The B-52's - Mesopotamia ("David Byrne Mixes")

“When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.”    

― Calvin Trillin, With All Disrespect

I've been watching the current Senate campaign in nearby Massachusetts (for the seat of former Senator and current Secretary of State John Kerry) with more than my usual bit of interest in all things political. I actually have a personal connection to this contest - I know the Republican candidate, Gabriel Gomez. He was my classmate at the Naval Academy, and in the same company with many of my old Annapolis friends. I can't say that I know him well, but we're familiar enough to recognize and call one another by name in a crowd of people. It's sort of strange, seeing a guy who you knew in your younger days, the same sort of hell-raisin', hard-drinkin', tom-cattin' partier you once were, now presenting himself as a solid citizen and vying for high elective office. Although I can't say that I support his cause or agree with most of his positions, I wish him well in his endeavors.

I don't know how many of you out there are familiar with the works of Calvin Trillin, the writer and humorist, but if you haven't checked him out, I heartily suggest you do. He has a very dry, witty, gentle, self-depreciating sense of humor . I heard him in a radio interview last year, discussing his then-latest book Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff (a book that went on to win last year's coveted Thurber Prize for American Humor). During the interview, Trillin brought up the topic I've quoted above, about the people we know and have grown up with now reaching the age where they're being put in charge of things, and how weird that seems. It was a pretty funny bit, with Trillin making reference to the kids he grew up with, known for eating worms or wetting their pants in elementary school, now serving as college presidents, elected officials and other respected authorities.

I can relate to that already, looking back not just on the recent Senate candidate acquaintance, but also on the lives of many of my old elementary and secondary school friends. Back in high school, one of my best buddies and I had an ongoing (and definitely non-PC) gag that poked fun at the mentally disabled. So what is his profession now? He's a senior administrator for residential communities that provide care and independence to people with Down's Syndrome and other developmental disabilities, a cause that he's devoted his life to. In another case, I went to school in California with two brothers who did such crazy, dangerous stuff to and with one another (jumping off of roofs into pools, crashing bikes head on, etc.) that I seriously thought they were congenitally insane. Today, one is a respected corporate attorney in the Bay Area, while the other is a renowned chemical engineer. So, it just goes to show you that the attitudes and actions on display in someone's early life are no harbinger of things to come.

All of which brings me to a phone call I received a few weeks ago, from my old friend Camob . . .

I've mentioned him a couple of times here in this blog. He lives way out on the West Coast, in San Diego, so we don't get together very much - I think the last time I actually saw him was in 2009. But we've always kept in contact through phone conversations and emails, maintaining a friendship and connection that goes back more than thirty years, all the way back to when we were young pups living next door to one another in a dingy old dormitory in Newport, Rhode Island.

He's a lot like me, in that most of his musical loves and sensibilities were formed back when we were in prep school and college. Camob was well into the New Wave long before he came to Newport, and was a champion of bands of that ilk that hailed from his home state of California. For instance, I remember when L.A. natives The Go-Go's dropped their hit debut LP Beauty and The Beat in the summer of 1981; you would have thought that Camob owned stock in I.R.S. Records, the way he talked up that band and that disc to anyone who would listen! He knew a lot about SoCal bands like Sparks and the Surf Punks, groups that I had only a passing acquaintance with. But as I mentioned in a previous post, the thing that made us instant friends early on was the discovery that we were both huge Devo fanatics. During off hours, we would sometimes hang out in his room, listening to his cassette copy of New Traditionalists (released the month after the Go-Go's album, in August 1981) . . . or more often than not, he and I would march up and down the halls with our parade rifles, mock-serious, as "Devo Corporate Anthem" (off of Duty Now For The Future) blasted out of his room and James, his older, more worldly roommate, looked on at us with an air of bemusement (ah, the things we did when we were young!).

I was the one who turned Camob on to The B-52's, my favorite band at the time. I was stunned that he was unfamiliar with their music up to that point . . . but he was a fast learner. By Christmas of 1981, he was a full-fledged fan - leading up to our epic journey to Providence that winter to catch them live at the Performing Arts Center (click that link above for the full story).

