Nude Photograpy

After the Stray Cats broke up, Brian Setzer took a long walk from his rockabilly past with his first solo album, 1986's The Knife Feels Like Justice, but while it was a fine LP and a modest success, later that year the Stray Cats reunited for the first of many times to record Rock Therapy, and by the time Setzer made his way back to the studio on his own, he'd seemingly grown tired of his new heartland rock gestures and dove back into the retro style that had made his name. While 1988's Live Nude Guitars leans toward rockabilly and uptempo roots rock, the production (mostly by Setzer and Larson Paine, though Dave Stewart and Chris Thomas work on a few tracks) is a lot slicker than anything the Stray Cats ever put to wax, and the big, glossy sound of "Rockability," "Red Lightning Blues," and "She Thinks I'm Trash" tends to work against the songs, and the synthesizer line and drum machine on "When the Sky Comes Tumblin' Down" are simply cringe-inducing.

The B-52's were one of the great new wave bands, one of the ones who defined the style and cut one of the great records of their time (their eponymous debut), an outfit who maintained a dedicated following even as they fell off the radar of critics and hipsters, a group who overcame a tragic loss (guitarist Ricky Wilson) to make a startling, unpredictable comeback that launched them beyond college radio and to the top of the pop charts. It's a hell of a story, even if the final act was decidedly anticlimatic (after one follow-up to the Cosmic Thing comeback, 1992's Good Stuff, the group essentially disappeared apart from an embarrassing version of the Flintstones theme for the 1993 big-screen adaptation), and they're easily one of the more legendary bands of their time.