POLL if you want to...POLL around the world: The B-52's Cosmic Thing

i never would've thought to compare this album to Joshua Tree, although in my mind it's kind of twinned with stuff like Pump and Full Moon Fever, big '89 late-career blockbusters that are actually awesome albums.

Yeah – the Billboard top ten album chart remained static for most of '89 in that pre-Soundscan way, but most of the albums were terrific: those you mentioned, plus FYC's The Raw and The Cooked, Don't Be Cruel, Like a Prayer, the Wilburys record, etc.

It might be fun to poll random week from '89.

"Deadbeat Club" is the only one I dislike - the rest of this is outstanding. Thought I might have warmed to that track at some point in 20+ years, but I hate it as much now as I did then.

Voted "Roam," because that's the song I want to hear right now.

http://www.youtube.com/v/_mzWFt5e1mk&fs=1&hl=en

too bad, you are getting "Channel Z"

"Roam" is great because how do you follow a strong single like "Love Shack" ? With "Roam", that's how!

channel z is like the worst thing on here, this is all about roam, topaz, deadbeat club & follow yr bliss.

Channel Z is good fun and it's always nice to just let Fred do his thing for a while ("BOMMMB!!!") but I was never able to muster a really personal relationship with it.

One vote for 'Bushfire'! This is one of the great 'against all odds'-type of albums, really great.

I really love this album. Deadbeat Club and Roam are brilliant but Topaz is my favorite song they've ever done. It's such a beautiful song and that stop at the 3 minute mark just gets me every time.

I still have the promo poster (same photo that's on the Topaz link upthread.) It was tacked on my bathroom door for YEARS, and it always made me happy to see it and think, a dozen years after the birth of punk/new wave, the band survived Ricky's death -- survived and PROSPERED!

Love this album to pieces; one of the first CDs I ever bought to replace my original vinyl.

Channel Z, but not by much.

Space junk! laser bombs! ozone holes!
Better put up my umbrella!
Giant stacks, blowin smoke
Politicrits, pushin dope!

Channel Z.

I always think I hate this album until i look at the track list and realize that i just need to not remember that love shack is on there and then i really like it.

am I mistaken as remembering Channel Z being the first single?

I think you're right, though I wanna say the title track was featured in the Wayans movie Earth Girls are Easy...from the previous summer?

"Channel Z" WAS the first single; it hit #1 on the college charts that summer.

lol @ ILM ignoring "Love Shack"

I mean I love this band but seriously that is their biggest, signature hit for a reason

why not? Top 40 radio never has!

Biggest hit, yes. But "Rock Lobster" still has "signature" dibs.

i think it's a case of it being over-familiar rather than anything contrarian

fuck Love Shack it is evil

worse than Piano Man, almost worse than We Didn't Start the Fire

i get to ignore love shack because i did my time in the trenches doing sound for highly paid shitty variety cover bands, so ive earned the right

"Roam" >>>> >>> "Channel Z" >>> "Deadbeat Club" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> "Love Shack"

Love Shack is pretty fun, guys.

I don't listen to cover bands or the radio so overexposure is not really an issue for me

Love Shack is pretty fun, guys

xpost: if by fun you mean obnoxious, i concur.
sorry

does anyone remember doogie howser going into depression and listening to channel z on repeat?

yeah i prefer all those B-52s songs that aren't obnoxious

vinnie had to snap him out of it

"Love Shack"'s great and all but obv is way overplayed. "Roam" for the riff alone

xpost i mean, it's doofy and obnoxious, but as far as doofy and obnoxious songs go, it's pretty good.

ILM contrarianism at its bets keep it up guys

best

does anyone remember doogie howser going into depression and listening to channel z on repeat?

Yesssssss. First time I heard it. He just stared at the record spinning on the turntable.

doogie had a record player? weird.

Doogie was ten years ahead of the vinyl fetishists. Cool dude.

Love Shack is pretty great, though I liked Roam more even back in 1990....

Doogie was ten years ahead of the vinyl fetishists. Cool dude.

it was the 80s. lots of people still had turntables.

I don't listen to cover bands or the radio so overexposure is not really an issue for me

― Whats with all the littering? (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 9:31 PM (22 minutes ago)

do you live in a world where sounds are emitted from TVs movies and stores?

yeah i was abt to say, '89 was only the first year CDs outsold vinyl

it was the 80s. lots of people still had turntables.
yeah, but doogie was kind of ahead of his time, wasn't he? Seems like he'd at least have a discman or something.
what else did the doog have in his record collection do you think?