Although decades have now passed and we are much older, Camob remains a committed fan of both Devo and more especially The B-52's.  He never misses an opportunity to see them play when they are in his area, which is fairly often. I've seen the Bee-Fives about 7 or 8 times in my life; I figure that, over the years, Camob has paid to see them at least 25 times all told, and has been to no less than a score of Spudboy concerts. Just before the holidays last year, during one of our phone conversations, he suggested that I keep an eye on the mails, as he was sending a package my way. I thought that was a bit odd, since he and I are not in the habit of sending each other Christmas gifts every year. I tried to pry out of him what it could be, without luck. But after a day or two, I sort of forgot about it. A few days later, however, a box with my name on it arrived at my door. I recalled that it was from him, but I had no idea what it could be. I tore the box open, and laughed hysterically as I found this inside:

A joke gift, but one from the heart, and a reminder and acknowledgement of our old days together.

A couple of years ago, I was browsing around the Web, and came across a site describing a recently remixed version of The B-52's song "Mesopotamia". So I started looking around for it, but instead stumbled upon a site that had what was purported to be the "original mix" of the Mesopotamia EP - the mix reportedly done by David Byrne that was mostly shelved after he and the band had disagreements regarding the album project (which was why Mesopotamia was released as a 6-song mini-album, instead of The B-52's third full-fledged studio album). From what I read, this "Byrne mix" was included only on early copies of the EP released in England, which were immediately pulled in favor of the version that most people are familiar with. But a couple of the English copies remained at large, and the guy running the site got his hands on one of them.

I practically levitated out of my seat as I read this. Mesopotamia has long been one of my favorite B-52's albums, but to this day it holds a mixed reputation among the band's aficionados. The EP marked a substantial change in the musical direction of the band. On this record, The B-52's moved away from the more 'basic', good-time, straight-ahead party rock sound of their first two albums (The B-52's and Wild Planet) into something somewhat darker, denser, more polyrhythmic and layered. Many fans and critics were horrified by this shift - I can recall one savage review from back then that contained the line "The B-52's tried to take the 'p' out of 'party', and failed." As a result, Mesopotamia peaked on the U.S. Billboard charts significantly lower than its predecessor, the Top 20 hit Wild Planet. This EP definitely put the brakes on The B-52's momentum, and it took them years to recover.

The full story behind the aborted Mesopotamia sessions has never been fully told.  From what I understand, the disagreements between David Byrne and the Bee-Fives stemmed from two things.  First, it was the sound itself, which was a radical departure from what the band was known for; the B-52's (and the label) were understandably nervous about so drastic a move away from what by then was considered a 'signature' sound for the group.  It seemed to them that Byrne was trying to act like a bush-league Brian Eno, and mold the band into a hybrid afro-worldbeat version of what Talking Heads had been doing under Eno's production during that time (Fear Of Music/Remain In Light/Speaking In Tongues).

In addition, Byrne was producing his first full-scale solo work, the musical score for the Twyla Tharp Broadway dance project, The Catherine Wheel. He was working full-bore on that during the day and producing/mixing the B-52's stuff at night (again, trying to be a little Eno). But unlike his mentor, Byrne obviously couldn't handle the stress/effort involved in helming two big projects at once, and one of them began to suffer. Guess which one? So between the changed sound and Byrne's inattention, they collectively decided to part ways, and scrap the full album sessions.

The problem the label had with aborting the album was that it screwed up their release plans; there was supposed to be a full-blown B-52s album on the shelves in 1981. So Warner Bros. quickly slapped together the Party Mix! remix EP for release in July 1981, buying time for themselves and the band while they tried to figure out what to do with the unfinished songs and mixes left by Byrne.

The result was chaos. Island, Warner's distributor in the UK, rushed the pressing of the overseas Mesopotamia discs for release in January 1982 - somehow including unfinished, unedited demos of some tracks, instead of the fully produced songs. So, you see - the heralded so-called "David Byrne original EP mixes" are actually nothing more than a music label's huge fuckup.

Even with all of that, they're still interesting. Three of the songs on this "Mesopotamia - David Byrne Mix" (screw it - for the sake of simplicity, let's just keep calling it that) - "Deep Sleep", the title cut, and "Nip It In The Bud" are essentially identical to what I'd heard for all these years. But there were significant differences in the other three songs/demos:

• "Loveland" - the 'David Byrne mix' is 8:24 minutes long, almost a full three and a half minutes longer than the "regular" version. It's also much 'dryer' than the familiar version; that is, there is no reverb or echo added to Kate's voice in this version of the song. Still, it's pretty good.
• "Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can" - This alternate version is a full minute and a half longer than the familiar version. I'd always sort-of liked the 'regular' version, but I always felt that, like "Nip It In The Bud", it could have been improved on. I discovered that, in this case, I was wrong. The 'David Byrne version', while longer, simply has too much going on within it - a lot of annoying sound effects and horn fanfares that intrude upon and ultimately diminish the song. I frankly prefer the version I've always listened to all these years to this one.
• "Cake" - The hands-down highlight of the 'Byrne mixes'. This version is two minutes longer than the familiar version. In this one, the song is slightly sped up from the 'norm', and overall it's a LOT funkier (in a cool Bootsy Collins, Speaking In Tongues-era Talking Heads fashion) and better put together than the released version. You don't notice the extended length of it; it's THAT good, and should have been the one to have gone on the official EP.

