New York — Kitschy, that's one that always rankles. Zany. Wacky. Disposable.
Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider are going through the list of words used to describe the B-52's over the years. Many seem equally applicable to cartoon characters.
Members of the B-52's think the band's 25th anniversary is the occasion for a two-disc anthology, "Nude on the Moon." Clockwise, from top, are Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. Missing is guitarist Ricky Wilson.
"It's like how comedy movies don't get the Academy Award," Pierson said. "If you have a sense of humor and a sense of fun, it means that you can't be serious."
The band's 25th anniversary is an occasion for a two-disc anthology, "Nude on the Moon," and, perhaps, a re-evaluation.
"At the beginning of this, people thought that we were a one-off thing, that we would never last," Schneider said. "We've outlasted all the other bands they were raving about in 1978."
The B-52's are responsible for a camp classic ("Rock Lobster") and a song ("Love Shack") that's heard more often at weddings than "The Chicken Dance."
Rhino's new anthology includes those, but also emphasizes the band's melodic, contemplative side and their philosophic embrace of anyone, and anything, outside of the ordinary. The band came of age during the punk rock era and had two members from New Jersey, but they're Southern-fried hippies at the core.
The five artsy friends from Athens, Ga., owed their initial inspiration to a Flaming Volcano, a drink they shared one night in 1976 at a Chinese restaurant. They crashed a friend's house, started playing his instruments, and started a band.
The B-52's were a bizarre assemblage: two women Pierson and Cindy Wilson who could screech like Yoko Ono, a man (Schneider) who was more a toastmaster than a singer, a propulsive drummer (Keith Strickland) and a guitarist (Cindy's older brother, Ricky), who learned to play by watching public access TV and favored odd tunings inspired by Joni Mitchell.
The women wore gigantic beehive hairdos and Schneider penciled in a fake mustache. Too freaky to get any jobs at the fraternities or sororities around Athens' University of Georgia, within a couple of years, their music was blasting out of speakers at colleges everywhere.
They were even an inspiration for John Lennon. He told Rolling Stone a year before he was killed that he heard "Rock Lobster" in a dance club, thought it sounded like his wife's music, and said it was time to work again.
After a few years as the soundtrack to more parties than they could ever possibly hope to attend, it looked like the B-52's wouldn't make it out of the 1980s.
Fans and their record company were losing interest. The five members lived together in Mahopac, N.Y., and while this worked for the Monkees, it's not so good in real life. Relationships were fraying, and when Ricky Wilson died of AIDS-related complications in 1985, the survivors thought it was the end.
Instead, Wilson's death had the opposite effect, renewing their friendship.
"Keith and Cindy didn't know if they had it in them to do another record," Schneider recalled. "We were afraid of the process at first, but once we got into a jamming mode, the record became part of the healing process."
The album, "Cosmic Thing," was released in 1989 and included the hits "Love Shack" and "Roam." It gave the B-52's a second life that most artists only dream of.
The band has released only one album of new material since then. It exists primarily as a performing unit; Strickland moved off the drum riser and learned Wilson's guitar parts. The B-52's have expanded to include extra musicians so their sound has grown more powerful and organic. Cindy Wilson left for a few years in the 1990s to raise a family, but returned.
Many of their concerts are private. The B-52's are a mainstay on the corporate party circuit; a lot of the misfits they played for at the outset grew up to become wealthy business executives.
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