The B-52's were really tearing tar off the path looking over hidden driveways to find the insane strobe light of a party out of bounds. As their eponymous debut was still climbing the charts, the band went back to Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas during April of 1980 to record their second album with co-producer Rhett Davies and executive producer Chris Blackwell. The sessions for 'Wild Planet' featured Kate Pierson on keyboard bass, organ, vocals, and keyboards; Fred Schneider on vocals, cowbell, glockenspiel, and additional keyboards; Keith Strickland on drums, drum machine, and Venus sounds; Cindy Wilson on bongos, vocals, and tambourine; and Ricky Wilson on guitars. Strickland: "When we started, it wasn’t a scene. We moved to New York because there wasn’t really any place for us to play in Athens. It was all happening in New York so, once we signed with Warner Brothers, we went up there. Then, within a year, the whole Athens scene exploded—Pylon…R.E.M…all hell broke loose! Now, when I go back, it’s such a different city in many ways. Any given night, there’s 20 or 30 bands playing and Athens is not a big town. The University of Georgia is there and I think that’s the main factor in having so many young people there. It’s been happening in a lot of cities and college towns, like Austin, Texas...Certainly Athens was a “blue pool” in a very conservative, maybe not-so-open-minded region. Athens was very liberal and I was fortunate to come of age in that environment and in the years that I did."
Cindy: "In one way, it was very easy for us because we were a group of friends. It wasn’t like being a hired performer to come in and be in a group. It was a bunch of friends getting together — artists and free thinkers. We’re from a college town, Athens, which was a great place to grow up because it wasn’t conservative. It was a very artistic scene there. So we came up through a more open-minded feeling, and had the sense of having fun and being outrageous and making each other laugh. We were lucky that we kind of came up through an organic situation like that ...When we came to New York and people started coming to see us, I’m sure we looked like we were from a different planet. But we started getting an audience there and definitely hit a nerve, so it just became bigger and bigger after that. We were kind of our own thing. "
Schneider: "Everyone brought in a distinct aspect to everything, and we just did our own thing. First of all, we liked it, and our friends liked it, and a hobby became a career...We were pretty punky in the beginning. We were formed as sort of a punk group with our own twist. We listened to Devo, Ramones, Sex Pistols. We went to see the Sex Pistols for their first show in America. But then we also liked James Brown, mambo music, pretty eclectic stuff....When I dropped out of college, the last thing I did—I knew I was dropping out, and a friend said, for our creative writing, he was going to do a book of poetry. I thought, “Shit, that’s easy. I think I’ll do one too.” And actually, some of those poems became bases for songs we did later on. I wrote these things, and the teacher said, “Well, I don’t understand any of it. I can see you’re very serious about it.” And he gave me an A. [Laughs.] My friend was reading his poems about a white horse, galloping through the desert, blah blah blah, and I’m doing poems about flamingos and living rooms and stuff...My friend Jolene and I, we used to stay home on Saturdays and watch really bad movies and laugh. We were doing Mystery Science Theater in the ’60s. Plus I like surrealism and Dada, and that’s what I bring to the band....Our look evolved from the fact that we bought thrift-store clothes. It wasn’t like “Let adopt a thrift-store aesthetic.” We just didn’t have any money. Whatever people want to print, who cares? Keith had the idea for the B-52s, and he had a dream where this woman with this bouffant, which they call a B-52, was playing in a lounge band. We didn’t want to be associated with Hiroshima or anything like that. Then we found, Keith and I, somebody’s fake-fur pocketbook in the shop down there, and talked Cindy and Kate into buying them and turning them into wigs. That’s how our look evolved...I went as a hangover for Halloween once. I just had on a wifebeater and a seersucker suit and a pencil-thin moustache and a broken cigarette. So I just left off the broken cigarette.
Pierson: "We always dressed like this, We always shopped at thrift stores; it was sort of a pastime. There was a whole group of us in Athens who'd dress this way. It's actually good to think that you're recycling clothes like this, too. I mean, look at this new stuff, So much of it is acrylic — or worse. I think this stuff will still be around after the earth disintegrates ...We started wearing [ bouffants] to parties — it was like the clothes. It wasn't a conscious decision to re-create the Fifties or Sixties or anything. It was just for fun."
Ricky: "It really hasn't sunk in yet, this success. I sort of don't believe it. I guess you would call it success, though."