All in all, it was pretty exciting hearing these alternate versions. Despite its critics, I'd always liked Mesopotamia - regardless of the fact that, even at its debut, it had a sort of unfinished, half-assed feel to it. And I knew from my conversations with Camob that he liked the EP as well. So I quickly forwarded him a copy, and soon afterwards received the following response:

"Really appreciate you sending this along. As we have discussed before, I always loved Mesopotamia like you did and I always felt it got shorted by everyone but the true fans. I was never a big fan of "Throw That Beat........" or "Deep Sleep", Loved "Mesopotamia", "Cake", really liked "Nip it in the Bud" and "Loveland". And you are right on with your comments, this version of "Cake" should have been the one they included on the EP."

That's my boy Camob - always on my wavelength!

Camob graduated from Annapolis a year ahead of me, and spent all of his active duty Navy time in the Pacific Fleet. He left active duty back in the mid-90s and found a niche in the professional placement field, eventually opening up his own successful business. But he maintained his Navy connection and continued his military advancement as a reserve naval officer; as a reservist, it seemed that he was more 'active' than he was when he was actually in the regular Navy, with regular deployments to hot spots around the world.

So back to that phone call . . .

Camob called to tell me some outstanding news that he's just received - he had been selected for flag rank - my boy was going to be made an Admiral! I couldn't believe it!

. . . And yet, I could believe it. People who don't know him well might dismiss him - but Camob has worked his ass off all his life to achieve success, both in business and in the military, and has never let adversity or naysayers deter him from where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do on this planet. I have been lucky enough to see all of his facets throughout his life - from the beer-bong wielding, concert-attending, poker playing boon compadre and dependable wingman, to the dedicated family man, savvy business professional and 'watertight' military commander. He's not just one or another of those things - all those experiences and attitudes from across the years are what molded him into the man he is today.

So I don't expect him to change much, now that he's got gold stars on his lapels. He'll probably still chuckle over our email exchanges (some of the funniest things I've ever written and read have come through the banter and correspondence Camob and I have engaged in, off and on, for over thirty years now). He will undoubtedly be the first Flag Officer in U.S. history who's once owned (and worn) a plastic Devo "New Traditionalist Pomp" hairdo . . . one who's served more hours of disciplinary marching and room restriction at USNA than perhaps any other admiral . . . one who knows and appreciates who Lene Lovich, Jane Wiedlin and Susan Dallion are . . . a man who never missed an episode of The Facts Of Life when it was on, and who once nursed a years-long crush on one of the TV show's girls (I'll let you guess

which one) . . . and one who spent much more time laughing and having fun in school and in life than in sweating over things, politicking and glad-handing his way to high rank. I'm afraid to say that there are more than a few top officers out there who greased their way along with that sort of "brownnoser" attitude (and I can personally name more than one . . .) - Camob is NOT one of those officers.

As such . . . well, with my buddy making Admiral, I sort of feel like Henry Hill and Jimmy "The Gent" Conway felt in Goodfellas, when they heard that Tommy DeVito was going to be a 'made man' in the Mafia - "With Tommy being made, it was like we were all being made." With Camob, it's like, finally, the right man, one of our own, a guy I've known and liked for forever and can relate to, made it. And I couldn't be happier.

(of course, in Goodfellas, this happened . . .

. . . so maybe that's not such the best analogy to use in this case . . . but I digress . . .)

So, with all of this, I have to say that in this instance I can't agree with Trillin's assessment of 'friends in high places". Knowing that Camob is now one of the folks "in charge of things" doesn't scare the hell out of me; quite the opposite - it makes me smile, knowing that, at least in this case, justice prevailed, things are in the right hands, and all is good and proper in the world. Congratulations to my old and dear friend!

So, in honor of the new RADM (USNR) Camob, here's The B-52's Mesopotamia EP, containing the alternate demo versions, released erroneously by Island Records in the United Kingdom on January 27th, 1982. Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.  

