Posts Tagged ‘The B-52s’

You know my name (look up the number)

Posted: August 25, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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When I took up the challenge of reviewing every band with a number in its name, I thought it would be something mindless I could do while doing some other, more serious, thing. Well, it was often mindless (to cite one example, One Direction), but overall this project has proven to be more interesting than it had any right to be.

Why are there so few band names with numbers?
You loyal readers came up with 110 suggestions. I thought that was a lot – but how many bands have had major-label releases in the past 60 years? Surely there have been thousands, and that’s just in the English-speaking countries. Why are so few numbered?

Don’t expect an answer to that one, but I can tell you that approximately half the names on our list are variations on two, three, four, and five. That makes sense, since most bands have two, three, four, or five members. 101 Strings actually has more than 101 musicians plucking strings. I don’t know why they’re so modest when they’ve done so much to destroy our way of life.

Threat level: Not exactly off the scale
The rest of this lot falls into no discernible pattern, though you could make a small category of names that seem to threaten: World War III, World War Four, Five for Fighting, Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor), 10cc, 50 Foot Wave, The B-52s, MX80, 101 Strings (I always thought that one was a threat), 1000 Homo DJs (we’re here, we’re queer, we refuse to play “YMCA”), and 10,000 Maniacs. Frankly, none of these bands seem particularly threatening, unless you fear Reznor’s brand of relentless self-pity.

Get right out of town!
I decided to disqualify any act that wasn’t listed at Allmusic.com, or, failing that, in Wikipedia. Also, the act had to have at least one album from a major label – something you could find for sale at eBay or Half.com. This led to surprisingly few disqualifications of your suggestions.

  • Less Than Zero: It’s an Elvis Costello song, it’s a Bret Easton Ellis novel, it’s an early Robert Downey Jr. movie, it’s the name of several albums, but it’s not a band.
  • 2 Tribes: This is a song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and some electro outfits. It’s not a band.
  • Devo 2.0: Mark Mothersbaugh cooperated with Disney to make disneyfied versions of his original songs. O the humanity!
  • The Five Jones Boys: George Jones played with four other boys, but they didn’t use a number. Also, they’re country. That reminds me: No country.

Much as I love jazz, I disqualified the entire genre. If I hadn’t, I would’ve been overrun by trios, quartets, and quintets.

Welcome to By the Numbers Week. Tomorrow night: One is the the loneliest number!

Write-a-thon, Day 33: Someone left a train out in the rain

Posted: July 25, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Robert Louis Stevenson drew a map of an island and was inspired to write Treasure Island. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about a Hobbit and from there drew a map of Middle-Earth. Many writers start writing after being captivated by a drawing or a photo. Others cut pictures out of magazines to help them visualize their characters or some aspect of their stories. Writing is surprisingly visual.

For my book, I bought 10 irregular sheets of poster board at an art supply store. The biggest is about 2’x3’. I took all the book covers, magazine photos, and old postcards I’d collected with a mountainous, railroady theme and spray-mounted them on these boards. I glued a balsa-wood frame to the back of each to keep them from warping, then hung them on the walls around my corner desk. This way I write while looking at the physical setting my characters are moving through.

I also drew a map of the where the action is, but my illustration skills are stuck in the sixth grade, when I struggled to draw a creditable starship Enterprise. (Still working on that one.) I keep redrawing the map for practice but I’m not getting better at it. I know the look I want and at some point I’m going to hire an actual artist to do it.

Meanwhile, it occurred to be that I could one-up Tolkien and RLS. (Boy, I never thought I’d get to say that.) I love building models. My book is full of trains. Why not build a model of something I’m writing about?

Micro 1

Nature is always trying to come indoors and take over. If you leave your car parked too long, nature will grow under it and eventually over it. Same with trains. Open-top cars left on a siding will eventually support enough wind-blown dirt and weeds to initiate agriculture. I’ve hiked past abandoned bridges that were turning into gardens way up in the middle of the air. Look at what happened to the High Line in New York:

High Line

I thought I was going to have one such bridge in my book, with an abandoned gondola astride it. So I made one. (This was also a way to sneak a garden railroad into my wife’s garden.) The wood came from an old dish drainer. The plants are a type of sedum that’s pretty much indestructible. It all lives outside; I’ll bring it in when winter comes.

Micro 2

I tried to sell these photos to Classic Toy Trains, but for some reason they weren’t enthused about showing their readers how to destroy their classic toy trains. They were very nice about it, though.

