Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no limburger!

January 25, 2016 6:52 AM

Oh it's time to do 'em right. Early concert footage of The B-52's. Hey now, don't that make you feel a whole lot better? Stream The B-52's Live! 8-24-1979. They do all 16 dances:

Do the Coo-ca-choo: The B-52's live in Atlanta 1978
Do the Aqua-velva: The B-52's live in New Jersey 1980
Do the Dirty Dog: The B-52's live in Dortmund 1983
Do the Escalator: The B-52's Rock in Rio 1985

Audio only
Shake: Live At Max's Kansas City 1977
Bake: Live at WSAI 94.1 FM Chicago 1978

posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide (26 comments total)

What'chu say?!
posted by SansPoint at 7:17 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't really miss being 15 years old but I do miss 1979.
posted by octothorpe at 7:21 AM on January 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

Hey! I'm sitting at Jittery Joe's in Athens, Georgia, at a table that has their 1981 "Party Mix!" album cover under its glass. Thanks for this post. The B-52s have never not been awesome.
posted by staggering termagant at 7:32 AM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

Hell. To the Yes.
posted by Bob Regular at 7:54 AM on January 25, 2016

What a great time for music. It seemed like a new sound or band was breaking every day. And, oddly, in hindsight, it seemed much easier to keep up with it all back then than it does today, even with things like the web, and streaming, and iTunes and Amazon stores etc. etc.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:58 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Totally fab. Thank you!
posted by Empty Planet at 8:06 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Downtown Cafe - that is a place before my time. I was 11 when that gig happened. 688 Club was the happening place by the time I was in high school.

It's very strange to reflect that New Wave and punk were starting up at about exactly the same time that I started to listen to pop music on my new clock radio (digging the hits like "Night Moves" and "New Kid In Town", no doubt).
posted by thelonius at 8:13 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Years ago, I read an interview with Kate Pierson where she mentioned that they worked all of these gaudy, sexy routines out while practicing in the former embalming room of the mortuary-turned-Mexican-restaurant where Fred Schneider was a waiter. That stuck with me.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:16 AM on January 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

they worked all of these gaudy, sexy routines out while practicing in the former embalming room of the mortuary-turned-Mexican-restaurant where Fred Schneider was a waiter.

If they ever try making a B-52s biopic (or at least a docudrama about the Athens, GA scene in general) these details have to be in there. It sounds like a John Waters movie come to life.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:30 AM on January 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Not to be a Total Garfield, but oh my christ is this exactly what I need on a Monday.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:33 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's very strange to reflect that New Wave and punk were starting up at about exactly the same time that I started to listen to pop music on my new clock radio (digging the hits like "Night Moves" and "New Kid In Town", no doubt).

First wave punk was over and done with in both the US and UK by '77 at the latest, and we'd already moved through several waves of post-punk (of which the B52s and other bands grouped together as "new wave" were part of) by '79. Stranger still to reflect on is how pretty much every genre of music was mashed together, combining + recombining seemingly limitlessly and at bewildering speeds, in the 70s. For a decade that gets a lazy dismissal as a musical wasteland, it was actually almost endlessly rich.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:52 AM on January 25, 2016

maybe if you count a bunch of garage rock bands as punk
posted by thelonius at 9:03 AM on January 25, 2016

Bizarre. Just playing Dance this Mess Around very loud yesterday when the kids walked in with their 'what the fuck is this look'. Oh, just a song from one of the best records ever made, kiddies!! Cool post.
posted by repoman at 9:07 AM on January 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

What'chu say?!

I'm just asking.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:15 AM on January 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Dismissed as a musical wasteland by whom? The very worst 60s nostalgists?

Now the B-52s are a band that is often unfairly dismissed by people who haven't heard the early stuff.
posted by atoxyl at 9:45 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

The B-52s and Joy Division were the two best post-punk dance bands of the late-'70s/early-'80s.


People say she's from Mars
Or one of the seven starts
That shine after 3:30 in the morning
WELL SHE ISN'T
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:57 AM on January 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

In 2000, I took a solo road trip from New York to Las Vegas, going on all the two-lane highways and deliberately looking for tacky Americana roadside kitsch.

One of the CDs I brought with me, which ended up in heavy rotation, was the greatest-hits double-album Nude On The Moon, which I can attest is absolutely perfect for such trips.

Years later, I saw them live for free, thanks to a periodic series of free summer concerts down on Coney Island. Leading up to the show, they had two video screens flanking the stage, and people were encouraged to tweet messages to a given hashtag and see them projected on the screen. About five minutes before showtime someone tweeted some of the lyrics to "Mesopotamia", and a guy in the crowd next to me scoffed to his friends that "yeah, like they're ever gonna play that song". Then five minutes later, when the band took the stage, guess what they started with....

(About 20 minutes later I actually moved further back in the crowd when I saw a little cluster of college kids who were dancing like crazy, which was what I wanted to do - so I grabbed my chair and all my other stuff, ran back to join them, threw my stuff on the ground and turned to this girl beside me and she and I proceeded to get low to "Private Idaho".)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:27 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh god, you just sent me down the Quiche Lorraine rabbit hole. Thank you so much.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:57 AM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

SOOO many good times were thanks to the B-52s! Perhaps not the best band in rock history, but you have to admit that there was nothing going on anywhere--let alone GEORGIA--in the 1970s that sounded anything like this.
posted by applemeat at 11:06 AM on January 25, 2016

They still have their chops, too. Funplex is a great album, and is full of modern anthems to being weird in the world just like their first album. I can't count how many times I've danced alone in my living room to Eyes Wide Open, and Deviant Ingredient is just awesome. And so much more. Seriously, if you get the chance to see them perform on any of their current tours, you won't be disappointed.

I do hope they find the inspiration to do just one more album. It's been 8 years since Funplex, and none of us are getting any younger.
posted by hippybear at 12:41 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I always thought that "Why don't you dance with me? I'm not no limburger!" was my generations cri de cœur. I don't think my generation agreed with me, but I stand by it.
posted by benito.strauss at 1:03 PM on January 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

5-year-old me got the "Private Idaho" 45 from her (musician) dad's (music store employee)'s friend. I think it's fair to say they bear some part of the blame in how I turned out.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 2:23 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I saw the B52s for free, on the beach even!, at a post-half-marathon concert (my dad ran the half marathon, not me). The best part for me was my father shrieking like a fanboy when "Private Idaho" began.
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:09 PM on January 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

Ricky Wilson, man, dig that flat round sound! He's got Dick Dale on the run, baby!

Still though, there's something funny about that Fred Schneider guy. You know what I mean!
posted by petebest at 6:57 PM on January 25, 2016

Party out of bounds,... I got into so much trouble bashing a hole through the dry-wall of a friend's apartment. Well, it was a dance party.

My goodness these clips bring back some fun memories.
posted by cleroy at 8:14 PM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

My mondegreen for Planet Claire was "I'm not no liver girl" as in "what am I, chopped liver?" And you know I am old because the only option to look up lyrics before the internet was the sheet music shop where the B-52s mostly weren't.
posted by gingerest at 2:00 AM on January 26, 2016