Songs For a Future Generation: The B-52s

Posted by: zac | From: January 18, 2005

When teenage boys--awkward, bored, and obsessive--get cooped up in suburban bedrooms, sometimes they take to making lists. Lists about rock bands, rock records, rock shows. Bests and Worsts and I wish I was theres. And sometimes these circle jerks last beyond bedrooms all thumb-tacked with ugly rock posters. But that's another sort of story all together.

At 17, one of my favorite such games was what we'll call the "way-back-when" machine. the premise is as self-explanatory as it probably sounds: you're offered a nominal amount of chances--threes, fives and tens always work best--to travel back in time to see one show by a particular band, any band, at the peak of their game. Yes, this is indicative of my adolescent experience. My choices at the time were all pretty pedestrian--the requisite Velvet's show, Talking Heads pre-77, most certainly Nirvana (a band I somehow missed altogether despite my proximity), the Smiths in 1984, and on and on. The main point of aghast contention with most of my Rock And Roll peers always surfaced at the admission that more than most of these fairly obvious choices, I would totally kill to have seen the B-52s circa 1978. Because from 1978 to about 1983, the B-52s were the Greatest Band Of All Time.

This is the original five-piece we're talking about, of course--that being Fred Schneider, Ricky and Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson, and Keith Strickland. Now admittedly, my obsession with this particular era of the B-52s' rocky career is in no small part aided by the band's incomparably photogenic line-up: a quintet with amazing style, sense of humor, and distinct personal character, the B-52s just took amazing fucking pictures, both on stage and in studio. Which isn't at all to marginalize the band's actual music--for the stretch of at least three and a half records (B-52s, Wild Planet, the David Byrne produced Mesopotamia, and a bit of Whammy, if you're forgiving... not to mention their self-made remix album Party Mix), the B-52s mustered some of the most undeniable, clever, interesting, and astoundingly under-appreciated music of their era.

Twenty-something Athenians with a sense of other-worldly kitsch seemingly removed from the sleaze-obsessed trappings of proponents like John Waters and the Cramps (though certainly influenced by both), the B-52s were the perfect amalgam of all that seemed perfect about '70s queer culture (and subsequent fag-hagdom)--with two of the world's most beautiful, anatomically-correct drag queens as dueling frontwomen to boot. While Fred Schneider's lisping, hyper-Georgian queerdom has always been the band's most recognizable (and probably polarizing) aspect, what's often overlooked is the brilliant, mega-influential (hello, Sleater-Kinney) guitar work of the shy, boyish Ricky Wilson--whose singular input marked the beginning and the end of the band's brilliant era.

Rounding out the original powerhouse was a carrot-topped keyboardist named Kate, and the band's secret weapon--another Wilson--singer Cindy. Cindy's vocals--a combination of caterwauls and yelps and grunts and shrieks--spat from her mouth as though her tongue were perpetually novocained... limp, lifeless, stoned, and FUCKING AMAZING. From footage and photographs of the era (for further evidence, I urge you to check out some of the archived videos from the early years), I've built the women of the B-52s up to be something of a composite of the Perfect Woman; wrapped up in the sort of stomach-knotting lust that time, space and age simultaneously mock--you know, the kind of head-ringing laughter you hear when you look at photos of a young Marlon Brando and you can't help but feel the pangs of impermanence.

anyway.

The era of perfection ended right around 1985 with the death of the band's main musical visionary--Ricky Wilson--at the hand of (you guessed it) AIDS. After Ricky's death, the band took an extended hiatus for over three years.By the time they returned, Strickland had moved from drums to guitar, and the wonderful women had moved from the objects of my ridiculous obsession to caricatures strikingly similar to Pee-Wee's Ms. Yvonne. Oh yeah, and they recording one of the most successful, annoying songs of 1989. Soon Cindy left the band, the coffin nail that assured their place in the retro dustbin. But let's forget about rusty tin roofs and painted signs by the side of the road--as truthfully, the band that recorded that song has about as little to do with the B-52s as heterosexuality. Let's remember the B-52s for what they always were at heart: the Greatest Band Of All Time.

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