Micro 3

After further thought I decided to put this bridge in my second book. At least I’m thinking ahead. For my next construction project, I considered a half-size caboose replica, but I had some doubts I could secure trackage rights for the backyard. Maybe I’ll build that miniature Cape Cod lighthouse after all. It could double as a doghouse.

Today I went to the gym for the first time since the Write-a-thon started, so I’m feeling particularly virtuous this evening. My new mantra is short and intense workouts rather than lengthy and laid-back. Blood, not just contusions.

Random Pick of the Day
Ministry, Filth Pig (1995)
Sometime in the early 1980s I saw The B-52s at Kane Hall at the University of Washington. The opening act was a Seattle band called The Blackouts. It was an unlikely pairing, as The Blackouts were dark and noisy and The B-52s are light and zany. But it’s a rock-concert tradition to pair like with unlike. A tavern here in Portland just had Wicked Sin opening for The Punctuals. I didn’t go. I knew it was wrong.

The Blackouts eventually met a heavy-metal industrialist named Al Jourgensen and under his leadership formed Ministry and became even darker and noiser. Filth Pig is a good example. On this disc, Ministry did everything it could to clear the dance floor. The album name was thought up by a 16-year-old boy with bad skin and no hope of getting laid. The cover art is grotesque. The track listing is unreadable. Most of the songs are as listenable as a space shuttle in need of a new muffler. The singing is not so much singing as it is screaming at Orcs.

But! This album has their cover of “Lay, Lady, Lay” (track 9, since you’ll never decipher the info on the CD). The first time I heard it, I thought it was a joke. I listened a second time because I was looking forward to the laugh, but I didn’t laugh. I just listened. Now I’ve heard it many times and I think it’s beautiful. (Dylan does it again.) “Lay, Lady, Lay,” and tracks 1, 2, and 10 redeem Filth Pig for me.

Random Pan of the Day
Fun Boy Three, Waiting (1982)
The musical equivalent of the plastic garbage floating around in the Pacific Ocean. David Byrne produced this thing, after producing another inept record earlier in the year, The B-52s’ Mesopotamia. But 1982 also saw Talking Heads’ first live album,  the excellent The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads. Strange year for David Byrne…The only FB3 song worth its weight in vinyl is one of their two collaborations with Bananarama, “Really Saying Something,” and in that one they let the girls sing the leads.

I know I said I wasn’t going to do anymore music reviewing while the Write-a-thon was on, but I can’t seem to rein myself in. So many bands to insult, so little time.

 

Middle-aged punks on dope

Posted: April 7, 2013 in Miscellaneous, music
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“I am what I am. Thank God.” – Jimi Hendrix, “Message to Love”

A co-worker entered my humble cubicle one day late in 2012 and said, “Flashback!” He was looking at the two shelves above my desk, which held a row of CDs, a display of old postcards, and the Pets.com Sock Puppet Spokesthing. While he gushed about these ancient cultural artifacts, I saw my possessions through his eyes. I realized that I could’ve decorated my space the same way at the job I had in 2000. In fact, I know I did.

I’m stuck in time!

In an email later that morning to this co-worker, after stating that I didn’t care what he thought of me, I wrote without even thinking “I’m through being cool!” and hit Send. Then I thought, Oh no, it’s Devo! I’m really stuck in time.

Rather than consider what all this says about me, let’s use it as an excuse to go back to the future. Welcome to 1986 Week, commemorating that stellar year when, as Paul Simon sang on Graceland, “I was single/and life was great!”*

Most of the artists I loved in the ’80s released nothing new in 1986. Echo & The Bunnymen, The Psychedelic Furs, The Cure, U2, Prince, and Bruce Springsteen held off until 1987 (when Prince gave us Sign ’O’ the Times, his equivalent of The White Album, and U2 gave us their masterpiece, The Unforgettable Fire**).

The B-52s didn’t record again until 1989, but in 1986 The Rolling Stones dressed up just like them.

Dirty Work

By 1986 Romeo Void had broken up. David Bowie and Michael Jackson had left the bulk of their best work behind. Gary Numan had left all of his best work behind. Robert Cray debuted with Strong Persuader, though I prefer what he did later. Duran Duran released Notorious, which was notorious for being awful. I refuse to listen to Madonna’s True Blue or Boston’s Third Stage. I can’t decide which is funnier, The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill or Metallica’s Master of Puppets. I’ll get to Depeche Mode, The Pretenders, Paul Simon, Talking Heads, and Siouxsie & The Banshees as 1986 Week progresses.

