OTR: The B-52's - Time Capsule

[illusionofjoy]

I really need more rack space to store my CDs. At the moment, I have several albums sitting out loose and unsorted, which drives me insane. It also has the side-effect that, in attempting to listen to every artist in alphabetical order, things get overlooked (Windows Media Player exacerbates this problem by refusing to organise things in proper alphabetical order - i.e.: last name first and ignoring "The" and "A" among other things). So, Big Audio Dynamite managed to sneak in ahead of the B-52's.

I've never really bothered looking at The B-52's in depth, my knowledge throughout the years extending to "Love Shack" (which everyone knows), "Rock Lobster" and "Roam" - all introduced to me via videos played on VH1. Incidentally, I know I mention VH1 a lot when I reference being introduced to pop music when I was younger. Unlike the children of the 1980s who actually grew up in and faced their teenage years in the 1980s, I actually grew up in the 1990s. So, all of the 80s music in my collection is the result of...some sort temporal displacement? A gnawing insatiable desire to have been born a decade earlier? Whatever it is, I did not come upon much pop music via MTV - for one thing, my mother, thinking it obscene, had blocked it from the cable box (not that I didn't know how to circumvent her lock). Also, by the time I had an awareness and an interest in pop music, MTV was headed downhill into the reality TV morass it is today. "The Real World" was the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, VH1 was picking up the slack and since their target audience skewed slightly older, there was plenty of 1970s and 1980s "retro" programming filling up their timeslots.

Time Capsule is actually a very recent purchase for me. Although there was a copy sitting on the racks at WAIH, I don't ever recall pulling it out. I also don't think I ever played "Love Shack," instead opting for the vinyl containing all six and half minutes of "Rock Lobster." Still, the reason for the purchase was that I knew my friends, whose wedding I'm DJing in the Fall, will want to hear "Love Shack." It is, put simply, one of those essential party songs. Of course, this whole CD is a party record - the B-52's are like Oingo Boingo sans sarcasm. (What? You thought that "Only A Lad" was happy song?)

Incidentally, the group is releasing a new album, Funplex on March 25^th. Aside from that, I know that Fred Schneider has been keeping busy with his show on Sirius 22 (First Wave), named after the B-52's track "Party Out Of Bounds." I caught the programme during my trip to New York and Vermont last Fall, as the rental was equipped was a satellite radio receiver. It was a quite entertaining mix of dance and party music. Reading up on it later, I discovered that Schneider does the programme live and forgoes using any CDs, instead playing every song off of his sizeable collection of vinyl records (over 60,000 LPs and 12"), which he hauls to the Sirius studios each week. Now that's hardcore.