Surprise! POLL! Yeah, we just thought we'd drop in! - ILM Artist Poll #93 - The B-52’s (vote until November 10, 2018)

"53 Miles West of Venus" seems like one of the best tracks right now. Kind of the bookend to "Planet Claire".

Ah, this is brilliant news. Can't wait to put my list together.

Just did a quick draft list and it's very Cosmic Thing heavy. Topaz in particular will be placing very highly on my list. Such a gorgeous song.

can you do a top 25? it's Funplex's only chance lol.

oh man this will be great.

I've voted. This is where I try to ensure I'm not the only vote for silly things like "Butterbean"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5mxF-mISIU

Is there a post-Cosmic Thing/late-period track which is especially popular with the hardcore?

I might be the only person on earth who loves "Good Stuff" and "Dreamland."

I can't recall if it was on ILM that ths clip was shared recently but it's great anyway and the top comment brings the lols;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n_Tg8iHwZ8

While I was in Art School in Berlin, I worked at a German television station to pay bills(and experience).This performance is for the TV Spot Rock Palast Live and I, after much white powder from a co worker, put all the black electrical tape and coloured cardboard on the background, you can see it peeling off, as they show the B-52s Logo. The song is indeed a lip synch, and the studio had nothing but a pair of matching record players. The BAND provided the 7 inch record for the performance. You can hear @2:32 the RECORD SKIPS with Fred's Great professionalism, Ricky's quiet smirk and Kate's WTF reaction. HTF never thought I would see this again. Thank you for posting! xoxo

Roam is the only B52s song I like and I love it

That video is amazing piscesx. check out 'Is That You Mo-Dean' for a glimpse of late period greatness.

There's good stuff on Good Stuff, e.g. "Good Stuff," but every song on the album is a minute and a half too long.

Interesting that they followed up the very consistent sound ('samey' if I'm being uncharitable) of Whammy! with their most diverse album Bouncing Off the Satellites.

omg that video, thank you!

Is there a post-Cosmic Thing/late-period track which is especially popular with the hardcore?

― piscesx

Is That You Mo-Dean? is by far favourite from the last couple of albums. That last minute or so is so euphoric.

Going to bring up “Mesopotamia” because it’s sort of shunted away in their streaming discography, but it’s a song that became deeply resonant to me during the Iraq invasion. The ironies doubled. The line “I should read a book” especially. The song somehow maintained is goofy desolate charm while becoming emblematic of American folly, like they could sense it decades out.

Voted.

Voted!

Voted!

Voted!

Yeah the songs are longish on Good Stuff, but I also find some of them expendable. My suggestion: an LP with songs 1-3 on side A and 3-6 on side B. (And swap in the long version of the title track from the 12" while we're at it.) "Mo-Dean" would be a great album closer, but then the CD goes on for another twenty minutes, and songs 7-10 seem like filler to me.

Will send something soon.

Will send something soon. at the last minute.

i'm still reeling at "girl from ipanema goes to greenland" - that incredible high whooshy warble vocal, it's exactly what i love abt so much of cosmic thing but with this different 80s dance quality. feels VERY 2018, i wd be shocked if this isn't already getting DJ play somewhere, and want to be at parties where this is playing all the way through and everybody is feeling good.

fearing "legal tender" may end up my only Whammy pick tho --- "butterbean" is maybe a more convincing idea of how to shift their sound without losing all the nervy new-wave energy but it's kind of inert/underwritten as a song.

feel like a real dope for sleeping on Bouncing Off The Satellites all these years --- it's good!! i think i got Whammy at some point, was disappointed by it, and was like "guess it's just a slump period til Cosmic Thing." so great to be encountering a classic ricky wilson guitar jam like "wig" for the first time.

i'm still reeling at "girl from ipanema goes to greenland" - that incredible high whooshy warble vocal, it's exactly what i love abt so much of cosmic thing but with this different 80s dance quality.

Exactly! It was a club hit in early '87.

You know what's a good jam? "Cake," treated as a palimpsest by DFA acts in the mid '00s, I suspect.

I could easily fill a ballot from the first two albums, Mesopotamia, and Cosmic Thing, but due poll diligence requires hearing the studio albums I don't know.

Funplex is better and freakier than I expected, though I don't love the thick guitar sound. The title track, "Hot Corner" (for Athens local color), and "Deviant Ingredient" are all good.

Nothing on Good Stuff really grabs me. The length of the tracks and the absence of Cindy Wilson make this feel expendable.

on to Bouncing Off the Satellites ...

"Deviant Ingredient" is wonderful. NO MORE NEU-RO-SES!

I swear, if you pull up the floor tile in the Electronics Departments of older Walmarts, you'll probably find multiple copies imbedded in the foundation of Good Stuff and the first Fred solo album that fell off the cut-out racks during a remodel. They were perennials in $2 bins for much of my youth.

"you'll probably find imbedded in the foundation..." even.

it is a kind of remarkable flop for coming after a triumphant comeback and commercial career-high album. i'm listening now and it's just very lifeless compared to "cosmic thing," maybe leaning too much into the dreamy wistful "topaz" zone which on the previous album is an accent or texture rubbing up against much bigger, bolder, and catchier songs. and yeah the songs are way too long.

fearing "legal tender" may end up my only Whammy pick tho

I like Chihuahuas and Chinese noodles!
I ended up with 3.

