Panic at the Funplex!

In the early 1980s I saw a bunch of classic New Wave musicians (and a few major punk ones) live in concert, and I’ve always been so glad to have had those experiences. Joe Jackson, the Pretenders (whom I saw before half the band died of drug overdoses and Chrissy Hynde went through her born-again phase), Elvis Costello, Devo, Bow Wow Wow and the Ramones gave amazing concerts, full of energy, pop and fizz. I also saw the fun-but-nothing-special bands that were good for a laugh but had limited staying power, like Split Enz, Flock of Seagulls and Sparks, and I heard some who should have made it bigger, like San Francisco's Romeo Void and Bonnie Hayes. I remember that period fondly, cringe a little to think of the dance clothes I wore, and smile to think of bouncing around in tiny clubs or huge auditoria for hours, carefully avoiding the mosh pits and drunken elbow-flingers. (I didn't drink so my reflexes were pretty good.) After the silliness of the disco era, it was great to hear lyrics with a bit of cynical wit, and to hear the angry young men and bouncy young women talk about what mattered (or didn’t), shake people up, and then laugh at themselves when they got too serious. Some early eighties, over-synthethized music is just laughable today, and the poseurs and big-haired, big-shouldered singers in the videos from that time are a hoot to watch, but a lot of the music is still quite fresh and delicious.

One of the biggest, brightest and best bands of the early eighties was the B-52s. They sounded like nobody else, and their campy wit, the harmonic warbles of Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, Fred Schneider’s nasal sprechgesang (spoken-song) delivery and the magnificent, neverending energy and bounce of Ricky Wilson and Keith Strickland’s instrumentals made them one of the best dance bands of all time, period. They were fearless and embraced the ridiculous. In fact, the name of the group comes from the extra-tall beehive hairdos Kate and Cindy used to wear on stage; they resembled the noses of B-52 bombers. I had the great pleasure and good fortune to see them twice in the early eighties, and those concerts remain among the most delightful in my memory.

In 1985, Ricky Wilson, older brother to Cindy, died from complications from AIDS, and the group went quiet for two years. They had a resurgence in the late eighties and actually gained their biggest mainstream commercial successes after that; “Love Shack” and “Roam” are hits from that era, and while I enjoy those songs a great deal, they were a little more polished than the early B-52s I loved so well and had a bit less of the raw, wild energy that made them so great to begin with.

When I heard they were releasing their first original album in sixteen years this spring, I was both delighted and trepidatious; their early works were so original, unselfconscious, witty and, most of all, danceable, I hoped that they would stay true to their roots, and not go all serious and sensitive on me, like Debbie Harry and Cyndi Lauper did for a time after their big bold New Wave beginnings. All four of the remaining B-52s are in their fifties, and I hoped they hadn’t grown up too completely and hadn’t learned to be afraid of the ridiculous.

Hooray! They haven’t. Their new album, “Funplex,” is strong, tightly produced but still fresh, and the B-52s still sound like, well, the B-52s. Their title song, “Funplex,” mocks America’s love affair with the shopping mall and our emotional attachment to spending money and seeking out instant pleasure with a credit card, but between Fred’s shouting out “Misery at the Funplex!” and Kate and Cindy’s lines about breaking hearts at the Taco Tiki Hut are addictive riffs and kitchy, catchy hooks.

My daughter Lily and I particularly enjoy “Funplex,” “Keep This Party Going” and “Juliet of the Spirits,” but the whole album is quite listenable and, of course, danceable. That’s why we’ll be seeing them in July when they come to Seattle with Cyndi Lauper, Joan Armatrading and others on the True Colors concert tour, which will benefit the Human Rights Campaign, an organization which advocates on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender/transsexual rights. We figure we’ll be dancing all day so we need to work out our dancing muscles regularly before then. Our current regimen includes dancing to “Funplex” and their 1983 “Whammy” album during after-dinner firefights with our atomic blasters (foam rayguns that shoot air-propelled foam projectiles). If someone had told me in 1983 that I’d be listening to fresh B-52s tunes while screaming, dancing and dodging my teen daughter’s foam missle attacks 25 years later, I would have been so happy. Sometimes dreams do come true.