Rock Lobster by the B-52's

[Marquee Mark]

I've never not liked the B-52's. (And let's make this clear... you can despise Love Shack and still love the other stuff. )

Yes, they've become terribly dated and camp... and they probably wisely switched to retro/oldies/nostalgia mode as early as possible. But damn... the first album has a menace and a ferocity to counter the kitschy kookiness. (Listen to Friendly Fred Schneider growl and snarl his way through the end of Planet Claire if you don't believe me.)

I've been hearing micro-snippets of Rock Lobster on some radio station commercial, and it makes me stop what I'm doing for those 3 seconds. It reminded me of a summer my family spent in Florida, just as my sister and I discovered the magic of Top 40 radio.

In the middle of the soft rock and stadium AOR, every once in awhile, this alien transmission would cut into the signal. This nasal-voiced guy would be talking about narwhals and bikini whales over the most screwed up attempt at Wipeout by The Surfaris. We never heard a DJ announce it, nor did anything else like it seem to exist on the radio.

If only one of us had heard it, there's no way the other would have believed it. As it was, we felt we had to keep this song to ourselves. It was too weird, too implausible, too insane to share with someone else. (In fact, it took us at least a year to find the "Lobster" record by... "some guy.")

I've started listening to the early B-52's stuff again. And damn, Rock Lobster has only gotten better. I actually get the jokes now (Beach Blanket Bingo, Land of 1,000 Dances, all that) and I have been hooked by all of the hooks, but the song retains such a unique singularity -- and a sheer joy. As Fred would say "Let's rawwwwwwk."

--Marquee Mark

P.S. And no, I won't post about the B-52's without mentioning Mesopotamia. For a record that was rejected by the label and discredited by the band, it's one doozy of a tease for the bizarro universe B-52's that should have been freaking us out from 1982 forward.
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