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Whammy!
by The B52s (Island/ 1983)Considering that the B52s contributed much to the soundtrack of my salad days, its somewhat surprising that I only own one album by the band - and it's not one that would be considered a classic either. But as was often the case with much of the music I listened to back then, I had both of the first two albums on tape. I also used to own the B52s Party Mix album which was made up of six segued tracks drawn from that first couple of LPs, but that was one which didn't survive a late-90s purge of my vinyl collection.
Essentially the B52s were mining the same schlocky trash culture aesthetic as both The Cramps and The Rezillos, but what seemed to mark the band off from many of their contemporaries was that they were actually quite danceable and perhaps as a consequence were the one new wave band that significant numbers of girls liked as well as boys. In fact I can't recall anyone amongst my immediate friends - both male and female - not having a soft spot for the B52s.
I suppose my all time favourite B52s track would have to be the glorious Sci-Fi/ horror film soundtrack pastiche that is 'Planet Claire' from the debut album. A great favourite at parties, this was the record which more than any other was responsible for the origination of our posse's signature dance, which though it didn't have a name was effectively an appropriately mutant version of the twist. But the B52s operated on a cerebral level too: for though it was making a rather simple point, the song 'There's a Moon in the Sky (it's Called the Moon)' caused me as a teenager me to question all my previously held assumptions about the universe and my place in it. Oh, and let's not forget that they were pretty sexy too – this in spite of the fact that when I was fifteen, I innocently believed that 'Hot Lava' actually was a song about volcanoes erupting. Indeed, my friend Rob B taped the video of 'Legal Tender' off the TV and often when I called round we'd both sit there like Beavis and Butthead, drooling over Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. But there was tragedy too, and the death in 1985 of guitarist Ricky Wilson, was the cause of no small amount of existential angst. How could such a terrible tragedy befall the good ol' B52s, I found myself wondering whilst browsing the self-help section of the local bookshop for the sadly non-existent book 'When Bad Things Happen to Good Bands'.
Thankfully, the B52s carried on, but the mid-Eighties was a bad time both for the band and for all of those who held them dear. I mean, sometimes you invest a lot emotionally in a group and you desperately want them to gain the wider recognition they deserve, but when I saw them performing 'Wig' on a children's TV show around 1988, I remember thinking resignedly that the game was pretty much up for them. How gratifying it was then, to see them finally reap their due rewards in 1989 with smash hits such as 'Love Shack' and Roam'.
To my ears, Whammy is a bit of a dud. Sure, it gets off to a storming start with 'Legal Tender', the title track 'Whammy' and the fab 'Song For a Future Generation', but it all seems to fizzle out on side two (though admittedly the closing instrumental 'Work That Skirt' is pretty nifty. And aside from the variable quality of some of the songs, it's also a difficult record to listen to from beginning to end, mainly due to the unrelenting presence of the rather crappy-sounding drum machine. So, in this respect, the album can perhaps now be viewed as evidence of a band fast running out of ideas and in dire need of an injection of creative energy. This, of course, was eventually to come in the form of Don Was, Nile Rogers and former Gang of Four bassist Sara Lee, who produced the massively successful Cosmic Thing album. But also, during the course of writing this piece, I've just listened to the B52s 1992 album, Good Stuff for the very first time, and what a revelation that is! Produced again by Was and Rogers, it's a wonderfully slick and polished piece of ear candy with pop hooks and catchy choruses aplenty and a tour de force vocal performance by Kate Pierson (Cindy Wilson having departed by this time). It's smart, sassy and sexy, with tracks such 'Hot Pants Explosion' (which has Fred Scneider sounding almost as leeringly deranged as Lux Interior of The Cramps on 'Can Your Pussy Do the Dog') and 'Good Stuff' which with lyrics such as 'Take me down where your love honey flows/ Kiss you nice, nibble your toes,' I'm at least old enough to appreciate as a celebratory ode to cunnilingus. Or do I just have a dirty mind?