Bbucko
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- Oct 28, 2006
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Back at the height of the You Spin Me Round frenzy circa 1986 or so a concert tape of Dead or Alive made the rounds featuring Pete Burns and two bikini-clad go-go boys interacting in a frankly lascivious manner, not that previously anyone had any doubts as to his orientation (oddly successful marriage notwithstanding). I want to say that I saw it broadcast on MTV or VH1, but it's just as likely that we rented the tape.
Even so, having such explicitly, obviously gay entertainment was still at that time highly unusual. I can't imagine a straight guy of the era pausing for more than a moment to even consider it, and I can't recall Pete ever being popular with any of my female friends, either, except in the wink-wink-nudge-nudge kinda way fag hags let us know what's what.
But Dead or Alive was a vehicle for Pete Burns, no matter how talented the musicians actually were: I was reminded of Grace Jones' efforts earlier in the 80s. It ultimately wasn't about the music; it was about the star's being fabulous.
The B52's from the beginning were a real musical group with real musicians (Even Fred :redface
playing and singing songs they wrote themselves, and these songs helped define the newly-emerging gay marketplace. They did not invent camp or the application of self-conscious irony, but were the first I remember having pulled these two strands of gay sensibility together in a truly marketable way. Fred Schneider's voice was also the first unapologetically faggy voice I remember hearing in popular music, before Marc Almond's which was the second.There were no "codes" or hidden references in the B52-s music, and that made it especially dangerous (or alluring, depending on one's perspective). Everything, from the wigs to the album art to the actual music was high camp in a new way impossible to discern or even describe, as it's all become so familiar and cliché-ridden now.
The very first time I heard Planet Claire was at a very 70s Boston Disco that was only gay on Sunday nights. It was the size of an airplane hanger with a dance floor large enough for hundreds of people. Just as the crowd was peaking (in all ways of the term) and a typical song like Relight My Fire
(itself a Crisco Disco masterwork) was ending, that base line (stolen from Peter Gunn) started thumping through your body and all the lights would go dark, then spots panned the crowd, paying special attention to the drag queens on platforms elevated off the ground in their sweeps who had their hands on their heads as if searching for something. As the eerie sci-fi organ music started, the red lights came on (approximating the "pink air" I guess) and the entire crowd convulsed in a spontaneous shimmy. It was one of the defining moments of my young life (I was 20).
The B52's first album was a complete revelation when I bought it a few weeks later. Dance This Mess Around was very advanced for its time: spare, minimal instrumentation and shrieking vocals and highly self-consciously ironic lyrics that were both meaningless and gave us all a new vocabulary and manner of speaking. The entire album was like that from the very first listen. It was the first rock and roll album I bought in my adult life.
The second (red) album was, initially, something of a disappointment to me. I wanted them to explore further that dark, minimal, wailing sound just as they were layering and beefing things up. Devil in My Car, which was one of their first songs but pushed off the first album for some reason, had a full Wall-of-Sound treatment. Give Me Back My Man and Dirty Back Road (buttfucking, anybody?) are similarly cluttered with an aural horror vacui that at the time I found both unnecessary and practically Disco. But I grew to love it, of course.
They spent years touring when, in my opinion, they could have better spent their time creating, given Ricky Wilson's truncated life. Their Party Mix was a waste of $12; it only further embroidered songs that could/should have been pared down, and it felt like a money grab to me.
By the time Mesopotamia came out, I had completely moved on to much harder stuff and found the B52's old hat and a tad obvious (fickle youth), so I really didn't have any high expectations. But whatever hopes I had were crushed in the sloppy writing and unbelievably poor production by David Byrne. The title track did nothing for me (at the time), and the rest of the album was mastered in a soft, low fuzzy-buzzy way that turned me off completely. Cake was a complete failure for me: it's sluggish, obvious and stupid. The double-entendre "rap" between Cindy and Kate is flaccid and meaningless: is "pineapple upsidedown cake" supposed to be naughty after such great stuff as Lava (Fred: "I'm gonna jump in the crater"; Girls: "See ya later".)
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