(Island, 1979)Straight up: there’s nothing at all to dislike here. Nothing. Willfully brain-dead un-lyrics, trebly almost-surf guitar stabs, Yoko-infected girl-group backing vox, ham-fisted organ, crisp discopunk drumming… Yikes! And dig the way the song twists itself into truly nasty ROCK in the last minute. Never has an effective goof succeeded so beautifully, so monumentally. The backside (“Running Around”) is slight, but it’s still a reasonably exciting, garagey, skinny-tie dance-piece that’s about as far away as you can FLEE from the soulless camp of latter-day horrors like “Love Shack” and “Good Stuff.” What HAPPENED to these guys?? Check out this live video and report back a true believer. Self-parodic as the band has long since become, it’s entertaining and impressive to realize that this stuff, had it been fresh outta the womb, would’ve been ruling New York City party circles in 2007.
1 comment:
and they LOOK like they belong in a John Waters' film, and a John Waters film got made into a big-budget flick recently, so... maybe it's time for a B-52s biopic with cameos from the Talking Heads, Devo, The Go-Gos and Blondie...
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