Six weeks after the B-52s released their brilliant first album in the hot new wave summer of 1979, they found themselves on-stage in Boston opening for Talking Heads. Some brilliant person decided it would be a good night to record the band; some less brilliant person buried the tape in the Warner Bros. vault for decades. Finally released in 2015 as Live! 8-24-1979, the performance includes songs from both the first album and Wild Planet, and features the B-52s ripping heartily through the songs like they were dedicated to giving the crowd the night of their lives. Decades later the effect is still the same.
Among the first American new wave acts to break through to mainstream visibility, the B-52s became one of the biggest success stories to emerge from the American underground in the late '70s. Making music that was full of quirks but also sounded friendly and fun to dance to, the B-52s filtered surf music, '60s pop, vintage soul, and low-budget sci-fi soundtracks through a pop culture kaleidoscope, with vocals laid over the top that suggested someone had been listening to a lot of Yoko Ono and Yma Sumac records…
Six weeks after the B-52s released their brilliant first album in the hot new wave summer of 1979, they found themselves on-stage in Boston opening for Talking Heads. Some brilliant person decided it would be a good night to record the band; some less brilliant person buried the tape in the Warner Bros. vault for decades. The performance includes songs from both the first album and Wild Planet, and features the B-52s ripping heartily through the songs like they were dedicated to giving the crowd the night of their lives. Decades later the effect is still the same.
Opening with “Legal Tender,” a paean to counterfeiting, "Whammy" is the B-52s’ return to form after the previous year’s David Byrne-led detour into more experimental territory ("Mesopotamia)....