Good Stuff is a frothy, swinging party sound track that happily disproves the theorem that one mellows with age. Kate Pierson and Fred Schneider, who are now pushing 40, sing about such unpressing issues as hot pants and UFOs with the same endearingly twisted enthusiasm they had when they first broke out of Athens, GA, in the late '70s. On Good Stuff, however, the B's have tempered their signature slaphappiness with a distinctly topical point of view: "Bad Influence" is an indictment of corruption in government; "The World's Green Laughter" is a wordless environmental plea, made all the more sincere by Pierson's seamless harmonizing with an assortment of recorded birdcalls.
The B-52's have been associated with activism for years (long before it was chic) and have raised considerable amounts of money through their many benefit concerts. Their songs became increasingly explicit and issue oriented in the late '80s, following the death in 1985 of founding B-52 Ricky Wilson of AIDS. "Early on, we were very wary of doing political songs; we didn't want to sound preachy or insincere," says guitarist Keith Strickland. "But after Ricky passed away, we re-evaluated what we were doing. We felt [there were] things that needed to be said. We just wanted to do more."
"Good Stuff has more political content than any of our previous albums," adds Schneider, "because we felt that now is the time to speak out. You have to evolve with the times, but you also have to stay true to yourselves. That's why we still touch on subjects that are dear to our hearts: like hot pants."
The band's unconventional style is inseparable from their music. Pierson and former co-singer Cindy Wilson (who left the B-52's just before the recording of Good Stuff) created the group's visual image with their sky-high bouffant wigs, trashy prom dresses and Courreges-goes-Halloween sensibility. "We definitely like to let our freak flags fly," says Pierson, "but our wild image stereotyped us. We were written off for a long time as 'those wacky wigsters from Athens.'"
Their 1989 release, Cosmic Thing, enabled them to shake that perception somewhat. The album was a critical and commercial success and gave the band renewed credibility, not to mention a bit more money. "In the early days, we dressed the way we did because we were broke," says Schneider. "We'd shop in thrift stores for nasty wild-color horrors - the more outrageous the better. Now that we can afford more, we buy expensive wild-color horrors."
Much has been made of the band's apparent vintage-chic, and they feel they've been grossly misinterpreted. "People have always said we were trying to do the '60s," says Schneider, "that our music was disposable and we were kitschy. But, actually, we've been a '90s band for the last twelve years."