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Hetch Hetchy - Make Djibouti EP

Oh-OK is one of the great forgotten bands from the early days of the Athens, Georgia music explosion, the movement that brought the B-52s and R.E.M. onto the world stage. The band formed in the spring of 1981, and originally consisted of David Pierce on drums, Linda Hopper on vocals and Lynda Stipe on bass. If you're thinking "Stipe, Stipe - now WHERE have I heard that name?" - the answer is "yes"; Lynda was/is Michael Stipe's younger sister.

Oh-OK's star rose and fell very quickly. Within two years of forming, the group had toured with Pylon, released an EP and full album, added (and lost) new members (including a pre-solo Matthew Sweet) and broke up by the end of 1983. At that point, the band members scattered. I got into Oh-OK long after their breakup, when I lived in Athens during during the late 1980s. They, like Pylon, were (and still are) revered in that town, sort of as the pioneers who fell off the trail. I was interested enough to track down bits and pieces of their music while I was there, and the little I heard was enough to make me a fan.

But unlike Pylon, who remained in Athens after their heyday and were still somewhat semi-visible, a lot of ex-Oh-OK members disappeared for a time - except for Matthew Sweet, of course. Linda Hopper quickly moved on to Holiday, which released an obscure EP in 1987, then formed the more successful Magnapop, which is still performing and putting out records (the latest being 2005's Mouthfeel). Lynda Stipe fell off the musical radar for a couple of years. But she resurfaced in the late 1980s fronting a new band, Hetch Hetchy, and sporting a new name, Lynda K. Limner. The band's first release was the Make Djibouti EP, produced by Lynda's brother (hmm - I guess there ARE benefits to having a sibling in R.E.M.) and put out by Texas Hotel Records in 1988.

I honestly don't know what to make of this disc. I purchased it because of the fond memories I had of Oh-OK, and seeing Michael's name in the credits didn't hurt either. But its sound is far different from the simple, almost-childlike melodies of Lynda's previous band (or anything related to R.E.M., for that matter). The six songs on this EP are heavy - and I mean HEAVY; even what could be considered to be the lighter, poppier attempts on this disc (such as "Present" and "Hard On Lynda") just feel wrong, dragged down by the weight of too much instrumentation. And the slower ones (like "Retarded Camel" and "Sad Song") are even more leaden, with plodding rhythms supported by a thudding bass drum. in addition, it sounds as though Hetch Hetchy hired the old keyboard player from Berlin to sit in on this session - every song seems to contain some version of that weird "doo-doo wah-wah" synthesizer riff from "The Metro" - which is NOT a good thing, especially in 1988.

All in all, the Make Djibouti EP was not a promising start for Hetch Hetchy. As for who to blame for the weakness of their debut, well . . . far be it from me to point fingers, especially more than twenty years down the road. I'll hold my peace. But I
will note that prior to recording their first full album, 1990's Swollen, Lynda got rid of most of the original band, and instead of using her brother again, enlisted the production services of former Hugo Largo bassist Tim Sommer. The resulting album was a lot better than the EP, but that didn't save the band - Hetch Hetchy broke up in 1991. Since then, Lynda has been part of a few obscure bands, like Flash To Bang Time, and is still involved in the Athens arts scene.

I guess in hindsight, I should be writing about and posting Hetch Hetchy's more superior Swollen, rather than gassing about this thing. Screw it - I'm almost done writing this, and don't feel like starting over. So what the hell. Maybe I'll post the other album sometime later. Until then, have a listen to the EP, and as always, let me know what you think.

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Love Tractor - This Ain't No Outerspace Ship

As you can probably tell from my posts, I was (and am) a big fan of the old Athens sound, beginning with the B-52's and R.E.M., and branching out to less-well-known but still vital bands from that era like Pylon, Oh-OK and Buzz of Delight. Love Tractor was an Athens band that appeared very late on my radar, probably because what they were initially into was a bit removed from the other local bands of that time.

The band was formed in April 1980 by two local guitarists, Mike Richmond and Mark Cline, more as a way to alleviate the boredom of living in the one-horse town Athens was back then, rather than creating/joining a new musical movement. The two began gigging around Athens as a duo, accompanied at first by a drum machine. But along the way, they began adding members on bass and keyboards, and shed the drum machine for a succession of flesh-and-blood drummers (including, briefly, a pre-R.E.M. Bill Berry) before settling on Kit Schwartz behind the kit.

The major difference that set Love Tractor apart from the other bands vying for stage time at the 40 Watt Club and Tyrone's back then was in their sound - Love Tractor was a TOTALLY instrumental folk-rock band; no vocals whatsoever in their performances.