What was the best song of 1986? Yo, pretty ladies around the world: Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care for Cameo’s “Word Up!”

Don’t expect 1986 Week to last all week. Don’t expect a comprehensive survey. Don’t get all army-foldy on me, either.

As we used to say in the peculiar slang we employed back in 1986: See you tomorrow!

* Special D is fond of quoting that line to me. Hey doll: “I sure do love you/let’s get that straight.”
** A tip of the critic’s pointy hat to my friend and fellow softball player Donald Keller, who put “mantlepiece” in my head whenever I want to say “masterpiece.” 

Random 1986 Pick of the Day
The Chills, Kaleidoscope World
1986 gave us albums from The Chills, The Cramps, and The Creeps. This reminds me of an evening I spent at Fenway Park in 1979 when we had three pitchers on hand named Clear, Frost, and Rainey.

I don’t know a thing about Kaleidoscope World; I just needed a Chills album from 1986 to fit my theme. The album I have heard is Submarine Bells (1990), which has two lovely pop songs, “Singing in My Sleep” and “Heavenly Pop Hit” (nice try, boys).

Random 1986 Pan of the Day
Stan Ridgway, The Big Heat
I must honor this man for rhyming “Tijuana” with “barbecued iguana” in Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio.” Sadly, on his solo debut he sounds like The B-52s’ Fred Schneider with really bad hair.

Rage against the Bikini Machine

Posted: February 10, 2013 in music, Record reviews
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Bikini Machine joue Dutronc
Bikini Machine
2011

I was looking at Allmusic.com’s lists of recommended songs and albums for 1969 when I hit “Le Responsable” by Jacques Dutronc (from the album Un disque MAXI). Messr. Dutronc is a legend in France but unknown in the USA. He was definitely unknown to any of us here at the Bureau. Unfortunately, Rhapsody didn’t have any of his music, but they did have a cover of “Le Responsable” by fellow Frenchmen Bikini Machine on their masterwork, Bikini Machine joue Dutronc. How did we make these connections before the invention of the World Wide Web? What did I do with my time? Read books? Interact with other humans?

Bikini Machine’s “Le Responsable” is an earth-mover (so’s the original, which I found on YouTube), so I happily gave the rest of this disk a spin. The results: Positive! Here’s a guide to what I heard:

“Sur une nappe de restaurant” (“Sir, that’s my napkin”) begins as if it wanted to live on The B-52s’ Wild Planet but soon surfs into a California-dreamin’/electro wonderland. The horn section gets a moderate workout here.

“Les Cactus” (“All that cactus”) can best be thought of as The Dave Clark Five playing “Boys” on the International Space Station.

“L’idole” (“This song is not about Billy Idol”) could almost be the theme to a spaghetti Western.

“J’ai font lu, tout vu, tout bu” (“I like this typeface, you like it, but the client hates it”) is French rap, which sounds pretty good in French.

“La fille du pere noel” (“My Dad spent Christmas with his girlfriend”) is the French version of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll (Part Two),” complete with musical flourishes à la Alison Goldfrapp, with whom the Bikini Machine boys probably want to pursue activities l’intimate in the name of rock ’n’ roll.

There are enough worthwhile tracks on this CD to rate it a Buy. (I also tried an earlier album, Let’s Party with Bikini Machine, but that wasn’t much of a party.) Bikini Machine c’est formidable! At least they are on Bikini Machine joue Dutronc (“Bikini Machine thinks Dutronc is Jewish”).

Return with me now to the Swinging Sixties, French division.

Wiiiiillllll-ma!

Posted: January 6, 2012 in music
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“I Wanna Be a Flintstone”
Screaming Blue Messiahs
1987

No critical deconstruction of The Flintstones can commence without first mentioning my sister, who was born the same night as Pebbles. Although I was 7, I sensed that this was a teachable moment, and I told my brother, who was 4, that when Mommy came home from the hospital, she’d bring with her our new sibling – a cartoon. My brother couldn’t decide if he was thrilled or terrified, so he spent that evening at my grandparents’ house being both. Because I’m a natural teacher, I also showed him how to set all the clocks in the house to ring sometime after midnight. Being little children, no one noticed us, and being little children, we slept through the resulting Flintstone-like chaos. The adults were all crabby the next day.

