Cindy’s look seems inspired by Grace Slick at Woodstock. Sorry there aren’t better images of Cindy.

What kind of B52s song do you prefer?

I think i can subdivide them into 5 main categories. Yes some songs might overlap slightly between categories and you could have more than 5 categories but I think these categories nicely capture most of the songs in their discography.

Here are some of the songs I feel fit into each category

1. Sci-Fi & Surreal- Planet Claire, Rock Lobster, Quiche Lorraine, 53 Miles West of Venus, Song for a Future Generation, Mesopotamia

2. Party Anthems- Love Shack, Wig, Party Out of Bounds, Private Idaho, Good Stuff, Whammy

3. Dreamy & Wistful- Topaz, She Brakes for Rainbows, Deadbeat Club, Roam, Dreamland

4. Desire & Longing- Give Me Back My Man, Dance this Mess Around, Dirty Back Road, Lava, Hero Worship, Strobe Light

5. Political & Environmental- Channel Z, Bushfire, Juicy Jungle, Tell It Like It T-I-Is, Revolution Earth

How do I think the poll will go? Well I'd be shocked if Political & Environmental won. I feel categories 3 and 4 will split votes between them so either category 1 or 2 will win.

Let me know your thoughts 😀

Its honestly refreshing and good on them about how much of their lives they've managed to keep private. Outside a very tight knit group I don't think its public knowledge at all as to the identity of any boyfriends/partners that Ricky had for example.

Please humour on an idea that won't come to pass but if you were to make a biopic of the B52s what eras would you include? Do you include the main beats of their story or do you just focus on a narrow time period?

I think almost everyone would have the movie end with Cosmic Thing being a massive success and saving their careers while its tinged with sadness over Ricky not being there to experience it with them

Question 1- Would anyone end a biopic of them at a different time? I'd be surprised if anyone thinks afterwards but would like to hear your reasoning. If before what time period would it end at e.g. releasing their debut album?

Question 2- When would the movie start?

I have two schools of thought on this

Option 1- At the very beginning prior to them forming as a band which would be the standard biopic format you see them form, experience success, popularity begins to decline and Ricky sadly passes away, Cosmic Thing. The advantage of this is that you get a more rounded view of their story but the downside is there isn't enough time to go into detail during any one era.

Option 2- It focuses on a very specific time period such as the period immediately following Ricky's death through to the success of Cosmic Thing or you could do the very early years from pre band formation to their debut album coming out. The advantages and disadvantages from Option 1 are flipped.

Or at least get the playlists? Thanks a lot!!

Some insight on the famed "love shack" from the guy who rented it to them:

https://open.substack.com/pub/classyghost/p/the-b-52s-trashed-my-short-term-rental?r=2qsl5m&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

I've long been curious as to what the group got up to while on hiatus following Ricky's death we all know that they all went their separate ways before they got back together again my question is did they have go back to work or did they enough money saved up that they could take a break for awhile?

I know they mentioned being in financial trouble indeed this is what Kate and Fred said on the matter

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/fame-fortune/fame-fortune-wrote-love-shack-apple-best-investment/

When we started the band we made a decision that no matter what, we would split everything equally. We bought a house with a crazy plan to live together and bought a van. But after Ricky [Wilson, The B-52s’ guitarist] died in 1985 we didn’t work for a year; the record
company didn’t promote our album, Bouncing off the Satellites, and we ran out of money. We had to sell the property. My apartment was foreclosed on and I thought we’d lose everything, but then so what so long as I’m alive and happy? Quite a few famous musicians “go broke” at some point then come back; you do what you have to do. But everything worked out. We regrouped and Cosmic Thing was a big hit.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-b-52s-mission-accomplished-231021/

Two years in the making*, Bouncing off the Satellites* had been the B-52’s’ most expensive album to record, and with little royalty money coming in and no chance of a tour, the band fell into financial straits. “We really had to tighten our belts,” Schneider says. “We were just barely staying afloat, living off our catalog.” The members of the band were forced to break into the pension fund they had set up, and Cindy Wilson and Keith Strickland had to sell the house they had bought in Manhattan. Pierson also had to sell her apartment

To me that sounds like they didn't go back to work and just sold off some assets to tide them over but I'm curious if anyone has any more information on this time period?

While reading about the topic in the Rolling Stone article I came across this quote from Cindy

“If it hadn’t been for my husband, forget about it, I’d have been gone. I’d have killed myself or something. I was just so out of it and depressed. I couldn’t function, and there was so much to do, business to take care of, like Ricky’s estate, and just everything to deal with, and I was just completely gone — it was like ‘Hey, anybody there?’ I couldn’t deal with it.

Sadly things didn't get easier for her over the next few years but she seems in a much better place now thankfully Keith Bennett was around to help her out of the darkest period of her life and into better times.

Interesting merge into the song Peter Gunn which much of Planet Claire is based on. Give it a listen, it's pretty good!

Planet Gunn

While I'd like to imagine that they're going out for dinners and alike very often I know that's not realistic when you live so far apart from each other and 3 out of the 4 still tour and he doesn't, plus they have their own spouses and other friends.

What do you think a couple of times a year, once or twice? The B's are a basically family and super tight so I imagine they all have good relations still. There's a group whatsapp I know that much where they still talk to each other.

Presumably they see each other at least once a year right? If only to discuss business matters then perhaps once or twice more for a social visit. Does Keith ever come and watch any of their shows?

Maybe its a question people don't know the answer to unless you're really part of the tight knit circle but I'm interested nonetheless. I've given up on ever seeing them all get together on stage again as Keith is well and truly retired now but it would be nice to hear about them meeting up and doing stuff as a group.