Now, I'll be honest, with very few exceptions, instrumental bands bore the shit out of me. Instrumental rock is no picnic in itself, but of all the genres, instrumental jazz ensembles have got to be the worst and most ennui-inducing for me. For example, I've recently been frequenting a local Cuban restaurant here in a sketchy part of town that features great food, dirt-cheap beer and some of the best, most eclectic live music performances in the city every weekend. In the couple of months I've been a regular at this place, I've been treated to superb groups offering up rock, big band, world music [quick shout-out on this one: the excellent band I saw there under this genre, Copal, came all the way from Brooklyn to our little burg, and featured a stunning redhead fronting the band on violin(!) and a weirdly hypnotic classical/Middle Eastern/gypsy/hip-hop sound - if that sounds like something you'd be into, run, do not walk, and pick up their latest, Into The Shadow Garden], what have you.

However, the worst band I saw there was a couple of weeks ago, when I went to the restaurant for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks. I got there fairly early in the evening, and while I ate I watched the band set up - just a quartet of nondescript young guys, sporting the apparently de rigueur look of torn jeans and scraggly post-secondary school goatees. I was looking forward to some decent music, but these guys completely disappointed me. Their entire set consisted of fifteen-twenty minute-long meandering "jazz explorations", with each player seemingly just doing his own thing. There was no visible connection/acknowledgement between the players, and as such, their music did nothing to draw the audience in. After a very short while, their music moved from boring to annoying, and I fled the venue much earlier that usual.

So, I can sort of imagine what Love Tractor was facing during their early years of playing in Athens. Cline has admitted in interviews that his was never "the most marketable band". With its shows, the band never really built up the sort of buzz and mythology that surrounds the early efforts of the B-52s (i.e., the legendary Valentine's Day party) or R.E.M. (practicing in the abandoned church). It seems that they were more admired than loved in town.

It took a while for them to find a recording contract, but Love Tractor was finally signed to DB Records in 1982. They released their first album, an all instrumental self-titled effort, later that year. Love Tractor received decent reviews, but sold poorly. For their second DB Records album, 1984's Till The Cows Come Home, the band began experimenting with actual words, adding a couple of songs with lead vocals by Richmond.

The relative success of this record, coupled with DB Records' increasingly shaky financial posture, led to the band's move to the larger Big Time Records (America) label in 1986. Their first release on their new label was 1987's This Ain't No Outerspace Ship. This album was Love Tractor's first full-scale foray into vocal rock, and in my opinion they pull it off with great success. Their sound on this record can be described as sort of a funkier R.E.M., with Richmond's twangy voice well suited to songs such as "Beatle Boots" and "Outside With Ma".

As fortune would have it, I moved to Athens shortly after this album came out, and the record was being championed by WUOG, the local independent college station. They played "Outside With Ma" to death, so much so that I fell in love with it. If I recall correctly, I bought this album on vinyl at either the Wuxtry, the famous local record shop, or at the local college co-op/music store located just down the street. It wasn't until years later that I replaced my vinyl copy with a CD version.

Love Tractor released one more album on Big Time, 1989's Themes From Venus, before breaking up later that year. The band members went on to join several other bands, but they all remained friends, and every year or so they would all get together in Athens to reconnect and write songs together. Seven years after breaking up, they reformed, and after touring around the country for several years, released a reunion record, The Sky At Night, on Razor & Tie in 2001.  They broke up again shortly afterwards.

So, here's what in my opinion is Love Tractor's best album, This Ain't No Outerspace Ship from 1987 (distributed by RCA). Be sure to check out their covers of Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" and The Gap Band's "Party Train"! Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

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The B-52's - Bouncing Off The Satellites

[Well, I'm back . . . sort of. I'm cheating a little, by backdating this one. I originally started it early in October, but never finished it in time for the anniversary I was trying to commemorate. Sorry for being away from this thing for so long. I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to post, but a combination of more pressing matters, time spent away, and simply my own general sloth kept me from creating actual words from my thoughts. No promises on how active I'll be in the next few days/weeks - I made that mistake last month! But, for now, here you go - enjoy:]

If you read my earlier posts, you know that I absolutely love The B-52's. I've been a fan of theirs for over thirty years (God, have they been around that long (and a more pertinent question - am I THAT old?)?), and have attended a countless number of their live shows (has to be somewhere around 12-15 now). I know this band back and forth, and can speak knowledgeably about band minutiae such as the name of Kate Pierson's pre-B-52's hippie band (The Sun Donuts), and as the relative quality of their opening acts over the years (The Bongos were pretty good, Royal Crescent Mob sucked). I briefly lived in Athens, GA, the band's hometown, and while I was there I used to go to Allen's for a beer (no longer 25 cents though (and this was before "Deadbeat Club" was even recorded, so gimme a break)), and on the way into school every day, I drove by the house at the far end of Milledge Avenue where the band played their legendary first concert, out on the back porch.

