Bouncing Off The Satellites

On the afternoon of Saturday, 17^th August 2013 I was drinking a cocktail on the balcony of my friend Wendy’s flat in Brixton. It was a humid, sunny day. The trees were heavy with dust. I reflected on summers past. I felt that sweet melancholy that comes at the end of the season. The cocktail was easing my profound hangover. I was content.

For the previous night, I had seen the B-52’s in concert.

I first heard the B-52’s in 1985. A Radio 1 DJ had taken to playing Rock Lobster. Twanging guitar; nonsense lyrics; stops and starts; girls screaming and wailing and caterwauling. My brain couldn’t adequately process the majesty of it all. My synapses fired erratically. I became utterly euphoric.

My friend Tony and I were crazy about the record. Our peers at school were into proper music like Level 42 and Foreigner. They sneered at us for liking the silly kids’ song.

Tony and I quickly acquired the B-52’s entire back catalogue. We were obsessed with their retro-futurist look; the primary colours of the sleeves; the images of the prelapsarian American dream. The B-52’s looked like the cast of Lost In Space, only sexier.

My musical palette wasn’t that advanced; I only really liked punk and ska. The B-52’s music was joyous, and beautiful and sad. I learned that many of the greatest B-52’s songs work on many levels. Take Dirty Back Road. Superficially it is a song about driving on a dirty back road. It is also a fairly obvious metaphor for a certain type of sex. Another example is Legal Tender. Outwardly it is a song about escaping the drudgery of life by counterfeiting money. But both these songs also hint at some greater, ineffable freedom, just out of reach.

Tony and I studied the B-52’s sleeves obsessively. We noted that occasionally a mysterious “Robert Waldrop” would show up in the writing credits. To this day, I have no idea who he is, but his name appears on Dirty Back Road and Legal Tender.

In the centre of town was a large toy shop. Therein, Tony and I came across some golden footballs filled with glitter. We christened these the “B-52’s balls”. When in town we would occasionally go by the store and twirl the balls.

It would be something of an understatement to say that 1980s Belfast was not an especially ‘woke’ place. It would not be much of an overstatement to say that it was intensely homophobic. Suffice to say that had we left the toy shop and twirled our glittery balls as we walked down the street, we probably wouldn’t have got very far.

It wasn’t long after we started following the B-52’s that their guitarist, Ricky Wilson, died of AIDS. Ricky had kept his illness secret from most of the band, including his sister.

In 1989 I went driving on a summer’s day with Tony, his girlfriend, Liz and my mate Cormac. It was one of those days when everything goes right. The sun shone. I was old enough to have an adult’s independence, but young enough not to be limited by self-awareness. Cormac and I had recently dropped out of college and had plans to move to the States. There (we believed) we could realise our shared vision of completely selfish hedonism.

The day was also memorable because Tony had prepared a C90 compilation. On the A side was Un Jour Parfait by the Stranglers’ bassist. On the B side was a compilation of tracks from LPs Tony had recently purchased. One of these was Roam, by the B-52’s. It was beautiful: Kate and Cindy’s exquisite harmonising a sirens’ call to wanderlust and untrammelled freedom.

Shortly after I acquired the LP and inspected the writing credit. Robert Waldrop.

Things never turn out the way you plan. After that summer I moved to Scotland. Cormac went to London and got a job as a motorcycle courier. I was happy for him. He was a lovely bloke. He didn’t have a bad bone in his body. He met a girl and asked her out. And then he was killed in a road accident.

After his funeral I went back to Scotland and drank for two years.

In 1992 I walked into a nightclub. A glittering, funky record was playing. A girl was singing. She had a voice that was a clear as a bell, but with an ache. The song was melodious. It was beautiful. It also seemed to be a paean to oral sex. It could only be the B-52’s.

The song was Good Stuff. Later the DJ played it again. I got up to dance. A girl watched me from the side of the dancefloor. She had long, thick, fair hair. I could imagine the weight of it in my hands. She kept rearranging it and lifting it and dropping it and so forth. She scowled and pouted at me as though I had stolen her lollipop. I suddenly realised that if I let this girl take me down where the good stuff flows, I would be healed.

The next day I bought the Good Stuff LP. I played it all summer. I got a job as a pizza delivery driver. It was the best job I ever had in my life. It rained a lot that summer, but I didn’t mind, it made everything fresh and new. The LP was a cracker. Almost everything on it was released as a single, except my favourite song, Revolution Earth. Ostensibly about the environment, the lyric details casting off corporeal bounds to become one with the earth and the moon and stars.

I didn’t need to check the writing credit.

In 1998 the B-52’s released a compilation, Time Capsule. Tony sent me a copy in the post. On the inner sleeve was a picture of Ricky Wilson with “We love you Ricky!” written across it. On the back, under the heading “The B-52’s are”, all five members were listed. It was a sweet and salutary reminder that those who go before us are always with us.

From 1985 onwards, Tony and I had persistently attempted to see the B-52’s in concert. Occasionally they would announce a European tour only to cancel at the last minute due to some perceived terrorist threat or suchlike. On one thrilling occasion Tony actually got tickets to see them but then lost the tickets. We gave up hope of it ever happening. And then they announced they were playing in London! On Friday night! I bought tickets and phoned Tony. He was out of the country.

On the 16^th August 2013 we began drinking in Greenwich. We slowly worked our way along the riverside to the O2, stopping at every bar along the way. When we got to the venue we met a distressed young man. He had bought tickets for his mother for her birthday but lost his own. With drunken magnanimity, I gave him Tony’s ticket. He was overjoyed.

We entered the venue. It was a pleasing space. The bar was well staffed. People were courteous and smelled good. There was a man in a lobster suit. The B-52’s came on stage. My sky-high expectations were exceeded. In the middle of the set they played Roam. My eyes filled with tears.

At the end of the gig the B-52’s trained a spotlight on the lobster man. And then they played Rock Lobster. We went outside and took pictures of the lobster man. The formerly distressed kid reappeared. He pressed a double CD of the gig into my hand and ran off.

Karma.

We went home to Wendy’s flat and drank whisky until I passed out.

As I write this, the B-52’s are playing their final, farewell tour in Europe. Tony is, at last, going to see them play. He is taking his daughter.

I hope they play Song For A Future Generation.

by Mike McConnell