Doogie was ten years ahead of the vinyl fetishists. Cool dude.

it was the 80s. lots of people still had turntables.

That was part of my joke.

what a horribly formed etc

do you live in a world where sounds are emitted from TVs movies and stores?

not really

what movies was Love Shack used in?

simmer down shakey love shack is great but roam is more great

that "glove slap" song from the Simpsons (to the tune of Love Shack) is funny.

Roam is allright but it doesn't feature Fred, who is hands-down the best feature of any B-52s song

Was 'Deadbeat Club' a single? Am I crazy for remembering hearing it on the radio?

Yes. Third one to hit the top forty.

a comparative flop though -- one of those singles though you might remember as bigger than it was thanks to MTV play.

Well I was only 9, I'm surprised I remember it as vividly as I do.

This fucking album.

thank you for this revive, i am now stoked to put this on

Quite worth the listen:

http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/hit_parade/2018/07/how_r_e_m_and_the_b_52_s_became_legit_hit_makers_by_the_1990s.html

My go-to summer album. Timeless, and various other cliches.

I realized today that "Deadbeat Club" and Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring," out within a year of each other, cover similar thematic ground.

They do rather! I've always found both ridiculously affecting. Very surprised to see "DbC = worst track" posts early in the thread.

Still never heard this album (I should) but the lyricless vocalizing they do at the end of Deadbeat Club is gorgeous. Hard to imagine it being the worst song here

The production of this album has aged very well, and 'Roam' remains one of my favourite tracks of all time - it never fails to boost my mood!

i love the sound of cindy and kate's backing harmonies on this. i mean i love it always but there's some pinch of something to the production, maybe just chorusing or a little flange? they get this extra shimmer to them that really fits the tone of the album. overall this record has such an amazing sound, so different from their 'classic' sound with the loss of ricky wilson, but totally distinctive and convincing in its own right. it's like george harrison going from the 12-string to the slide.

"deadbeat club" blows my mind more and more with the passing of the years.

Lately "Bushfire" has been a big jam for me

Topaz is still the most beautiful melody in music I know.

Yeah I wish I would've voted for it. Such a great penultimate track; really encapsulates the utopian gorgeousness and the shimmering sadness of the whole album

"Shimmering sadness" is OTM. It's a somewhat back-loaded album in my mind. Indeed I struggle to remember much about "Cosmic Thing" and "Dry Country" until they're playing, fairly or not. I'm invariably looking forward to that luvly melancholy final act of "Topaz"/"Follow Your Bliss". I've taken to interpreting "FYB" as a wordless tribute to Ricky Wilson, further entrenching the sadness.

overall it does such a great job of folding that sadness into something joyous, or recognizing that sadness and loss, or growing older and inevitably distant from the days of the deadbeat club, don't mean the end of joy, or that those days don't still inform something beautiful and precious about who you are. in that way the whole piece is a tribute. except maybe channel z i guess, but hey.

Expanded Remaster In June: http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2019/05/14/b-52s-cosmic-thing-30th-anniversary-reissue/

anyone want to justify the "roam" music video?

anyone want to justify your mom?

wanting. needing. waiting.

I now like "Deadbeat Club" a lot more than I used to

This album is really, really perfect

I've fallen for 'Deadbeat Club' so hard in recent years that I made it the subject of a Pop Con paper. They release it the same year as Pet Shop Boys' "Being Boring," which covers similar ground.

OH LIGHTNING, STRIKE TWICE
HEY EVERYBODY, BASK IN THE AFTERGLOW

i love that topaz was the #13 b-52's song of ALL TIME on our poll a while back

and actually, since you're both here, i thought this was a nice quote:

DJP's enthusiasm for "Topaz" a decade ago taught me to love it.

Strickland's slink guitar sounds marvelous.

― I like queer. You like queer, senator? (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn),

deadbeat club is amazing. love this album.

Great Moments in Vocals: Cindy exclaiming "I Want The World To Change For Me!" in "Channel Z".

otm

oddly enough i had "Wig" from BOtS stuck in my head an hour ago

there are these commercials for a hotel chain I keep getting which has like an EDM version of "Roam" in it, but it's completely re-recorded and completely replaces the groove, it sounds really weird. I always thought the most distinctive feature of that track was the harmony vocals, now I think it's actually the rhythm