Probably my favorite of all the B-52's shows I've seen was the one they played Providence in March 1982, in support of their latest album Mesopotamia (I think it was called the "Meso-Americans Tour"). At the time, I was living and going to school in Newport, RI, and I had recently turned one of my new buddies there (we'll call him "Camob") onto the band. Camob came to Rhode Island straight out of the San Fernando Valley of suburban Los Angeles, and though he did his best to hide it, his unconscious mannerisms and vocal inflections pegged him as a straight-up early '80s "Valley Boy". He was like a bigger, beefier, less aggro Billy Zabka - only if Zabka had brown hair, no karate skills and a more normal, formative childhood. Camob was also smart as hell, although he was doing his level best to murder his cerebral cortex every weekend by liberally dousing it with as much ethanol as he could procure (the man had a stinging, insatiable yen for stinkwater that was truly remarkable for someone of his tender years, and positively hair-raising for a teetotaling geek like myself back then). Couple all of that with his Devo fandom, and it's no wonder we quickly became fast friends.

Anyway, after his first taste of their music, Camob dug the Bee-Fives pretty much from the get-go, and as such, he and I decided to go to the Providence concert. He talked one of our classmates into going with us as well - not that we were particular buddies with the guy, but mainly because he had a car we could use for the trip (well, that HE could use - I still couldn't drive just yet). The evening of the show, Camob and the other guy loaded up the car with brown-bagged "supplies" (I didn't bother to ask what they were), and we all headed across the Newport Bridge, en route to the state capital.

The sold-out show was at the Providence Performing Arts Center, a beautiful old opera house-type venue with red velvet seating and a huge balcony hanging over a third of the floor seating. We got to Providence early enough to find good parking close to the theater. But instead of running right in to claim our seats and settle in for the opening act, the other two guys with me insisted on breaking into their bags of "supplies", which basically consisted of several cans of semi-cold Busch beer and a contraption consisting of a long flexible plastic tube about an inch in diameter, with a funnel at one end. Being a nondrinker, I had no idea what the thing was for - looked like some sort of mouth douche to me. But I soon found out what the deal was, as the guys plugged up one end and began pouring can after can of brewski into this contraption, which they called a "beer bong". I watched in amazement as Camob held the bong high, raised the nonfunnel end to his lips, and in a flash emptied the equivalent of four cans of beer straight into his belly, without losing a drop (my boy was very proud of his ability to "open his throat" to make that happen . . . and we'll just leave that line alone . . .).

Needless to say, by the time the show started, Camob was roaring drunk. Our driving buddy, who didn't partake as liberally as Camob did, seemed to be holding his own; of course, I hadn't had a drop. I had more than a bit of concern regarding how we were going to be able to drive back to Newport later that night, but my worries were momentarily forgotten as the curtain came up. Like I mentioned earlier, the opening band, The Bongos, were pretty good. I'd never heard of them before that show, but a lot of their songs stuck with me, including "Number With Wings".

But of course, the main reason I was there was for the headliner, and they did not disappoint. The place was going apeshit as the B-52's played classic song after classic song. Outside of "Mesopotamia", I don't recall them playing anything else off of their latest album. The set was concentrated on the big hits from their first two discs: "Private Idaho", "52 Girls", "Rock Lobster", "Dance This Mess Around". People were out of their seats the entire time, dancing in the aisles and causing such a ruckus in the PPAC balcony that Fred Schneider paused the show momentarily to implore the people up there not to bounce around so much, lest they cause the balcony to collapse on the rest of the audience! Just a great, great show.

(And as for our return trip, Camob's friend had danced and sweated off enough booze to become sober enough to get us back to Newport. I rode shotgun, still petrified, ready to grab the wheel at the first sign of the guy slipping into a sudden alcohol coma, while Camob lay prone in the backseat, mumbling to himself in a profound liquor stupor - another TKO victory recorded by the infamous beer bong. Thank God he made it back there without booting - that would have made a bad ride THAT much worse.)

