Like Polio or cancer, artistic inspiration can strike anywhere. Take Athens, Georgia, for example. Situated sixty miles north-east of Atlanta, this drowsy community (1977 population: 52,000) is beloved by inhabitants for its mosquitoes, good library and the red Oconee River that runs through it. But fame is a harsh mistress. Five local boosters are now forced by the exigencies of success to live in places like Carmelita's Reception House on New York's Fourteenth Street until they find a home outside the city. They are the B-52's, and their rise to prominence has been impressively swift. They may be Athens' most notable export; the citizenry, however, was probably glad to be rid of them.
"Most people hated us," recalls Ricky Wilson, the group's soft-spoken, baby-faced guitarist. Sitting in an office at Warner Bros., he picks at his salad. "We would disrupt parties and stuff."
"I had bricks thrown at me," says drummer Keith Stickland. "We were physically thrown out of discos. We would dance a little strangely and look a little strange."
"We wore high heels on our heads," singer-keyboards player Kate Pierson explains. "Everyone would clear the dance floor when we got up to dance."
Such bizarrerie was bound for greater glory. With vocalists Fred Schneider III and Cindy Wilson (Ricky's sister), the B-52's first jammed together in October 1976. They liked what they heard and formally debuted at a friend's Valentine's Day party in 1977. After two more gigs on the Athens party circuit, the B-52's took the plunge, went to New York and opened at Max's Kansas City in December 1977. It was their first performance without the aid of backing tracks. Three more New York trips followed, each creating a bigger buzz - although back in Athens the band only performed every couple of months. Warner Bros. caught on by spring 1979 and signed the B-52's for the U.S. (In England they're on Island, whose owner, Chris Blackwell, produced their LP himself.)
The B-52's succeeded - at least in New York - because they had a fresh outlook. While other groups thrashed around in the New Wave-punk ashes, the B-52's emerged with a full-blown aesthetic that seemed to issue from some fourth dimension. Visually, the band is a throwback to the Sixties, if not earlier. Cindy and Kate affect miniskirts, go-go boots and beehive hairdos onstage (the band's name is Southern slang for bouffant), while Fred likes seersucker coats and pleated pants.
Their music is stripped down to a danceable pulse, simple riffs that rarely use more than a couple of chords. Cindy and Kate sing in girl-group unison or piercingly alone; Fred's jagged baritone provides relief. Ricky's four-string Mosrite (the middle two strings are missing), shown on the album's inner sleeve, is no joke; it has to be that way, he explains, to achieve the right gutty sound. Whimsical lyrics, some of them cowritten by Fred and Kate, deal with the pink air of "Planet Claire" (where "no one has a head"); "all sixteen dances," unfortunately not all specified in "Dance This Mess Around"; and a horror-movie, beach-party saga, "Rock Lobster."
Seen live, Cindy and Fred are a terpsichorean delight - frugging, camel walking and performing the escalator, the shy tuna and twelve other dances. But despite their onstage confidence, the B-52's are reticent, though polite - perhaps reflecting their newness the music business. Surprisingly - for a band that sports bouffants, quotes the Shangri-Las and covers Petula Clark's "Downtown" - they seem annoyed at critics' concentration on their Sixties camp aspects.
"We never thought of it as being camp," claims Kate. Fred adds, "We're not trying to digest the Sixties and shit it out. We're not trying to be a throwback to anything. We don't analyze, we just take ourselves for granted." "People are afraid of the unknown," Kate concludes.
Still, Fred admits a fascination for early-Sixties girl groups. "They were always mysterious. You'd see 'em on Clay Cole, for instance, and they'd just be sitting on these stools singing. You could hardly see their eyes because of their hair. It seemed real exotic."
"They're funny, too," Cindy offers - at twenty-two, she's lucky to remember the genre firsthand. So much for camp.
The band members' personal tastes range from Peruvian singer Yma Sumac to Bootsy Collins to Fifties electronic music to film composer Nino Rota to Captain Beefheart. (Under the influence of Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, one week Keith dressed in drag and played hi-hat cymbals on a street corner.) There is some Beefheartian wordplay in their lyrics; science fiction is another point of reference. Keith: "We all really like that atmosphere." Fred: "My favorite kind of movie." Ricky wears a T-shirt emblazoned with UFOs and the legend "LOOK TO THE SKIES!"
The B-52's retain a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude about rock trendiness. "None of us likes hype," Fred says. "I enjoy performing, but once I'm offstage I don't want people to recognize me." "Like Kiss," Kate suggests.
Nor do they seem cowed by possible shifts in fortune. After about one and a half years as professional musicians, the B-52's have no doubts as to what they would do if the dream suddenly ended. Cindy would go back waitressing; Ricky to his job selling tickets at a bus station; Kate to raising goats; and Fred "would have a farmhouse somewhere and say, 'See ya' - or I'd be at the bottom of the Oconee River.
"Our parents are more excited than we are."
