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

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

lol

forgot my response

This description runs through my mind often:

Favorite moment: just a few seconds into "Party Out of Bounds" when Fred yells "SU-PRIIIIISE!" like a drunk Charles Nelson Reily violating Paul Lynn at a toga party. Classic.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, July 8, 2003 3:41 PM (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What can you do to save a party?

one of my unfulfilled life goals is to learn how to play Queen of the Nile

XP

https://i.gifer.com/R3C6.gif

one time somehow blount and i were riffing on the idea of having schneider rather than kate & cindy appear on "Me In Honey." What it's DOIN' to ME!!! this in turn led us to imagining him replacing thurston moore on "crush with eyeliner" - I'm the REEEEAL thing! and then finally to realize that he would have been welcome as the replacement for any guest vocalist on any album, so long as his verse opened with an unrestrained SUR-PRIIIIIIZE!

the classic b-52s formula has so long been a part of my listening brain that it's easy for me to forget what a truly bizarre and wonderful queer construction it is, both the thrift-store early 60s camp john waters aesthetic packaging, and the sound on record: early, prescient new wave, leaning into the surf guitar over other 60s influences, fine enough, but then to add these heavenly but kinda flat and strange harmonies, and over top of it, as your seeming lead singer, an outrageously proud and self-delighting paul lynde character, absolutely reveling in a vocal display that i have to imagine put him in serious danger in athens, GA in the late 70s. it's so rad and unlikely, and they became huge on it!

(people who write and think about camp aesthetics probably have much more sophisticated and precise ways of describing this i'm sure. it's just awesome in a musical sense to me. they sound like nothing else at all.)

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

I have never forgiven David Byrne for making such a mess of album three that the band fired their friend, scrapped his lifeless mixes and had to cobble together what could have been a pretty interesting album.

yeah i sorta forget, even as i'm listening to it, to think of mesopotamia as in any way a "third album" rather than one of a couple of inessential EP type projects

so is the version on Party Mix Byrne's or the band's re-mix?

whichever is more common, there's some part of an old B52s thread where Donut breaks down the differences and where the alt mixes were released (Holland iirc)

If "Loveland" is 8:35 and "Cake" is 7:46, those are the Byrne mixes. "Throw That eat..." is a bit longer too. The first two are noticeably different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCCtPgEmUE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f8gtfHYSs8

I think Byrne mixes were only released in Europe. They are generally longer and more plodding.

so is the version on Party Mix Byrne's or the band's re-mix

the latter

the Byrne mix of Queen of Las Vegas makes my point entirely.

I don't think Byrne was a particularly good match tbh

should've gotten tom tom club imho, or done a joint album or stb

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 ♫