I've been there and back again with this band, long before their mainstream popularity, so the death of Ricky Wilson back in 1985 was particularly affecting. The guy was a guitar genius, and while Keith Strickland has definitely picked up where Ricky left off (and saved the band in the process), to this day the band is still missing the spirit that Ricky brought to their music. I'll always be a fan, though - as will Camob, who after all of the these years is still one of their #1 acolytes.

So on the 25th anniversary of his death, I offer you the last album recorded by all five original members, Bouncing Off The Satellites, released in September 1986 on Warner Brothers Records. This album doesn't quite have the loose, party-hearty feel of their earlier albums, but there is still enough in the way of goofy ideas and good music to make up for the overall stiffness and broader lack of imagination.

Enjoy:

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The B-52's - The B-52's (RS500 - #152)

The first album I ever bought with my own money, and one of my favorite albums of all time, The B-52's debut album, released in July 1979 on Island Records and distributed by Warner Brothers.

The first time I ever saw or heard The B-52s was on NBC's Saturday Night Live in January 1980. By mid-1979, both Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi had left the show, and SNL was definitely on a downhill slide. But Saturday Night Live's saving grace during its fifth season was in the quality of its musical guests. In that year, the show featured famous, iconic appearances by David Bowie (backed by future recording artist Klaus Nomi, in definitely one of the weirdest yet most fascinating network TV performances of all time), The Specials (they did :"Gangsters" and "Too Much Too Young", which absolutely SLAYED me), Gary Numan and Blondie. Frankly, due to the uneven writing of that season, the musical guests were practically the only reason to watch the show that year.

Anyway, I watched the episode featuring The B-52s from my home in Massachusetts, and thought I had just witnessed one of the greatest bands in the world. I couldn't get "Rock Lobster" out of my head!

When I went back to school the following Monday, I was eager to hear my friends' reaction to this New Wave band from Georgia. So I was surprised when nearly everyone who saw the show began running the band down, talking about how 'weird' and 'crappy' they were. Mind you, this WAS during the end of the 70s, in a small conservative town in New England. The popular bands for people at my school back then included Styx (it's always surprised me that multiple hearings of "Babe" and "Come Sail Away", which played constantly that year, didn't lead to more teen violence and suicides . . .), Foreigner and ELO. The more 'rebellious' kids were into The Cars. But overall, in 1980 there were very few guys or girls there who would admit to liking punk or new wave, 'weird' music that would get you classed with a very select and nongrata group of students.

So I was sort of on my own, and kept my love of that type of music to myself. The SNL performance was the only time for many months afterward that I heard "Rock Lobster", but I kept the song in my head and looked forward to hearing it again.

That spring, we got the word that my dad was going to be transferred from Massachusetts all the way across country to California. This was very exciting to me and the rest of my family. I had never set foot in California up to that point, but from what I read and saw, it was a land of constant sun, palm trees and movie stars, where every kid wore OP shirts and carried surfboards to school, so they could hit the waves after the final bell. My Massachusetts friends were extremely jealous of our upcoming move, and I was completely jazzed. In July, we loaded up the Chevy van, said goodbye to New England, and made a long, epic cross-country journey to the Monterey Peninsula, arriving late one evening.

On our first morning there, my brother and I leapt out of bed and raced for the door, eager to see bright, sunny California with our own eyes. We got outside to find it grey, cold and dreary, not like what we pictured at all! It stayed that way all day. Oh well, we thought - the next day will be better. But the following day was just as foggy and cold and the first, and that trend continued for most of the summer. We didn't realize that Northern California was nothing like the Southern California of TV shows and Beach Boys fantasies. That cold water running down along the coast from Alaska, past San Francisco and into Monterey, leads to some hellacious fog that usually doesn't burn off until late morning/early afternoon. It was definitely not what I had expected, and it was depressing.

School started there that September, and between the stresses of getting acclimated to new surroundings and dealing with the cold, damp weather every morning, I was pretty miserable. My sister (who was in the same grade) felt the same way, and for the first couple of weeks she and I sat out on the stone bleachers overlooking the football field during our breaks, looking out across the bay towards Seaside and wishing we were somewhere else. I could see or sense nothing special about my new home . . .

Until one afternoon in late September. I was once again sitting out on the bleachers, mired in a funk, when suddenly a student I didn't know drove up in a beat-up Mustang, music blaring. His nearby friends walked over to talk to him. It was then I realized that the song blasting out of his car was "Rock Lobster", the first time I had heard it since SNL in January! It would have been unheard of for someone at my old school to be caught with a B-52's song thundering out of his car. I don't know why, but hearing that song again, in the place were I was, made me think to myself "See, this place is going to be all right."