Schneider: We never thought it would get past our circle of friends in Athens. We never had any expectations ... We're not trying to do satire...We don't plan to keep everything the same, for sure. Just to be entertaining, that's all I want."
http://theb52s.com/ "Private Idaho"
Pierson: "Fred came up with the title. He started out with “You’re living in your own private Idaho,” and I came up with, “Underground like a wild potato / Don’t go on the patio / Beware of the pool.” [Laughs.] It’s all sort of dark and mysterious—and silly, too, in a way. But the play on words with “Private Idaho” was pretty genius, because we just played recently in Idaho, and it is a strange place. It was a really cool gig—it was outside—but there’s always something, I don’t know, a little mysterious and scary about Idaho. [Laughs.] I don’t know, I guess it’s because it just seems unknown or something. Sort of vast and flat and unknown. But where it talks about “watch out for signs that say ‘Hidden Driveway’” and then the pool, I guess it’s really kind of a reference to the subconscious being like living in your own world. There’s a reference to a radium clock in there—when Fred says, “Swimming ’round and ’round like the deadly hands / Of a radium clock at the bottom of the pool,” and it’s kind of an obscure reference, but there was a clock factory in Athens. They had glow-in-the-dark dials, and these women were dying of cancer, and I don’t know when this was, exactly, but I remember it was in the news about how the women who were painting the radium onto these dials, they were licking their brushes before they dipped the brushes into the radium. So that was a reference to that, and kind of a reference to, I guess, environmental pollution and toxic things. So it has this dark feeling, in a way. And yet we sing it with such glee. [Laughs.] "
https://youtu.be/2n_Tg8iHwZ8 VIDEO Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo
You're living in your own Private Idaho
Living in your own Private Idaho
Underground like a wild potato.
Don't go on the patio.
Beware of the pool,
Blue bottomless pool.
It leads you straight
Right through the gate
That opens on the pool.
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
Keep off the path, beware the gate,
Watch out for signs that say "hidden driveways".
Don't let the chlorine in your eyes
Blind you to the awful surprise
That's waitin' for you at
The bottom of the bottomless blue blue blue pool.
You're livin in your own Private Idaho. Idaho.
You're out of control, the rivers that roll,
You fell into the water and down to Idaho.
Get out of that state,
Get out of that state you're in.
You better beware.
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
You're living in your own Private Idaho.
Keep off the patio,
Keep off the path.
The lawn may be green
But you better not be seen
Walkin' through the gate that leads you down,
Down to a pool fraught with danger
Is a pool full of strangers.
You're living in your own Private Idaho,
Where do I go from here to a better state than this.
Well, don't be blind to the big surprise
Swimming round and round like the deadly hand
Of a radium clock, at the bottom, of the pool.
I-I-I-daho
I-I-I-daho
Woah oh oh woah oh oh woah oh oh
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Get out of that state
Get out of that state
You're living in your own Private Idaho,
Livin in your own Private Idaho.
"Devil in My Car"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_sXbdT1hl0 VIDEO "Give Me Back My Man"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl_EEpRfrkk VIDEO "Dirty Back Road"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMoOPo5zW3w VIDEO "Party Out of Bounds"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYq4OZYqF1E VIDEO 'Wild Planet' full album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAwXek5oxdw VIDEO All songs written and composed by Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Ricky Wilson, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, except as noted.
Side One
1. "Party Out of Bounds" 3:21
2. "Dirty Back Road" R. Wilson, Robert Waldrop 3:21 3. "Runnin' Around" 3:09
4. "Give Me Back My Man" Schneider, R. Wilson, Strickland, C. Wilson 4:00 5. "Private Idaho" 3:35
Side Two
6. "Devil in My Car" Schneider, R. Wilson, C. Wilson, Pierson 4:28 7. "Quiche Lorraine" Schneider, Strickland, R. Wilson 3:58 8. "Strobe Light" Schneider, Strickland, R. Wilson 3:59 9. "53 Miles West of Venus" Schneider, R. Wilson, C. Wilson, Pierson 4:53 11/07/80 - Capitol Theatre
VIDEO
The B-52's turned on their kitschy crustacean lava light with the beehive balderdash of this new wave retro rock from outer space. The group was born after drinks at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, Georgia in October of 1976 with Cindy Wilson, her older brother Ricky, Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland, and Fred Schneider in an impromptu jam. Their first gig came on Valentine's Day in 1977 at a house party. They took regular trips to New York to play at various underground clubs and pretty soon the buzz led to a record deal. Their eponymous debut was recorded with Chris Blackwell at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas. The album features Fred Schneider on cowbell, toy piano, synth bass, vocals, and walkie talkie; Kate Pierson on farfisa combo compact organ, guitar, synth bass, and vocals; Keith Strickland on percussion, drums, and "Planet Claire" sounds; Cindy Wilson on guitar, bongos, tambourine, and vocals; and Ricky Wilson on guitars and smoke alarm. 'The B-52's' went to number fifty-nine in the US, twenty-two in the UK, seven in Australia, and three in New Zealand.
