you on your feet, and on draggy days when I don't quite feel up to the task I can drop this particular CD on the stereo and "dance this mess around" all the way to a spotless kitchen. Much of the B-52's music takes off from pop culture, with a very specific emphasis on those alternately bizarre and utterly lame 1950s and 1960s sci-fi drive-in flicks that live so fondly in cult-fan-memory. "Rock Lobster," a classic of its kind, is a perfect example, subverting Frankie and Annette's rear-projection waves into mundo-bizarro tanning butter; "Lava" is a wild mix of drop-dead sultry and drop-dead wacko; "There's a Moon in the Sky" can only be described as the musical equivalent of Flash Gordon on acid.

My particular guilty pleasure from this CD is the flat-out warped "6060-842," the twisted fable of Tina's visit to the ladies' room and the telephone number written on the wall. But whether it's the sexually perverse "Hero Worship" or trashing Petula Clark's 1960s pop hit "Down Town," its all just a lot of fun. If you only know The B-52's from their later, pop-tinged party hits, you owe yourself this one. Turn up the volume and make the neighbors roll their eyes and wonder what you're doing!

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I was a kid when I first saw the B52's on SNL back in like 1979. I turned down the TV sound because I thought that they looked weird. And they did. But my curiosity got the better of me and I turned the sound back up. They were playing Rock Lobster. By the end of the song, I was hooked! Badly!

And so my friends were all hitting the teenie bopper disco scene and I never did fit there too well. Here was a band I could identify with. This music really did change my life, because it reminded me that it is ok to be different. And it made me happy and the music isn't boring, ever. "Let them go on to the disco," I said. And I danced around my room to Rock Lobster, and finally scraped up the money to buy the B-52's vinyl a month or so later.

Thus started my love affair with the B52's and this (now) CD marks the pinnacle of my music collection. As an adult, I appreciate the creativity of this band even more now that I recall and understand its historical context. Enter the B52's during a time when disco and long-haired rock were dominating the charts. Enter the B52's, a sound quite different than anything I had heard before, and anything I have heard since.

This album has been a source of solace for me throughout my life. It reminds me to be me during times when I feel different. Sounds cheesy, but there is nothing like hearing "Planet Claire" or "There's a Moon in the Sky" to help one remember and celebrate one's individuality and uniqueness. So what if I'm on my own planet? I like it here! And ya know, even coming across another B52's fan is a further reminder that I am not alone.

As an adult, I can't help but still dance around my home while listening to this CD. This is great party music, whether the party is for 1000 or the party is for 1. This piece of work can always be counted on to raise spirits and remind us of our place in this world...or.. another world. Ha ha! Go B52's!!!

Including in the New Wave movement as one of the principal forces we had this band from Athens, Georgia(the same as R.E.M.) wich is called for many years as "the best Party Band in the World".

We are talkin'about their first release(1979) wich is, for the majority of their fans, their best work ever. And "The B-52's" is indeed a sublime work of creativity. Inspired in the alternative rock of the sixties and seventies, The B-52's appeared as "pop-freaks", using wigs, coloured clothes and, above all, creating an alternative form of making simple things sound great.

As we can listen in this record, they were a diferent band who used lines like "here comes a bikini whale" in the classic "Rock Lobster", or "if you're lucky you get to ride in a gold meteorite" in the crazy-spacial track "There's a moon in the sky(called the Moon)". Other tunes are highlights like the great rock sound of "Lava" or the essential "Dance This Mess Around". The whole album is genial. The B-52's began their career with their creativity peak.

ESSENTIAL to everyone who enjoy good music, with a positive attitude. In my collection of 545 CD's this album is, of course, in my Top 20.

Like The B-52's used to say "It's good to be diferent"...