June 27 1989 saw the release of one of the great 'let your hair down' records of them all. Yes, Cosmic Thing by the B-52's came roaring out 35 years ago today! It is a story of tragic loss, recovery and the unifying force of music.
The LP, part produced by legendary funk King Nile Rodgers (who really should need no introduction), and partly by another Grammy winning legend, Don Was (he has six of them, for the record - and has produced the likes of the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, John Mayer and Garth Brooks), was released on Reprise Records and became the ninth best selling album of the year, in the US.
It marked something of a comeback for the band, being the first new work since the tragic death of founder member Ricky Wilson, of an AIDS related illness, back in 1985. He had died during the final effort to complete Bouncing Off The Satellites, meaning there was no impetus to promote or tour that record.
Keith Strickland told Billboard, "After Ricky died, we felt the band was finished. We couldn't imagine going on without him." But the band didn't end with his death, they merely went on a bit of a hiatus.
Although it took four years to get to the next record, the genesis of it happened much sooner. Strickland recalls, "I moved to Woodstock in the summer of 86 and rented a little cabin on a pond off Wittenberg Road that was covered with lily pads and abundant with wildlife. It was idyllic and very healing. I wrote the instrumental portion of the songs [there]."
Wilson's death pushed Strickland to move from drums towards the guitar, and also left him as the principle songwriter in the band. And it was also he that urged the band to get back together, to create something of a healing process. "We spent a lot of time just talking, and we needed that. We were our own support group after Ricky's passing, which was a very traumatic thing for all of us, and in particular for Cindy [Ricky's sister and bandmate, Cindy Wilson]."
With the music that was emerging, "I wanted to keep some connection with what Ricky had done.... He was a key ingredient in our sound, and I just didn't want that to disappear, " Strickland told Rolling Stone in 1990.
Strickland's efforts were not unnoticed by his bandmates, with lead singer Fred Schneider telling Billboard, "Keith is a very underrated musician. The music he brought us for Cosmic Thing, we thought, was brilliant and inspiring. There was some trepidation about doing another record, but once we heard the music and got to jamming, everything fell into place really quickly."
The album itself:
Cosmic Thing somehow conveys an old time feeling, perhaps not unsurprising given the overtones of rock n roll and surf music that the B-52s always brought to the plate. But you don't have to take my word for it, Cindy Wilson would say that it had a "rural, kind of Southern, dusty feeling to it... It was about nostalgia. It was looking back at the good times we used to have in Athens, so it was a wonderful, healing record."
The album opens with the title track, which had also been featured a year earlier as a promo single for the movie, Earth Girls Are Easy, starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans. As one reviewer noted, the song was "an awesome slice of bouncy, wig-tossing, bodacious fun." Dry County is "leavened by a sauntering rhythm.... it's downright funky", or so said Mark Ellis Walker in his review. Deadbeat Club reflected back on the bands early days in Athens, Georgia, where they would laze around with nothing particular to do - so their parents would refer to them as deadbeats.
Cosmic Thing (Official - live - music video)
Track four is the first banger. Love Shack hit number three in the US and two in the UK, and was actually the last track recorded for the album and had to be trimmed down from its original fifteen minutes of jamming. This one was inspired by a little club just outside Athens called the Hawaiian Ha-Le, a nondescript but jumping little juke joint the band knew. The side closes with Junebug, which had been the first track completed, with wildlife sounds recorded next to Keith Strickland's pond.
Side two opens with the second memorable hit - Roam; with its gorgeous harmonised vocals from Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, and the only track not to feature Schneider singing on. Bushfire, according to Walker, "delivers a double or triple load of impressions and messages, varying from the cinematic landscapes to a sense of personal transformation, catalytic moments to tribal community ritual."
Roam (Live in Athens, GA - 2011)
Channel Z is a straight up political song, pondering on the state of late 80s USA, before the album closes out with the beautiful, mellow tones of Topaz (the harmonies on here are pretty fantastic) and the slightly trippy instrumental, Follow Your Bliss.
Topaz (Audio only)
What they said:
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, looking back on the record for AllMusic, called it "a first class return to form", noting the band had "updated their sound with shining new surfaces and deep, funky grooves."
Ian Wade noted for his BBC review that the album is "chiming with positivity and fun times the awaiting 90s had to offer, and becoming their most successful album to date." Jim Farber said somewhat obliquely in Rolling Stone that the sound was "on summer vacation, hanging out in the heat, fashioning insouciant odes to sloth", while Kristine McKenna writing in the LA Times, was a little more straightforward, stating that the record was "remarkably fresh" and that it "may shape up to be the record you hear at every party this summer."
Love Shack: the video
Many of you will remember the classic party video for Love Shack (which won MTV Video of the Year) - and if you don't see below to remind yourself.
Director, Adam Bernstein, didn't really want to leave New York City to do a shoot, preferring to find a studio in the city, but once he saw the location the band had found, he changed his mind. It was a small building in the woods of upstate New York, owned by ceramicists Philip Mayberry and Scott Walker, who when they heard the track said, "Oh my God, you have to do the video in this house, It literally is the Love Shack!"
The video also saw a public debut for one Ru Paul, who was trying to get the dance line going - they were trying to recreate the Soul Train dance; and with Bernstein not sure what was going on, Paul was left to pretty much direct the scene. In the end the party in the video pretty much was an actual party, including a bunch of friends of the band having a good time.
I bought the album on cassette when it came out, I have it somewhere on CD now - and listening back, it still, for the most part, holds up really well after 35 years. So if you need a reason to smile or something to pick you up - just click on any of the video links above and that should do the trick.
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