Schneider says their throwback thrift style was not 'camp': "We were the outsiders in Athens. We’d go to parties and people would, like, bolt the door...Camp sort of means you don’t know what you’re doing, and we know what we’re doing. There are a lot of people who are considered camp who have no idea how ridiculous they are. But I just see us as sort of like surreal. It’s a different level...We’ve always shared everything – writing credits, all the royalties – and there’s no real leader because if there was one we’d immediately depose them. We’ve never tried to fit any mould because we already broke the one we started."
Cindy Wilson considers: "In one way, it was very easy for us because we were a group of friends. It wasn’t like being a hired performer to come in and be in a group. It was a bunch of friends getting together — artists and free thinkers. We’re from a college town, Athens, which was a great place to grow up because it wasn’t conservative. It was a very artistic scene there. So we came up through a more open-minded feeling, and had the sense of having fun and being outrageous and making each other laugh. We were lucky that we kind of came up through an organic situation like that...When we came to New York and people started coming to see us, I’m sure we looked like we were from a different planet. But we started getting an audience there and definitely hit a nerve, so it just became bigger and bigger after that. We were kind of our own thing."
Strickland remembers: “The downtown scene attracted artists like Warhol. And, of course, Max’s Kansas City was the first club we ever played in New York, and The Velvet Underground played there, and the Warhol crowd would hang out. There’s always been that interaction between rock’n’roll and art in New York. One of the first shows we played at CBGBs, William Burroughs came… Kate! You saw him, right?”
Pierson adds: “Yeah, he came to our soundcheck at The Mudd Club...Burroughs came with an entourage and he had a long raincoat and a fedora. And he was just sitting at the bar writing and writing during our soundcheck. Frank Zappa came to a show. David Bowie came to a show… We’d always get people saying, ‘Andy’s coming! Andy’s coming tonight!’ And I don’t think Andy ever came. Ha Ha! ... We always appealed to people outside the mainstream; and I think more people feel they’re outside the mainstream these days ... We call ourselves ‘The World’s Greatest Party Band’. And even though that’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there’s still something magical when we play that allows people to just bust loose and party and be crazy."
http://theb52s.com/ Rock Lobster was first released as a single by DB Records. It was re-recorded for their Island debut and went to number fifty-eight on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was a top 40 hit in New Zealand and the UK, made it to number three in Australia and became a number one hit in Canada. Strickland says: "Cindy does this scream that was inspired by Yoko Ono. John heard it in some club in the Bahamas, and the story goes that he calls up Yoko and says, Get the axe out – they're ready for us again! Yoko has said that she and John were listening to us in the weeks before he died." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szhJzX0UgDM We were at a party His ear lobe fell in the deep
Someone reached in and grabbed it
It was a rock lobster
We were at the beach Everybody had matching towels
Somebody went under a dock
And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock lobster
Motion in the ocean His air hose broke
Lots of trouble
Lots of bubble
He was in a jam
S'in a giant clam
Down, down Underneath the waves Mermaids wavin'
Wavin' to mermen
Wavin' sea fans
Sea horses sailin'
Dolphins wailin'
Red snappers snappin' Clam shells clappin'
Muscles flexin'
Flippers flippin'
Down, down Let's rock! Boys in bikinis Girls on surfboards
Everybody's rockin'
Everybody's fruggin'
Twistin' 'round the fire Havin' fun
Bakin' potatoes
Bakin' in the sun
Put on your noseguard Put on the lifeguard
Pass the tanning butter
Here comes a stingray There goes a manta-ray
In walked a jelly fish
There goes a dogfish
Chased by a catfish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha
There goes a narwhale
HERE COMES A BIKINI WHALE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-iZIcxc60 Planet Claire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AOKPTbZEyA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVZ5KTxyOOY 'The B-52's' full album:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrH_hK7UjuiTUuiewp4hK1P5uOVvXsPDV
1. Planet Claire 0:00
2. 52 Girls 4:35
3. Dance This Mess Around 8:12
4. Rock Lobster 12:49
5. Lava 19:40
6. There's A Moon In the Sky (Called the Moon) 24:36
7. Hero Worship 29:34
8. 6060-842 33:43
9. Downtown 36:37
The B-52's followed their bliss had a comeback as big as a whale rocking through the wilderness with this wild cosmic party. The group had struggled with the recording of their 'Mesopotamia' 'Whammy' 'Bouncing off the Satellites'
