One thing about the B52s in their early days was their unwillingness to fuck with the formula. Someone might have had a talk with them along the lines of: this is going to be a hard thing for the mass market to swallow so if you're going to launch this on the world in any sense, you have to basically not deviate from it thereafter.
I shouldn't pronounce on this because to be honest I don't remember ever having heard a full B52s album aside from the first two (there have been seven plus an EP that's about as long as most albums,* still, a pretty tiny output for a group that's been in existence for 45 years - it's one song every 219 days, including cover versions.
I have really hurt my back. I am not sure how it happened I think it was when I was trying to put a harness on Nancy to slowly introduce her to the idea of going for a walk on a lead. I have completely abandoned that idea, not because it was hard to get the harness on, though it was, but because when we got to the door she didn't want to do it and indeed turned around and got out of the harness almost immediately. I guess at that stage I wasn't that aware of having pain but it developed soon afterwards with a vengeance. Now it's that interesting situation where you start to get a vague idea not of how your muscles work but that they certainly do have a complex arrangement when you go to do things. It's not great lying down completely, it's better sitting, it's initially uncomfortable but ultimately fine standing/walking, but getting between those states is really, really painful. I'm not here to whinge, it's better this morning than it was last night, as long as I don't throw to many discuses or play too much squash I am sure I'll be fine.
Side two of Wild Planet only has four songs on it, of varying durabilities. As usual the comedy component is the thing that wears out first, so 'Quiche Lorraine' for instance which reeks of mid-to-late-70s improv and which doesn't even really stand up too well (I know what that's like) on first listening, is the most throwaway (also the storyline makes me uneasy). '53 Miles of Venus' is a kind of faster, sparser 'Planet Claire' and while its emptiness is perfectly evocative of emptiness, and it's a good thing it doesn't have any lyrics (aside from the words which make up the title) so there's no riff on Venus (wolf whistle) Mars (hunting horns or something else warlike) Pluto (woof woof) Uranus (uh-oh), it still feels unfinished. That, or it's a pleasant wind-down after the frenetic work out of the previous eight tracks.
'Devil in my Car' is possibly the hidden delight of the album and a song I had never really thought about before. If you slowed it down, oddly enough, it would be not unlike one of REM's hits, I can't remember which one because it's too hard to think of one tune while listening to another, but I think maybe 'Radio Free Europe'. It has a little more of an Americana, country feel to it, the - um, bridge? (the 'freeway to hell' bit) - is a bit reminiscent of American X, too, something like 'White Girl'. In any case, it's a keeper.
I bought the single pictured above of 'Strobe Light'/ 'Dirty Back Road' when it came out, forty years ago, and unlike so many things I have retained it ever after. They are good songs (I like 'Dirty Back Road' the best) but I don't know why the hell I purchased this, considering I could have bought the whole album for a bit more outlay. Anyway - 'Strobe Light' is a pretty interesting take on, sorry to come back to this but all things considered - a pretty interesting take on heterosexual lovemaking/seduction - the thing where Fred rings the girls and they respond with such contempt/disgust/ennui is still pretty funny to me. The later bit about kissing the pineapple, I don't know where to go with that but I will sit with it.
So looking back on the whole, this album is completely formulaic, in the sense that it's to the formula of the first album and every track is a parallel universe version of tracks from that album; they're not entirely in the same sequence but they almost are (admittedly there's no equivalent to the 'Downtown' cover on The B-52's on Wild Planet but that is by far the weakest track and poorest performance, so there being no quavery/sullen 'Que Sera Sera' or 'The Beat Goes On' here is a plus. Wild Planet is just slightly more electro (I think the drums on 'Quiche Lorraine' are drum machine, for instance, and come to think of it that might also be true of '53 Miles West of Venus').
Thanks for indulging me in this I had a good time. Now to get comfortable to do my real work - 1500 words of book chapter at least.
*Wild Planet has nine tracks and is just under 35 minutes long; the 'European version' of Mesopotamia, which was marketed as an EP, has six tracks and is six seconds shy of 33 minutes long. The 'European version' is, according to discogs, 'much more raw and electronic'. The US version (which is also the Australian, and the Canadian, version) is 25:43 minutes long.
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