{"id":3745,"date":"2025-07-17T09:24:33","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T09:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-b-52s-the-warner-and-reprise-years-150499\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T09:24:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T09:24:33","slug":"the-b-52s-the-warner-and-reprise-years-150499","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/the-b-52s-the-warner-and-reprise-years-150499\/","title":{"rendered":"The B-52s \u2013 The Warner And Reprise Years"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

\u2018\u2018Imagine,\u201d Fred Schneider<\/strong> tells Uncut<\/strong>, \u201cone week I\u2019m washing dishes to make ends meet because I\u2019d quit my job to do the band, and then the next week we\u2019re flying to Nassau to record\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Bahamas\u2019 luxurious Compass Point Studios over three weeks in early 1979, The B-52s<\/strong> laid down their self-titled debut album. These five skint musicians were a bold signing for Island and Warners, even amid the excitement of post-punk: a deeply strange and subtly transgressive group, they shared as much DNA with the avant-garde, from Sun Ra<\/strong> to Yoko Ono<\/strong> to Captain Beefheart<\/strong>, as with surf music, girl group pop, disco and punk.<\/p>\n

Formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1976, The B-52s<\/strong> had been nourished by the city\u2019s unique environment. This was a farm town of eccentrics, led by the likes of Jeremy Ayers<\/strong> (later of Limbo District<\/strong>) and record shop owner William Orten Carlton<\/strong>, a place that welcomed outsider art and queerness.<\/p>\n

From the start, The B-52s<\/strong> were unusual. They were a collective with no leader, a five-piece with three singers and no bassist (vocalist Kate Pierson<\/strong> handled keyboard bass along with organ) that sculpted songs via group improvisations, with a postmodern eye on the past. This was clearest in their look \u2013 all atomic bouffant wigs, shiny fabrics and garish makeup, a dazzling forerunner to the seedy Lynchian Technicolor of Wild At Heart<\/strong> or Blue Velvet<\/strong> \u2013 but also in their music, which blended surf, punk and underground experimentation with the novelty weirdness and outer-space obsessions of the 1950s. <\/p>\n

They were kitsch, certainly, but surreal and absurdist rather than camp or ironic; an American response to Roxy Music<\/strong>\u2019s high-art trash aesthetic. Yet these were the days when bands as bizarre as The B-52s<\/strong> could find a home on major labels, and Island and Warners\u2019 bet paid off. <\/p>\n

To say that their catalogue \u2013 now being reissued in this 9LP or 8CD box, minus 2008\u2019s Funplex<\/strong> \u2013 starts strong would be an understatement: The B-52\u2019s<\/strong> is a stunning debut, a hermetic manifesto that appeared out of the ether. Its first side in particular is near-perfection: from the ragged space-garage of \u201cPlanet Claire\u201d, with its \u201cPeter Gunn\u201d riff, and the breakneck, proto-Strokes<\/strong> \u201c52 Girls\u201d, to the swinging chaos of \u201cDance This Mess Around\u201d. <\/p>\n

Side One\u2019s closer, \u201cRock Lobster\u201d, is the album\u2019s crowning glory. Seven minutes of demented garage built around a detuned surf riff, with absurdist lyrics about a beach party, it evolves into a savage outro showcasing guitarist Ricky Wilson\u2019s<\/strong> genius. Involving detuned, missing and unison strings, his novel technique \u2013 part Ventures<\/strong>, part Magic Band\u2019s Zoot Horn Rollo<\/strong>, part Sonic Youth<\/strong> before Sonic Youth \u2013 allowed him to play slashing parts that still sound like little else, and hit harder than most punk or no wave. With Schneider handling declamatory spoken word, The B-52\u2019s<\/strong>, especially \u201cRock Lobster\u201d, shows off Cindy Wilson<\/strong> and Kate Pierson<\/strong>\u2019s Ono-esque vocal experimentation, and famously inspired John Lennon<\/strong> to call Ono from Bermuda to tell her that her \u201ctime had come\u201d. Double Fantasy<\/strong> was the result.<\/p>\n

Producer Chris Blackwell<\/strong> sensibly kept the arrangements minimal and the sound dry on The B-52\u2019s<\/strong>, mimicking the band\u2019s shows, which gives the record a beautifully crisp feel. Rhett Davies<\/strong> was similarly strict on the follow-up, 1980\u2019s Wild Planet<\/strong>. Despite songs about poodles called Quiche and demonic cars, there\u2019s plenty of edge: \u201cParty Out Of Bounds\u201d is interspersed with eerie discord, the raunchy \u201cDirty Back Road\u201d doesn\u2019t hide very hard behind its driving metaphor, and single \u201cPrivate Idaho\u201d is consumed with paranoia, Schneider warning over one of Wilson\u2019s finest riffs: \u201cDon\u2019t let the chlorine in your eyes\/Blind you to the awful surprise\/That waits for you at the bottom of the bottomless blue, blue, blue pool\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The B-52\u2019s<\/strong> and Wild Planet<\/strong> used up their pre-fame material, and now the group needed fresh songs. To buy some time, in July 1981 they released Party Mix!<\/strong>, a pioneering yet inessential remix album that squashed three songs from both LPs into side-long medleys. In the meantime, they were recording with David Byrne<\/strong>, but various difficulties meant the results were trimmed to a mini-album, 1982\u2019s Mesopotamia<\/strong>. Their attempts to fill out their sound with horns, synths and the like don\u2019t always succeed, but the Levantine disco title track remains a fine example of their interlocking vocal parts, overflowing hooks taking the place of traditional choruses.<\/p>\n