Keith Strickland had started out as the band's drummer; but gradually took on other instruments for later albums. During the hiatus, he began writing songs and brought them to the rest of the group. They decided to try and write and record together again. Strickland remembers: "I always had that sense of freedom with instruments. I was never that inhibited with picking up an instrument. I played in bands when I was in high school and we would always jam. They were very much jam bands, although that wasn’t a term in those days. We would have these very long jam sessions. We had this house together and people would come in, bring a guitar and play. I was jamming with lots of different people, and I would pick up the bass or the guitar or some percussion instrument, and just play. And I learned how to listen. We all realised at the same time that there was almost a psychic kind of thing happening, where you would almost know what the other person was going to do. And it was free-form yet there was this flow to it. You could just sense it. I felt like in those days, that’s when I really learned to listen to other players, which allowed me to be comfortable with just picking up an instrument and playing it. Everybody has something unique and individual to offer, and it’s really about being yourself and being comfortable with who that is, and not seeing your limitations as limitations. Just seeing it as ‘it’s just what I do.’ And if it comes natural, just do what’s natural! "
'Cosmic Thing' was recorded with producers Nile Rodgers and Don Was (each producing half of the album) and featured Fred Schneider on percussion, vocals, and background vocals; Cindy Wilson on vocals; Kate Pierson on keyboards, vocals, and backing vocals; and Keith Strickland on guitar, keyboards, vocals, and backing vocals; with horns by Carl Beatty, Chris Cioe, Bob Funk, Arno Hecht, and Paul Literal; Leroy Clouden, Charley Drayton, Sonny Emory, and Steve Ferrone on drums; Richard Hilton, Tommy Mandel. and Philippe Saisse on keyboards; Nile Rodgers on guitar; and Sara Lee on bass, keyboards, and background vocals. The centerpiece of the album was the infectious hit single 'Love Shack' which became a number one smash in Australia, New Zealand, and on the US modern rock tracks chart.
Strickland admits: "We didn’t know we had really written “Love Shack” after we had written it! Actually we had kinda shelved it. When we started looking for producers, we had lined up Nile Rodgers and Don Was, when we met with Don we played him the demos of our songs and he said ‘These are great but do you have anything else?’ We said we had this one track, but it was not finished. We had several versions on the unfinished demo and he goes ‘Are you kidding me? This is great!’ But we had not really found the chorus to the song. He immediately wanted to start working on that, so he just said ‘Repeat this one part,’ which was “The love shack is a little old place where…” – y’know. We played it only once in the demo but as soon as we repeated it it all fell into place. After we recorded though, I knew, I think we all knew that we had hit upon something. It just had a vibe to it. And you know when there’s a vibe but you can’t really put your finger on what it is? You don’t know why it’s working but it really is, and you just get this feeling about it. And it just that that knowable knowing. Like, ‘My goodness, there’s something here.’"
The video for 'Love Shack' helped to make the song a hit. Pierson reveals: "We knew [RuPaul] from Atlanta when he was in a band called Wee Wee Pole. So we knew him before he was the icon he is today; he was always an icon though. We asked him to be in the video, which took place near where Keith and I were living at the time, in Plattekill near Woodstock, New York. Our friends, ceramic artists Phillip Maberry and Scott Walker, told us that we had to do the video at their place because they lived in the Love Shack. The director went upstate to look at it because he wasn’t convinced that we could film it anywhere outside of New York City. When he saw it, he was bowled over. We got a busload of all our friends and went up there and it turned into a party. Actually, RuPaul started the whole dance line. All of a sudden he organized everyone, clapped his hands, and said, ‘Y’all line up and everybody dance!’ It turned into a party within a video, a real party. The video really captured that because we really were having fun."
Schneider says: "Actually, if you listen to it, a country band could do “Love Shack.” That album—to be honest, people wouldn’t play “Love Shack” at first. The radio wouldn’t touch it, except college radio. That’s why we always… When college radio wants something, we’re there for them. And independent radio. While the band did sound-check, I went with the A&R person to radio stations to beg them to play it. Once it started taking off, the other radio stations started playing it. Then it snowballed. It went to number one all over the country. But it didn’t do it at once. We were behind Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli [on the charts]."
'Cosmic Thing' went to number thirty-eight in Sweden, eight in the UK, four in the US, and number one in Australia and New Zealand. http://theb52s.com/ 'Love Shack' was certified gold and peaked at number three on the US pop chart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SOryJvTAGs 'Roam' was another gold number three hit on the US pop chart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNwC0sp-uA4 'Channel Z'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB4G9WBYMFo 'Deadbeat Club'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KyhesAa-DA 'Cosmic Thing' full album:
VIDEO "Cosmic Thing" – 4:50
"Dry County" – 4:54
"Deadbeat Club" – 4:45
"Love Shack" – 5:21
"Junebug" – 5:04
"Roam" – 4:54
"Bushfire" – 4:58
"Channel Z" – 4:49
"Topaz" – 4:20
"Follow Your Bliss" – 4:08
VIDEO
