B-52s: Classic or Dud.

Topaz is one of my top 20 songs of all time. One of the prettiest melodies ever recorded.

It's a truly beautiful song. I hadn't heard it until the other day.

have i ever weighed in on this thread that Dirty Back Road is the best B-52s song? if not, here i am, and it is

I think there could be compelling arguments for so many B-52s songs to be the best B-52s song.

Did you hear the Veruca Salt song from two years ago that references Dirty Back Road in the chorus though?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMeYDS9kZcE

ha no! unsurprisingly the best part of the song by about a million miles!

They were here in concert on Sunday but I didn't go. I thought about about starting a TS: B-52s vs. King Crimson, since they were here recently too, and I didn't go to that either. Seemingly polar opposites, prog vs. new wave, both hugely influential to me in their heydays, both led me into rabbit holes of unfamiliar music (KC: classical and jazz, B-52s: surf music and Henry Mancini.) And I don't listen to either a whole lot these days, although I always love 'em when I do.

Glove slap, baby, glove slap.

Fripp played in the B-52s once!

http://www.elephant-talk.com/wiki/Interview_with_Robert_Fripp_in_Best

whoa and The Screamers?!?!?

damn

Ruby Ray JUST posted all her pics of the night Fripp played with The Screamers https://www.facebook.com/ruby.ray.752/posts/10214036279682579?pnref=story

saw them last night in L.A. -- they still sound amazing. It wasn't a super long set, they were on a bill w/OMD and Berlin (Berlin was decent, only caught the last couple songs, OMD was astonishing as per usual), but they played all the key hits. Rock Lobster closed it out. They had someone in a lobster suit dancing around onstage with them. good times!

Cool. Was Tracy W on bass?

yep! that band was super tight.

"Some say she's from Mars or one of the seven stars that shine after 3:30 in the morning. WELL, SHE ISN'T!" just jumped out at me. Never really noticed the last part before.

Listening at work, no one can see me laughing under this COVID mask.

I only just noticed this morning that for their formative (pre-mainstream) days, the B-52s didn't have a bassist!

There's a Bass in the Band (And It's Called the Bass)

the gypsies had no home and the b-52s had no bass

https://www.vintagesynth.com/sites/default/files/2017-05/sb100.jpg

iirc ricky wilson tuned the bottom two strings down, removed the middle two strings, and played "bass" on the low strings simultaneously with guitar on the high strings.

A number of songs are CFxxFF, where x is missing string.

and Kate Pierson handled the rest on her keyboard xpost

I just tried experimenting with the CFxxFF tuning for the first time, and it's amazing! Taking the bottom strings down that far makes them ridiculously slack and floppy, but you instantly get *that* sound. (I'm guessing Ricky used thicker gauge strings for this?) And then tuning the top two to the same F is similarly weird, but it is the magical sound of the "down! down!" part of "Rock Lobster." The way he combined bass parts and lead parts on only four strings was wonderfully eccentric and original.

yeah, that's amazing! i didn't know that at all

I would assume one would be playing mostly unison on the top two strings, rather than a lot of minor and major seconds?

Yes, the "down!" riff is literally just placing one finger over both strings at the 12th fret, descending each step down the fretboard. The two unison strings create a sort of wavery sound, probably aided by just a touch of reverb, and voila.

“Without anything but the love we feel”

otm

bought "Good Stuff" on CD at Half Price today, but listened to another acquisition ("Chorus" by Erasure) on the way home instead

Waiting for bus number 99
Goin to the store for hot dogs and wine

A number of songs are CFxxFF, where x is missing string.

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, October 6, 2021 8:25 AM

imagine if he had gotten his hands on one of those guitars with moveable frets.

Cracked case copies of Good Stuff (probably harvested from long boxes) were staples of late-'90s Walmart cutout bins.

yeah, that album was made for cutout bins.

I remember buying it the day it was released at Peaches Records in Seattle and being disappointed.

I remember spending a summer almost wearing my cassette copy of Good Stuff out, even though I knew in my heart that it wasn’t quite as awesome of the prior album

This one's been stuck in my head all weekend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpKEzFZYqBg

It’s a good track. The 9 minute Shep Pettibone one works really nicely if you are a fan of 80s extended mixes.

nice, thanks, I do love extended 80s/90s mixes

I like the Good Stuff remix too

I had Bouncing Off the Satellites on tape in high school (I took my car in for service and it was in the cassette player when I picked it up) and I think it's kinda slept on... has some of their very best songs (Summer of Love, Ain't It a Shame, Girl from Ipanema, Wig). She Brakes for Rainbows kinda points the way to Cosmic Thing, too.

yeah it's a solid LP imo, better than Whammy (which, in turn, sounded MUCH better when I revisited it recently)

Bouncing Off The Satellites has been out of print for ages. Don't remember ever seeing a copy in the UK.

Good Stuff forms part an extremely incongruous 2-for-1 CD package.

https://countrymusicusa.com/cdn/shop/products/20190320_123_740x.jpg

Ahahaha!

Well, there are too many horn arrangements on Good stuff imo

That’s the Blood, Sweat and Tears album where Fred Schneider joined as lead singer

Revisiting Whammy a few days ago, I was struck by how tinny and crudely programmed those sequencers and drums are. The songs are okay.

By contrast, Bouncing Off the Satellites bounce off the walls. "Ain't It a Shame" is their Secret Best Song. Sinead O'Connor killed it a decade ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUF5mrKUOVA

can't be doing with any version of that song that doesn't have the Galaga samples

I totally love Whammy. Alfred, have you heard Plastics? I’ve written this elsewhere but the second time I saw the B-52s Plastics toured with them, and I’ve long thought the “tinny” rhythms on Whammy may have been Plastics-inspired. That period after Wild Planet that yielded Party Mix and Mesopotamia they were obviously casting about for what to do next.

I thought Bouncing off the Satellites was a minor letdown on release, but I’ve come to love that as well. It lacks anything that rocks me like “Trism” or “Queen of Las Vegas” though.

…which is crazy because Plastics were certainly inspired by the B-52s; Whammy seems to me like returning the favor.

I think I've said it before, but I love the Mesopotamia outtake version of Queen of Las Vegas (from the Nude on the Moon anthology):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4SAclO9JAE

Absolutely, it’s wonderful. I wish there were more outtakes like that, but there really aren’t.