I worked up the nerve to walk over to introduce myself to the guy, and we eventually became good friends. He introduced me to his buddies, and suddenly I had friends all over the school. Later that week, out of the blue, I got a job working after school at a ritzy girls' school down the road from where I lived. With the first paycheck I received, I went down to the record store at Del Monte Mall and bought the Yellow Album, which I played to death on the family stereo with the volume turned low - my parents didn't 'get' this crazy new music at all! But overall, things were suddenly a whole lot sunnier, funnier and happier; I didn't even notice the morning fog anymore.

From the point I heard "Rock Lobster" again, things at school got better; life in general there was a whole lot better. Now, I look back fondly on that time, and consider Monterey, California to be the best place I ever lived. And that's why I love and enjoy this album to this day.

I'm sure you already own this - if not, here you are:

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Various Artists - Squares Blot Out The Sun

Here's another great compilation of (mostly) 1980s Athens music - Squares Blot Out The Sun, released by DB Records in 1990. DB Records was run by a guy named Danny Beard, who was there at the beginning of the Athens music scene. It was his label that released the B-52's first single, "Rock Lobster", back in 1978. He was also the first to record legendary Athens band Pylon, producing their single "Cool" in 1979.

The guy was a visionary, with a good ear for music. But alas, he was no businessman. DB Records sort of wobbled through the 80s, putting out releases by Love Tractor, Guadalcanal Diary, The Swimming Pool Q's, and other bands that followed in the immediate wake of Athens' first wave. A lot of these bands were college and independent radio staples back then, but that didn't really translate into album sales.

Squares Blot Out The Sun was supposed to have been released in late 1985, but due to the label's financial problems, it didn't hit store shelves until 1990, when DB Records was on its last legs. The late release was both a blessing and a issue for the album. A curse in that, instead of focusing on a specific period, what was happening in Athens in the early years (from about 1979 to 1985), the record is all over the place, featuring bands from as far back as 1978 and as recent as 1990. But the blessing of this is that more songs are included on the disc, including some gems by some pretty unknown/unheralded bands.

Pylon has two cuts featured here, but there are also songs by other important but obscure Athens bands, including Oh-OK (Michael Stipe's sister's band), the Brains, and the Fans (quick side note: the Fans were the band who, in the late 1970s, were the ones who were supposed to "make it", and were setting

themselves up for major label recognition . . . until suddenly, out of the blue, the B-52's appeared on the scene and completely stole the Fans' buzz. Read the book Party Out Of Bounds by Rodger Lyle Brown for the full story of this rivalry). Some of my personal favorites here include the party anthem "Neat In The Street" by the Side Effects, Coolie's "Richard Cory", and "Bidin' Time" by the Reivers.

This album is a good companion to Athens, GA: Inside/Out (posted earlier), as the two together will provide you with a pretty good overview of what was happening musically in the town during the 1980s. Enjoy, and let me know what you think:

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Various Artists - Athens, GA, Inside/Out: Music From The Movie

The soundtrack to the 1987 documentary film about the burgeoning mid-80s music scene in Athens, Georgia, released by the late, lamented I.R.S. Records. At the time, I had been a long-time B-52s fan, and I knew about R.E.M., although I wouldn't really get into them for a couple more years. So I was semi-aware of what was going on down in Athens. But the film and this soundtrack were eye-openers, detailing both the major and minor acts playing in that town.

As luck would have it, later that year I would find myself living in Athens for a time. My house was a tiny, ramshackle shitbox down past the University of Georgia sorority houses, on an extension of Milledge Avenue. But I didn't care - I was young, wild and free, and in the midst of some cutting-edge music. I discovered that the documentary only scratched the surface of what was going on there. I visited the main spots (Uptown Lounge and the 40 Watt) numerous times during my short stay there, and saw some awesome bands: X, The Beat Farmers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (one of the best live shows I ever saw anywhere). Michael Stipe used to hang out at the bar across the street from the Georgia Theater; most people were cool enough to leave him alone. All in all, Athens was a really great place to live.

I've had this album on cassette for forever; to the best of my knowledge, it's never been released on CD. So this burn won't be 100% high fidelity . . . but it's not too bad, so enjoy.

[20 Feb 2014:  Since this post was written, the powers-that-be have finally seen fit to release this soundtrack on CD, with bonus tracks; I've upgraded my links accordingly, with the updated file - enjoy!]

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