The B-52's are a band whose music transports me to specific childhood moments. I grew up the youngest of seven children, with all six siblings significantly older, so the house was a sonic jungle, vinyl and tapes scattered and stacked and shelved in various rooms, a multitude of genres represented.
It was Brenda who had the taste for the so-called "80s new wave": Talking Heads, Devo, The Cars, Oingo Boingo, The B-52's. For whatever reason, only the B's captured my pre-teen imagination. It had to be the songs; my visual reference points began and ended with the album covers (MTV wasn't touching them with a 10-foot-high bouffant wig at that time). This is why I still defend them as a great band. It would be easy to assume a young child would be instantly fascinated by a group with such a garish, inflammable image, all ridiculous hair and bright everything. But my sisters tapes were all I had.
(As I aged and my ears matured, I would rediscover and appreciate the other bands mentioned above; except for Oingo Boingo, fuck that trash.)
The tape I remember most vividly was Whammy!, their 1983 synth-dance experiment. It was an event for me, Brenda, and brother Doug to blast that on the third floor, the largest free-roaming space in the whole house. Seriously, we did pantomime routines to "Butterbean" and strained our ears against the boom box to make out every single word to the instant classic "Song For a Future Generation". My six-year-old mind found it so wild that a band would record what is basically each member reciting personal ads for the benefit of aliens on Jupiter. (That same six-year-old mind did not, however, pick up on how effeminate all three male members sounded. Oh, youth!)
It took another half-dozen years for the B-52's to crash into my mental runway once again. That was 1989, when "Love Shack" exploded onto the charts, fresh and unexpected, an ass-shaker and brain-puzzler (I shudder to imagine what the misinformation superhighway would have convinced people "Tin roof rusted!" meant, cf. "Superman dat hoe"). Like millions, I bought Cosmic Thing and replayed that heat till all the popsicles melted. The songs pulsed with rejuvenated spirits, absurd creatures, peace, love, green and heart.
Inspired, I bought all the older albums, including one I missed entirely the first time 'round--1986's Bouncing Off the Satellites. During the recording process, guitarist/visionary Ricky Wilson became ill and soon thereafter died. (It would take years before the world would learn that Wilson did not die of cancer, as was initially reported, but rather the still-misunderstood AIDS virus.) Practically under duress, the band finished the record and retreated. The album itself was released and widely panned by critics and ignored by consumers.
Twenty-one years on, Bouncing Off the Satellites deserves revisitation and reevaluation. The B-52's are set to release an overdue new album called Funplex in March. In the context of a band that both defies and defines odds, BOTS should be viewed no longer as some dour epitaph or unfortunate schizophrenic episode, but rather as...a record in a band's catalogue.
"Summer of Love"--The hit that shoulda been, and a sparkling example of the Fairlight done right. (To hear it done wrong, see the last three Devo albums.) The harmonies of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson are uniformly fantastic, belting out some rather deceptive lyrics:
"I've been waiting for the man
Just buzzin' around...downtown
Waitin' for that very special
Comes in to see what I got
Orange popsicles and lemonade"
"Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland"--I always thought a song blessed with such a title should sonically resemble a spastic crackhead battle royale, but it stays in a spaced, spacey niche. Pointless, but fun.
"Housework"--A Kate solo vocal turn. Actually, the only other member credited on this song is Keith Strickland. Hmm. You don't get many Kate solo tracks. Cindy, sure; out the ass. A Cindy Wilson spotlight moment became a quick hallmark of the B-52's albums. Why Cindy and not Kate? This song helps explain why. Asinine and forgettable, the words and music evaporate from your head at a two-second clip. Far and away the nadir of the album.
"Detour Thru Your Mind"--Finally, at track four, we hear some Fred. Incredible; on the earlier albums, he's already crashed a party, spotted some pink air, done all sixteen dances, ran around, and gone down down doowwwn by this time.
He tries his best to make up for it here, a spoken word psychedelic sojourn that manages to rhyme "orange" and "large" and inject the best back-masked message on a record to date. Great guitar solo, too.
"Wig"--This is to BOTS what "Butterbean" was to Whammy! A song where they are clearly trying too hard to be the tackiest, wackiest band on Earth, yet somehow succeeding despite the slip showing.
"Theme For a Nude Beach"--Featuring all five members on vocals, a loose-limbed frolic around Beach Bowl Galaxy that keeps evoking sandbars in the lyrics. It succeeds at the attempted graceful sounds, but the B's of 1979 would have been far kookier with this, making it sound closer to a real nekkid party.
"Ain't It a Shame"--As out of place on this album as a Whole Foods Market in Hagerstown, Maryland. The entire song is one long, heavy sigh, from the lazy guitar swashes to the resigned harmonica to Cindy's syrup-y vox gone mournful and bitter as she serenades deadly apathy. (Even Keith and Ricky's backing vocals seem afraid to wake the neighbors.)
In a case of "real recognize real", Sinead O'Connor did a cover of this song for her She Who Dwells... album. I've yet to hear this version, but if ever a female singer could out-break Cindy's heart on this one....
"Communicate"--Jumps out like fire from an exposed manhole after "Ain't It a Shame". Fred pops back in to deliver an imitation of Paul Lynde as a (fill in the blank) instructor while the girls with kaleidoscope voices shimmy behind him. The most positive song on the album (don't hold it in!) is also the most tightly structured and effortlessly executed, with perfect pacing and dearth of tacky keys.
How does one resist a tune that spells out the title within the lyrics? One doesn't, so stop Googling for the answer. Just listen to it over and over until you enter such a state of giddy other-than you start making up your own chant. (My favorite variation pays homage to my favorite musculoskeletal disorder "C-O-S-T-O-C-H-O-N dritis".)
"Juicy Jungle"--A horn-y Fred solo number that foretold the group's interest in environmental issues. Great cause; annoyingly trite song. All that money spent in the studio recording this claptrap could have been donated to Greenpeace. That had to cross Fred's mind at one point.
"She Brakes For Rainbows"--(Hip hop crate digger alert: sampled by the Majesticons for their track "St. Tropez Party". ) Written by Keith and Ricky and given to Cindy so she could pull a heart of a fuzzy hat. Gorgeously arcing chorus. Tells the story of "Brenda Holiday", a woman who doesn't speak much but knows more. "She knows where the rain goes/She brakes/She brakes for rainbows". The last song on the last album with Ricky Wilson isn't supposed to suffuse the air with unbearable sorrow--we're supposed to admire this Brenda--but as the chorus fades into the clouds, it's difficult to not think of Ricky Wilson following right behind.
This album is not, by any stretch of the cosmic rubberband, up to the quality of the first two albums or Cosmic Thing; it is, however, a sight better than Whammy! (which coulda been the bestest EP of all time ever with judicious pruning in the studio) and Good Stuff (the title of which is such a damn lie I don't know where to start). It succeeds despite an over dependence on the Fairlight synthesizer and an undeniable disjointed vibe. (Session musicians are sprinkled liberally throughout, and Fred Schneider's sprechgesang is almost nonexistent.) Conventional wisdom paints BOTS as a dud. It is not.
B-52s
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