I know they are probably more remembered for their early 90s kitschy pop tunes but the B-52s used to be an amazing but quirky post punk band with all that trademark energy. They came from Athens which is an accomplishment in itself since bands like Pylon(an amazing band!), REM, Drive By Truckers, Widespread Panic, Danger Mouse, Indigo Girls, and many of the Elephant 6 bands like Olivia Tremor Control & Neutral Milk Hotel came from that same scene.

With Ricky Wilson they had this great rough guitar sound that sounded like the American answer to Joseph K. Interestingly, Wilson played with the two middle strings missing and had his guitar split to cover bass and guitar duties at once since the B-52s had no traditional bass player. The Low E was tuned down to C, A down to G, and then the B tuned down to F, and the high E down to G#. Sadly Ricky died from AIDS in the mid 80s - one of the first semi-well known musicians to succumb to complications of the disease and unfortunately not the last.

For this post I’ll feature a video from one of their early performances -right before they started to gain prominence. The poster of these videos actually was the guy who shot this footage in college and is trying to get it released to a DVD format sometime in the near future. I wish him all the luck because this looked like one hell of a show and a rare snapshot into the live performance of one the very best post punk/new wave band around and if I may say so - the best “almost everyone in the band is gay” band ever!

I also want to point out in this clip that Fred Schneider is playing a Disney wooden piano box(:52 seconds in)  with a children’s learning book attached from the 50s. You can see it more clearly in some other performances of this song. Kind of like the kids easy music books now with the cheesy piano section on the side only this was from the 50s and had a big box attached and likely some type of real piano hammers in it. Kind of cool to see musicians in the late 70s creating music with toys.  Also note the weird half baked choreography for the first few verses.

Dance This Mess Around by the B-52s

I guess the author doesn’t want this embedded so you’ll just have to follow my link instead.