The keeper from Whammy for me is Song for a Future Generation, which I at first assumed would be some sort of utopian anthem but hilariously is about video dating

Since I own all their albums I've never picked up the "Nude on the Moon" comp. Didn't realize until today that it contains a much different, Mesopotamia outtake version of "Queen of Las Vegas."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07TjYCnvZn0

i'm still reeling at "girl from ipanema goes to greenland" - that incredible high whooshy warble vocal, it's exactly what i love abt so much of cosmic thing but with this different 80s dance quality.

Exactly! It was a club hit in early '87.

― I like queer. You like queer, senator? (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, November 2, 2018 12:18 PM (two hours ago)

It totally sounds like one; so euphoric!

I'm really blown away by the jump between Whammy & Satellites. Whammy is monolithic and weirdly alien, whereas Satellites is filled to the brim with all these fully-formed pop ideas. It's hard to believe there's only two years' gap between releases

I was raving about this on some other thread, it seems to be Shep Pettibone's mix, edited by The Latin Rascals

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

Summer Of Love; also killer.

not knowing much abt them biographically, Whammy! kind has the whiff of a "label pressure to get a record made even though we've been touring constantly and don't have much written" kind of album. i shd look up the actual story i guess.

*kinda

the Yoko cover is my favorite from Whammy! now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVPyQAwA-WM

Bouncing Off the Satellites has been my favorite album of theirs ever since I took my car in to the dealership for some repairs and when I picked it up, a cassette of Bouncing Off the Satellites was in the tape player. I assumed it was my sister's, but... it was not! Listened to it for months in the car.

Bouncing sounds much more alive in the midst of death than Whammy.

I have never forgiven Whammy for my experience of buying it new with great anticipation and then realizing it was not very good

also wanna give a shoutout to "Channel Z" here

wanna give a shout out to whichever posted said he got a jolt whenever Schneider shouted SURPRISE when and his partner were going at it on the couch.

hahahaha, missed that

I also want to put forth the theory that the versions on Party Mix >>> the LP versions

SUR-PRIIIIIIIZE

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, September 26, 2018 11:37 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^that's one of my all-time favorite album openings.

― how's life, Wednesday, September 26, 2018 11:44 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I used to date a big B-52's fan who had a bunch of their albums running in her CD changer, and this intro had a knack for popping up awkwardly during intimate moments.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Wednesday, September 26, 2018 10:19 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and then...

I used to date a big B-52's fan who had a bunch of their albums running in her CD changer, and this intro had a knack for popping up awkwardly during intimate moments.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles),

I imagine Schneider breaking through the door like the Kool-Aid guy, holding a dead cat.

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 27, 2018 5:41 AM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm also going to send a quick email to everyone who voted for either mesopotamia, party mix, or mesopotamia/party mix and let them know that the votes will be split, in case that affects their decision.

this poll is totally valid and will stand up to legal scrutiny

*signs executive order*

good mourning!

where's the remix of Byrne's?

sic, you post in this thread, you have to send a ballot. those are david byrne's rules, i just follow them

and alfred, you've got t minus 26 hours to get your ballot in, or you're not a lord any more. or, you're not the president. whichever one of those punishments stings the most

just responded via email. I'm voting for the band mix of mesopotamia; the Party Mix/Mesopotamia release.
Not the Byrne mix.

I never knew the standalone CD of Mesopotamia was different from the versions on Party Mix! I knew about the longer demo versions of some songs making it onto the vinyl, but this is something else?

sic, you post in this thread, you have to send a ballot. those are david byrne's rules, i just follow them

tbh not being familiar with the differences between the Mesopotamia material is the main reason I feel unqualified to vote! but I'll try and give all those middle records a listen and send a bad ballot

hell yeah, thanks! your vote would put us at 25 ballots.

I'm 100% voting in this, and will be finalizing my ballot in the next couple hours

apologizing to the poll gods for re-ordering my ballot but jfc this has to be top 5:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo7vXBeTlJM

^ Very true.

Imagine being at that gig and hearing "Rock Lobster" for the first time.

wow, i just spent waaaaaaay too long illustrating the events of a certain song in a way that's faithful to the album art. no big deal, i'm just unemployed and running out of money!

friendly reminder: last day to vote! i'm expecting a couple more today, and if a couple more surprise ballots come in we can make up to 30. pretty good!

incentive to vote: the top 3 are very, very close, and there's another handful in the top ten that are also very close. so your vote will really make a difference. you can be like that tipping point guy in state where no one lives that decides an election

about to send

Voted!

i finally voted too.

i'm glad this was able to stay open for another week as this poll has a very nice turnout.

definitely! we're up to 31 now

and where the hell is BradNelson? a ballot from him should be one of the first but not yet?

Has he even posted?

He hasn't and I don't like calling people out. It just seems to be in his wheelhouse?

...

the b-52s are a very horny band

one final time: there's still time, if get yr vote in sometime tonight! tomorrow morning (t - 8 hours or so) i'm going to do the final tally and count the number of points, votes, #1s, etc. so if you get yr vote in before then, I'll be able to include it.

Rollout starts Monday. I'm thinking Albums + 40-31 on Monday, 30-16 on Tuesday, 15-1 on Wednesday.

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 POLL

Whoops, only just saw yesterday's Mesopotamia email. That seems a wise decision. (I guess I've mostly heard Mesopotamia via that twofer, but all mixes are decent, and I rarely listen to Party Mix.)

it is happening!

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