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NUDE ON THE MOON: ANTHOLOGY
The B-52's
(Rhino / Warner)
Some people remember The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. We remember The B-52's on Saturday Night Live.
OK, so it didn't have quite the same global impact. But Jan. 26, 1980, was still a pretty memorable night in our house. We can vividly recall being glued to the tube by everything about the bizarre band -- the giant beehive wigs, the '50s thrift-shop outfits, the amateurish performances, and the sight of some guy with a weird little moustache shouting about a "Rock Lobster." We can also recall heading to the record store the next week to buy the first B-52's album -- and the way the long-haired clerk laughed and asked why we were "wasting money on this new-wave crap."
Our response then was probably something like, "Because they're cool." Nearly 22 years to the day later, we're still willing to stand by that statement -- especially after sampling Nude on the Moon, the new B-52's retrospective from Warner Music's reissue division Rhino. With 35 tracks on two CDs and a 52-page colour book packed into a cardboard mini-box, Nude on the Moon is in many respects your basic career anthology: The singles, the best tracks from their albums, a few rarities and live tracks, some unreleased fare, a glowing biography, a handful of quotes from the principal players and plenty of pictures. But if you haven't listened to The B-52's in a while -- and we admit, we haven't -- it's also one hell of an eye-opener, a reminder of just how original this quintet of college kids from Athens, Ga., really were.
The best stuff comes right off the hop. Disc 1's first six songs come straight from that jaw-dropping 1979 debut LP: 52 Girls, Lava, Hero Worship and the freaky classics Planet Claire, Dance This Mess Around and Rock Lobster. This side of The Shaggs or The Fugs, you'd be hard-pressed to find six stranger songs. In fact, a music teacher would probably argue they don't even qualify as songs. The drum beats are absurdly simple and repetitive; the twangy surf-guitar licks and two-finger keyboard lines even simpler. The vocals consist mainly of shouts, screams, petulant rants, weird sound effects and off-key warbling. The lyrics often seem to be random strings of nonsensical wordplay or lists of dance crazes. Back then, it was like something from another world. But today -- well, it's still like something from another world. And that's the point: After more than two decades, nobody has managed to duplicate the sound of The B-52's.
Hell, even The B-52's had trouble pulling it off. Their second album, 1980's Wild Planet, has some decent songs: Give Me Back My Man, Private Idaho, Party Out of Bounds, Strobe Light, Quiche Lorraine. But even though they were written at the same time as the earlier songs and recorded just a year later, the band's increasing musicality and professionalism make these cuts seem slick and sophisticated next to the insane kitsch and herky-jerky funk of that first album. Ditto for most of the rest of Nude on the Moon, which finds the group slowly but surely upgrading their songwriting and sound, replacing their provocative campiness with benignly quirky dance-pop. Which is not to denigrate worthy tunes like Whammy Kiss, Mesopotamia, Cosmic Thing and Channel Z, not to mention breakthrough radio hits like Love Shack and Roam. It's just that for most of their career, The B-52's were too a little too slick for their own good. For our money, they were at their best when they were going against the wave, not riding it.
We're not the only fan of their early work. Reportedly, John Lennon said their first album sounded so much like Yoko's old songs, he decided music had finally advanced enough for him to come out of retirement and make Double Fantasy.
Not bad for "new wave crap," huh? (More on: B-52s).
Track Listing Disc: 1
Disc: 2