Still bashing out the party tunes
Based upon my youthful good looks, virile prose, and juvenile sense of humour, you may have assumed I am a young man. Sadly, this is not the case. Middle age clings to me like white on rice. The grave yawns damply in the middle distance. Any day now, some polite youngster will offer me their seat on the bus.
My body is no longer the miracle of sleek muscle and raw amorous energy it once was. My back’s buggered, my waist a purely historical concept, and my hair peppered with grey.
But the thing that makes me feel really old is I’m suddenly the target demographic for tour promoters pushing baby-boomer nostalgia.
I’ve become part of the ‘‘winery tour’’ generation. Bands I grew up on, which once seemed so youthful and daring, are now pensionably ancient.
Even so, decreased relevance to the cultural zeitgeist is no impediment to them headlining arena shows, or leaping about on rural stages amid grapevines, gazing out over a sea of picnic blankets while they provide a singalong soundtrack for middle-class binge-drinking.
One such band is The B-52s, which plays a 40th-anniversary show in Auckland on Valentines Day, with fellow pop veterans, Simple Minds.
On February 14, 1977, The B-52s played their debut gig at a friend’s house in Athens, Georgia. And now, precisely 40 years later, they’ll be playing Vector Arena on Tuesday, with a Christchurch show two nights later.
I talked to singer Fred Schneider in 2009, when the band was last here for – you guessed it – a winery tour. He seemed as amazed as anyone that he’d built such a long career out of shouting about undersea critters and mysterious planets over souped-up surf rock jams.
That voice! So camp, so nasal, so loud. Schneider chortled when I told him my mate reckoned he sounded like ‘‘a gay chainsaw’’. And he was delighted to hear I was a fan of The B-52s’ 1978 debut album, a bright and trashy new-wave LP that injected some big dumb fun into my teens four decades ago.
Roam if you want to. Schneider, now 65, and bandmates Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson are 68 and 59, but they’re still bashing out their hyperactive party tunes.
‘‘We’re still going because it’s still fun and we’re still close,’’ he told me. ‘‘And nobody makes music like we do. We still have the ability to induce mass hysteria in audiences that range from 7 year olds to people in their 60s. We came out of the punk era, but what we do is more like pop music that’s taken a hefty dose of acid. It’s bright and surreal and wild and fun, you know? And we must be doing something right. We’ve been around longer than most people!’’
Why have The B-52s’ songs endured so long? Because, says Fred, they’re all about shagging. ‘‘It may sound like a bunch of staccato shouting, but really, I’m a story-teller, and most of those stories are about partying, space, and sex. Especially sex. I don’t know why, but on some level, I think every single B52s’ song is about sex.’’
'We came out of the punk era, but what we do is more like pop music that's taken a hefty dose of acid. It's bright and surreal and wild and fun.' Fred Schneider