Today I’d much rather refer to The Flintstones than watch them. (Same with the Stooges. Would you rather imitate a lamebrain or spend half an hour watching three of them slap each other?) Every year I call my parents on their anniversary and sing them Fred’s “Happy Anniversary” song (to the tune of the William Tell Overture):

Happy anniversary
Happy anniversary
Happy anniversary
HAPPPPPY anniversary!

We enjoy that, but I doubt we’d enjoy sitting through the entire episode where Fred buys Wilma a hot piano from 88 Fingers Louie and barely has time to sing “Happy Anniversary” before being hauled off to the hoosegow. Though I still think it’s funny that Fred was such a dope that he only remembered their anniversary because that year it fell on trash day.

In our house, whenever a deadline is looming and we’re almost out of time, we announce, “This is Operation Red Light. Repeat. Red Light!” But I’m not interested in rewatching that episode, in which Fred dressed up like Wilma and made meatballs out of golf balls to try to fool…oh forget it.

How did they make everything out of rocks?
There were many original songs on The Flintstones, including the Miss Water Buffalo theme (“O we’ve searched high and low/for Miss Water Buffalo”) and the opening number from Wilma’s Martha Stewart-style show, The Happy Housewife (this was about 10 years before The Happy Hooker): “Make your hubby happy/keep your hubby happy/when he’s a little chubby/he’s a happy pappy…”

And who can forget Wilma and Betty’s immortal car-hop jingle:

Here we come on the run
With a burger on a bun
And a dab of slaw on the side,
Oh your taste we will tickle
With a great dill pickle
And all of our potatoes are french fried, fried, fried,
Our burgers can’t be beat,
’Cause we grind our own meat,
Grind, grind, grind, grind, grind!

And when you’re on your way,
A tip upon our tray
We hope to find, find, find, find, find!
We hope to find, find, find, find, find!

Two Neolithic women in short skirts singing “grind, grind, grind, grind, grind” isn’t the same as The Commitmentettes pleading “Take me, take me, take me,” but it’s not bad for a prime-time cartoon circa 1961.

Fred worked in a gravel pit as a dino operator. Why did he always wear a tie?
Scholars agree that The Flintstones jumped the shark with Pebbles’ birth. A new baby is pretty much the end of any successful sitcom. Après Pebbles, The Flintstones went downhill like a load of rocks (Exhibits A and B: Bamm-Bamm and The Great Gazoo). Repeated attempts to build on The Flintstones‘ legacy have failed. Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm as teenagers? That’s not writing, that’s typing. Live-action movies? Torture. Fruity Pebbles cereal? Gross!

The Screaming Blue Messiahs are another example of Flintstones fail, only weirder. The Messiahs were a British punk outfit with hillbilly leanings. They were led by Bill Carter, who shaved his head at a time when that was still scary, or at least strange. He also played his electric guitar without a pick. He must’ve had adamantine claws for fingers.

The Messiahs remind me at times of their English predecessors, The Clash, and at other times of their Scottish contemporaries, Big Country. They were an intense trio of noisemakers for their era, but even their best album, Bikini Red (1987), has dimmed with age. And it wasn’t all that illuminated to start with. (I do like “Big Brother Muscle,” probably because it sounds like The Clash covering The Rolling Stones.)

“I Wanna Be a Flintstone” (“Dino is my dinosaur/His tail’s in the kitchen and his head’s out the door”) is nothing like the rest of the Messiahs’ catalog. It’s more like a crude copy of The B-52s’ “Private Idaho” as played by The Stray Cats. Naturally, this was the closest the Messiahs ever got to a hit and the only reason they’re remembered today. The song is funny the first few spins, and I admit I once used it at a party to repel boarders, but in true Flintstone fashion it soon becomes something you refer to rather than play. I either lost the record or gave it away as a door prize.

Someday maybe Fred will win what fight? And what happened to that cat?
When Fred was accidentally promoted to the executive suite (a trick every sitcom has used, including The Simpsons), an old hand told him that he could succeed in any business situation by using the following lines:

“What’s your angle?”
“Whose baby is that?”
“I’ll buy that.”

It worked for Fred and with a few variations it’s worked for me. I owe The Flintstones…but I’m not going to watch them. Not even if I was offered the director’s cut of the episode where Fred was cloned by invading aliens into Fred-like automatons who broke into people’s houses and stole their food while monotonously chanting “Yabba. Dabba. Do.” The next day in Bedrock the adults were all crabby. OK, now I’m laughing.

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