The group changed their process for 1983\u2019s Whammy!<\/strong>, with Ricky Wilson <\/strong>and drummer Keith Strickland<\/strong> handling all the music on drum machines, synths and guitars. Jamaican engineer Steven Stanley<\/strong>, one of the sonic wranglers on Party Mix!<\/strong>, produced the delightfully out-there results. While they embraced electronics, this wasn\u2019t your usual mid-\u201980s sound: the frantic likes of \u201cWhammy Kiss\u201d and \u201cButterbean\u201d are more akin to Suicide<\/strong> covering Beefheart<\/strong> at Black Ark. <\/p>\n

\u201cSong For A Future Generation\u201d was a bizarre, brilliant single, each of the group delivering a spoken verse about themselves, then coming together to trill \u201clet\u2019s meet and have a baby now\u201d. Whammy!<\/strong> originally included a cover of Ono\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Worry\u2026\u201d, unfortunately replaced with the inferior \u201cMoon 83\u201d on subsequent pressings, including this one.<\/p>\n

Things began to go wrong for The B-52s<\/strong> about now. Ricky Wilson<\/strong> became ill with AIDS, keeping it a secret from all but Strickland, while relationships in the band fractured. When Wilson passed away in 1985, Bouncing Off The Satellites<\/strong> was practically finished and was released the following year with no active group and little promotion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, only the joyous, rockabilly-powered \u201cWig\u201d, reworked from a decade-old jam, captures their usual zest.<\/p>\n

No-one could replace Wilson, so the new songs the group wrote when they reunited later in the decade were less manic, less experimental, but more soulful and in tune with the times. As a result, 1989\u2019s Cosmic Thing<\/strong> became a huge hit, one of the best-selling albums in the US that year. It was a warm, welcoming record: the group looked back fondly on their Athens days on \u201cDeadbeat Club\u201d, and indulged their interstellar fixation on \u201cTopaz\u201d and the title track, even while \u201cChannel Z\u201d took shots at political \u201cdisinformation\u201d. Granted, the snare sounds were gargantuan, but that was hard to avoid in 1989. <\/p>\n

Similarly inescapable was \u201cLove Shack\u201d: if it suffers somewhat from overfamiliarity these days, it\u2019s nevertheless a playful piece of Southern groove, with Schneider, Wilson and Pierson\u2019s vocals freeform and vital.<\/p>\n

1992\u2019s Good Stuff<\/strong> has its moments \u2013 \u201cIs That You Mo-Dean?\u201d was another space classic \u2013 but suffered from the absence of Cindy Wilson<\/strong>, overlong tracks and increasingly slick production from Don Was<\/strong> and Nile Rodgers<\/strong>. The B-52s<\/strong> would later perform the title song for 1994\u2019s The Flintstones<\/strong> \u2013 a peak in visibility, a dip in quality \u2013 tour extensively and, in this decade, enjoy residencies in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n

While there\u2019s something very B-52s<\/strong> about Nevada\u2019s atomic testing sites, casinos and tacky Strip, Vegas is still an unexpected destination for a group so conceived in the underground; yet it\u2019s perhaps no weirder than Bryan Ferry<\/strong>, a fellow explorer of the kitsch and the curious, staking out his patch on Smooth Radio.<\/p>\n

The B-52s<\/strong> have been calling themselves \u201cthe world\u2019s greatest party band\u201d for years now. They\u2019re not entirely wrong, of course, but the Athens troupe are so much more than that. For one, the way they\u2019ve lived their lives and presented themselves has long been an example to marginalised outsiders, whether queer or otherwise. And the music collected here \u2013 especially their effervescent debut \u2013 has inspired acolytes from Beat Happening<\/strong> to Boy George, Sleater-Kinney<\/strong> to Stephen Malkmus<\/strong>, not to mention Lennon and Ono. As this box charts, they\u2019re one of those rare groups who can genuinely claim to have launched the counterculture gloriously into the mainstream.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post The B-52s \u2013 The Warner And Reprise Years<\/a> appeared first on UNCUT<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018\u2018Imagine,\u201d Fred Schneider tells Uncut, \u201cone week I\u2019m washing dishes to make ends meet because I\u2019d quit my job to do the band, and then the next week we\u2019re flying…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,88,1729],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album","category-reviews","category-the-b-52s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}