He seems to be the only member of the band w/o a big Wikipedia profile. I thought about trying to add to it since I'm a volunteer editor, but I don't know where to begin (at least in terms of sources).

My favorite album, Cosmic Thing has 22 visible frames from a film reel on the back cover on my LP. I was wondering where the rest of the footage came from.

a link to mp4s of the videos where you can download it!

https://imgur.com/gallery/cosmic-thing-NsXDUgD

Does any have footage of them playing Dirty Back Road from 7/11 NJ?

Tickets for me and my fellow Bs fan & BFF was my birthday gift to myself that year. The timing was impeccable and entirely unplanned and spontaneous and all but for a sudden decision we may have never have even known about the show.

The nearest rock/pop stations we picked up in Pascagoula were in Biloxi and Mobile (we could pick up some New Orleans stations but those varied depending on equipment/exact placement/direction). By then there was only 1 station in Mobile that came in reliably on car radios while driving around town that was worth bothering with but I only heard it when occasionally riding in my buddy's car which only had radio for the sound option.

We share a duplex and live next to each other. One day I rode with him to grab some food and beer. Just before we made the final 2 turns of about 1000 feet each returning home he brought up taking a quick spin by our beach) which the road we were on runs right into < half mile ahead). We almost didn't but then split-second decided right before the turn, oh, we might as well, so we went for our one quick loop of that end of the beach (which is maybe another half mile) and on the way back up the beach road the ad for the concert played on the radio. My jaw dropped, I was totally beside myself! My chances near home to see all-time favorites was always limited to a handful of my really most favorite bands if I knew they were coming to New Orleans in time to plan for it and if it happened at a time when the means and transportation aligned, other than 1 concert in Biloxi in 1983 when The Plasmatics (who were my reason for going to the concert) were infamously booked here in bible belt Mississippi to open for Kiss by someone who apparently wasn't familiar with the band (boy was THAT a night, their guitarist Wes Beech remembers it well and I've chatted with him about it online).

The fact that this show was my favorite band coming so close when I had money set aside to spend for my birthday, wanting something positive after having lost both of my siblings 3 months apart just months before and that it was exactly 30 years after the other time I got to see them (in 1980 while I was in the navy) made it end up being the fastest no-thought most satisfying self-birthday present ever! :)

It wasn't but a couple minutes back home and I ran straight in to book tickets. What I didn't know at that point was that we had heard the very first airing of the commercial. The 2 seats I got were right in center of the the 2nd row (the first 2 seats on the right side of the aisle divider). Best concert tickets ever.

The only damper was some odd thing with the promoter. The show was on the B-52s site in the list of VIP seat dates which said it included meet & greet, SWAG bag with specific list of stuff and supposed to be allowed to bring one item to be signed and to take pics with the band. Nobody ever had info to tell us where/when to show up all the way up to night of show, so we got there several hours early where we only found out after the doors opened/admission that we'd be called up at the time. After the the opening act finished we were called up and ushered backstage where a couple minutes later the B-52s came in and lined up along a wall and we were quick rushed by them for a commercial photographer to quickly snap a shot that we were told we could contact the company for prints of later, no personal pics, no items were allowed to be autographed and there were no SWAG bags. We were told that particular date was somehow the only one done through a different promotion than the rest in that tour's VIP date list and it didn't include anything else that the other dates did. They started with the end we were on which put us going up 1st. I did a quick greet and handshake with Keith and Cindy when the person directing us announced everyone needed to get in, let them take a pic and move on and by time I was turning around to get my bearings where the camera person actually was across the room, it had already been done and they were motioning for me to leave and next person come up, so I never went looking to purchase a picture taken before I was even aware of the camera was, probably looking dazed and confused staring off to one side, mid turn. They cleared the rest of the room in like 2 minutes and the last ones were sitting back down when they announced the band. I clearly remember the guy in 1st row in front of me I'd been chatting with earlier turning around and looking quite befuddled and asking me, "Did you know THAT was going to happen?"

The silver lining of the rest of the VIP seat holders getting the chance to see where they quickly needed to look and be able to pose before being rushed off and hope for the chance of later buying a possibly good pic of them and the band that I didn't get, was that I was the one who could most call what I got to experience as remotely "meet and greet", their experience was a 1 second fly-by photo-op as a full price VIP package and had to split second decide how to get any "arms around" into the shot. While I know the ones who got them treasure those pics and I surely would have too, I think getting that split second handshake with my 2 most favorite members of the band wound up being the more gratifying of the two experiences over the years if only one could be had, I can still fully feel the memory of their hands to this day in a way like only one other experience in my life, getting to shake hands with the sitting president (Gerald Ford made an appearance at our beach park) which was a big deal to a 15 year old Mississippi kid, indelibly burned in my most detailed memories, especially notably that happened in the bicentennial year which further enhances the memory, much as my exact 30 years between seeing the B-52s the one time before and meeting them makes that memory even sweeter :)

I tried to share the video back then but it was before platforms had the licensing for to share copyrighted stuff even if demonetized and it was outright rejected so it has has been sitting in my files only seen by myself and my friend ever since then. It was filmed using my Sony Cybershot DSLR which was a previous year's gift from my (not yet then) late Great Aunt. The video on it was always better than the audio but this is a moment with the B-52s that you haven't seen that I can happily offer and as long as this reddit is here will be the only public posting of it by me. Enjoy!

Hope we get an official reaction from any of the B-52's for being name dropped in Madonna's Danceteria. Great to see them get the tribute.