♫ Before I talk, I should read a POLL! ♪ ILM Artist Poll #93 ♪ B-52’s ♫

yessss

Too low

I didn't realise this was so popular. I always think of it as one of the lesser songs on Wild Planet.

That fanmade video is really great!

love how their queer sensibility fucks with the Bo Diddley rhythm of "Strobe Light."

https://i.imgur.com/qUauay5.jpg
11. Legal Tender

432 points, 18 votes. Highest position on ballot: 2

Whammy!
music video

live in Rio, 1985 (with Tina Weymouth and her dull husband)

lol Karl

Exhibit A in my Whammy! is underrated thesis.
My #4.

this song is so great, sort of an angular Devo thing, mixed with Kate Bush's "There Goes a Tenner"... so joyful

I heard this for the first time because of the poll. It's beautiful.

Ten!
Twenty!
THIRTY MILLION DOLLARS!

would have been better with Keith instead of a drum machine

Wow, I thought for sure Top 10.

you weren't far off!

here comes my #1

i don't love the whammy! sound but it's at least unique and on this song it just about works. it does feel kinda like a demo though, this basic synth backing track and the guitar feeling eerily pasted on top of it. it's sort of their "temporary secretary" in that i think most casual fans have never heard of it and would be baffled by a poll where it places this high... but it appeals to things a lot of us ilm types find fantastic in records. wiki tells me it was a top-ten dance chart hit, which surprised me. i wish they'd done a b-side "rock version" just to see how it worked....

also reminds me of stuff my friends and i were trying to do with very rudimentary recording skills and software drum machines in the early 2000s. we were trying to cover "deceptacon" and such so i guess there's a reasonable line of descent. i wish "legal tender" went a few more places along the way but the hooks are so simple and appealing, and i'm charmed by cindy's lyrical conceit here, where launching a counterfeiting operation is expressed almost the way you'd explain that you've been setting up a darkroom, or taking up canning of course. but of course, it's always a communal project. we're in the base-meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeent....

https://i.imgur.com/mcucLLn.jpg
10. Party Out Of Bounds

463 points, 19 votes. 3 first place votes.

Wild Planet
live 1980, but not the same 1980 show as a lot of other links in this countdown. Fred approaches Andy McCluskey levels of lateral dancing coverage, at times

according to B-52's legend, they first decided to play together after enjoying a Zombie drink together

WHO'S TO BLAME!?

i love the whole idea behind 'Party Out of Bounds', as well as the execution. when you play it out of nowhere, it really does sound like the B-52's are crashing your party and making it a million times more fun (which makes it a great opener, too)

"ok, who ordered pizza?"

and this is my "too low!" of the countdown, too. i expected it to be top 3 for sure

oh, ALSO: cindy ripping into a machine-gun bongo pattern
<3

xp I heard the formative drink was one of these

https://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/tMw2KftMIbgsgujVcpUwIw/348s.jpg

this one has basically been stuck in my head since Bee OK picked it for the voting-thread title. their nerviest, jumpy-footed-est rock song. love the back and forth between fred and kate - "crashers getting bombed!" "who's to blame?"

another great update of an old concept. about half of fred's lyrics seem like they could come straight from some now-public-domain educational film about throwing a fun and wholesome party, but his delivery, cindy's bongos, and the keith-and-ricky attack turn up the dial and something much more dangerous and exciting seems to be sneaking in the back door. something is going out of bounds and it's great. "people get sick - they play the wrong games" is one of fred's very best lyrics imho. then stuff like "It shouldn't be difficult! Try not to condemn!" seems like it came in from a straight ahead sloganeering punk record. what a creation.

xp

oh shit, that's right! flaming volcano!

a good night at a tiki bar involves a flaming volcano, then a zombie, then maybe a test pilot to top things off. THEN you go crash someone's party and order pizza imo

BE TACTFUL
WHEN MAKING THE ROUNDS

The B-52's are the only ones qualified to give party advice in song form.

This has got to be Planet Claire or Dance This Mess Around #1. I hope it's the latter.

On ILX, :Roam" might be #1.

* "Roam"

there are about five songs left on my ballot where i'd be 100% unsurprised, and satisfied, if they made #1.

they have a lot of legit contenders for #1, both in the ILX and non-ILX context.

I tried to make the email address Party Out of Bounds but was already taken on gmail.

Astonished this wasn't Top 3

They have nine songs that are better?

"Roam" as #1 = disgusting things you'd never anticipate

"roam" rules

https://i.imgur.com/W9Bjq3t.jpg
9. Deadbeat Club

501 points, 21 votes. 2 first place votes.

Cosmic Thing
music video (with michael stipe cameo)

live 1990

Well this is a surprise

TOO LOW

many famous faces of Chronic Town in that video

I get kind of emotional thinking about them coming back to make that album.

i was one of the #1 voters. there are other b-52's songs that rock much harder or that make me giggle but this one puts tears in my eyes, i think it's so beautiful. one of the best musical evocations of real bittersweetness, genuine smiles in looking back through incredible loss and pain, to a time that can never be had again but which still lifts the spirit and matters. a love letter of gratitude to one's bandmates, a statement of just how much it could matter, at the right time, to have a few other proud deadbeats to bum around with.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/94/f0/16/94f0167c72e74c32cfbd3db7e83f103b.jpg

i went on a date once to allen's. i don't remember what the beer cost in 2003 but the burgers were solid greasy-spoon fare at a reasonable price.

downstairs was foxz, a dirty, leaking, falling-apart bar whose customers were roughly split between queers and tolerant bud-drinking southern drunks, and on karaoke wednesdays, a whole supplemental contingent of college and townie hipsters. the first time i went as a freshman i was too chicken and shy to join my friends doing "love shack." the last time i went before they closed and relocated, i remedied that.

https://i.imgur.com/8b1zrMK.jpg
8. Mesopotamia 

618 points, 25 votes. 2 first place votes.

Mesopotamia
live 1990, with an extended shadow puppet dance party in the middle starring Kate and Fred

cool show from 1982

live 1983

this is lame to point out, but each of those images, top down from left to right, specifically references lyrics from the song

My one and only visit to Athens in the early 90s I made a pilgrimage to Allen's.

AND YES THOSE ARE THE REAL CUNEIFORM SYMBOLS FOR 1, 2, AND 3

Dr Casino otm, great writeup, Deadbeat was my #2 but it could have been #1

also cosign this 100%:

The B-52's are the only ones qualified to give party advice in song form.

― jmm

https://i.imgur.com/ck8VWma.jpg
7. Planet Claire

735 points, 30 votes. Highest position on ballot: 2

The B-52’s
live 1982

miming to the album track for a kid’s show in 1987