Music review: B-52s not affected by age at Botanic Gardens concert
Age has not affected the B-52s.
The new wave band, which dominated the college party scene in early 1980s Athens Ga., long before they became bona fide hit makers, benefits from its built-in kitsch factor, which seem even more timeless the second or third time around.
The B-52s propelled to fame in the 1980s with such New Wave hits as "Love Shack" and "Rock Lobster."
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And, as band mates Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson, Keith Strickland, and Fred Schneider demonstrated at Live at the Garden on Friday night, they’ve still got the stamina they demonstrated in those heady, early days.
Bathed by the subdued glow of colored backlights, the red-headed Pierson, 60, looked and sounded ethereal, as did her blonde counterpart, Wilson, who’s 51. Schneider at 57 was as deadpan campy – and as trim – as he was during the group’s heyday, while Strickland, 55, harnessed youthful energy as he stalked the stage wrangling chords from his Fender Telecaster.
Yet, as they confirmed in front of a crowd of thousands on Friday, this version of the group – which includes bassist Tracy Wormworth, an alumnus of ‘80s new wavers the Waitresses, and drummer Sterling Campbell, an eminently capable hired gun who’s backed everyone from Cyndi Lauper and Duran Duran to Soul Asylum, Tina Turner, and David Bowie – is a sleeker B-52s for the new millennium.
Gone were Pierson and Wilson’s signature beehive hair-dos, which were supplanted by super shiny natural locks. Their look, also, eschewed their trademark thrift store attire for slickly modern couture.
Opening with “Punk,” the first song off their new album, Funplex, the B-52s ran through a muscular set of old and new favorites. “Turn you watch back 100,000 years,” Schneider exhorted on “Mesopotamia,” as dedicated audience members wearing bouffants and fringed flapper dresses leapt to their feet to dance along.
Schneider’s pokerfaced shtick took front-and-center several times during the night, as he moved from the cowbell to the glockenspiel for a solo during Wilson’s airy ballad, “Give Me Back My Man,” from the B-52s’ second album, Wild Planet, which was released in 1980. Afterwards, Pierson got equal time, belting out tunes like the Federico Fellini-inspired “Juliet of the Spirits,” the group’s newest single.
Some members of the audience seemed momentarily confused when, after Schneider announced, “This goes out to all the lovers out there,” the B-52s launched into the propulsive “Strobe Light,” another song from Wild Planet. But by the time the group played “Roam,” their 1989 hit single, hundreds were on their feet. A pair of tracks from Funplex, “Love in the Year 3000”and “Hot Corner,” a tribute to Athens, the B-52s ground zero, followed.
Finally, at 10:30, after taunting the audience with the suggestion of “an up-tempo ballad,” Schneider grabbed his cow bell and delivered the opening lines of “Love Shack,” the B-52s 1989 multi-platinum seller, the song everyone had been waiting for.
“Everybody’s movin’/Everybody’s groovin’” Pierson and Wilson sang as, under a nearly full moon, the lawn erupted into a sea of spasmodic madras- and khaki-clad dancers.
Then it was time for a quick break.
Within a few minutes, the B-52s returned to the stage for an encore that revisited their 1979 debut, playing both the punk-ish “Planet Clare” and the surf-twangy “Rock Lobster” to an ecstatic audience.
Piano player Jason D. Williams, a local institution, opened the show with what he described as a set of “garden tunes,” including “Caledonia,” “Great Balls of Fire,” and a rousing rendition of the celebratory Hebrew song “Hava Nagila.”
“Folks, if you love Memphis, stand up,” Williams told the crowd, which braved the humidity to rise to its collective feet to give him a standing ovation for a medley of standards that included “Sea Cruise” and “Tore Up.”
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