Another album on lovely coloured vinyl (this one is purple) and one that should really be discussed after you’ve read what I have to say about their next but one album (“Youth Detention…”, where I first encountered them). But as chronology doesn’t work like that you’ll have to wait a couple of days, so here goes.

I was lucky enough to tour the USA on a number of occasions and, while there, some of us developed a liking for Country Music and the music of the South, the folk music of immigrant America perhaps. This will manifest itself in this collection with records by Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams and in a more recent incarnation the Drive-By Truckers, Steve Earle, Jason Isbell and the marvellously monikered Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires.

Lee Bains comes out of the punk rock scene in Birmingham Alabama and is a former member of Tuscaloosa Southern Rockers The Dexateens. NPR radio in the US described he and The Glory Fires as “punks revved up by the hot-damn hallelujah of Southern rock”. This is their debut album and fair reeks of the South, from Bains drawl to the slinky Skynyrd-like guitar lines. It passes in style from straight Skynyrd style Southern Rock (“Ain’t No Stranger” and “The Red Red Dirt Of Home”) right through to Country, “Reba” is a straight up Country ballad and “Roebuck Parkway” is a beautiful slice of acoustic Americana, with a hint of their Punk past sprinkled along the way. If you’re familiar with the Drive-By Truckers we’re in the same ballpark (to appropriate an American idiom) with songs about and rooted in the South and it’s problems. 

There is as much religion in these song (it’s said the title of this album stems from a mishearing of the spiritual “There Is A Balm In Gilead”, The Balm of Gilead being a Biblical medicine that can heal sinners) as there is liberal righteous ire…that feels appropriately Southern Gothic…

There Is A Bomb In Gilead - https://youtu.be/_QUPj9CBpD4

Ahhh the difficult 2nd album. There is nothing much here that veers too far away from what The B-52’s were doing on their first album. It’s also known that many of these songs were in their set as far back as 1978, 2 years before this release, and were held back from the first album as they wanted their 2nd to be strong too. But…

It just doesn’t have the sense of riotous fun there is on the first album, the songs don’t leap out and shake you by the shoulders like before. This might be due to any number of things. The surprise of hearing them for the first time has gone for starters, it’s not like hearing music from another planet anymore cos we’ve now heard music from another planet. This is not something I usually worry about unduly but the production here isn’t as lively as previously and Keith Stricklands drumming at times sounds more like a drum machine than a drummer. Props to Keith for being so spot on but at times it doesn’t have the natural feel that gives it some swing.

None of this is saying that “Wild Planet” is a bad album, it’s not at all. “Party Out Of Bounds” could easily have opened album number 1 and not been out of place. I absolutely adore “Private Idaho”, it’s one of their best and without doubt “Give Me Back My Man” is right up there in The B-52’s output, a stunning single when it was released.

Private Idaho - https://youtu.be/2n_Tg8iHwZ8

I bought this album on the same day in 1979 as I bought the debut album by Yachts. One of them I was planning to buy and knew what they sounded like, the other I was encouraged to get by a mate (whose name has been lost to the mists of time). They are both great (we’ll get to the 2 Yachts albums waaay down the line) and if it was my forgotten mate who advised me to buy this one, whoever you were, I thank you.

From the off it struck me as sounding like music from another planet (Claire ?) or at least the soundtrack of a bizarre low budget 60’s sci-fi movie. As “Planet Claire” fades in we are greeted with eerie, high pitched girls voices sounding like they came direct from the sound effects department at Star Trek HQ. Then “singer” (I use the term loosely, he’s more of a fairground barker) Fred Schneider starts ranting at you about a girl from another planet who has pink hair but possibly no head. None of this was normal to me back in ’79.

They didn’t have a bass player, Kate Pierson played bass parts on a keyboard, and guitarist Ricky Wilson and drummer Keith Strickland smashed out mutant dance rhythms that were odd but oddly compelling. Kate and Cindy Wilson take over vocal duties on “52 Girls” and Fred gets back to haranguing you on “Dance This Mess Around”.

Side 1 then draws to a close with what is, to these ears and feet, one of the greatest dance songs ever written and likely The B-52’s high point, “Rock Lobster”. Many will counter that because it was a worldwide hit and more people know it that The B-52’s greatest moment was “Love Shack”. Now, as great as that is and as easily as it can fill a dance floor at any hen party in the land it pales into insignificance when compared to “Rock Lobster”. Close your eyes while it’s on and you can see one of those Technicolour Teen movies going on, set on a beach somewhere in California or the Carolinas, girls in bikinis, boys with surfboards, everybody’s rockin’, everybody’s fruggin’, pass the tanning butter. It’s brilliant in its imagery and its ability to get your hips moving.

Side 2 carries on in much the same vein, they don’t stray far from what they’re good at. Fred gets positively apoplectic on”6060-842” and Kate and Cindy close things out with a somewhat subdued take on Petula Clark’s hit “Downtown”. The B-52’s would go on to sell millions of records and have huge international hits but I’m not sure they ever quite hit the heights they reached on this album.

Rock Lobster - https://youtu.be/2uH5AhFh8UI

(PS…the original UK release of this album came in a yellow B-52’s carrier bag (mine disintegrated long ago, maybe it was biodegradable ?) and included a facsimile copy 7” of the original single of “Rock Lobster”. For the purposes of what I wrote above however we are talking about the re-recorded album version of the song)