Live Concert Series PT 7

Messing Around

A B-52's experience

As a grad school student in the 1980’s, I often found myself in places I couldn’t have imagined an hour before I arrived. In one of these places — a house one street over and down from my apartment — I remember entering a large room, and in it were a bed, a dresser, an old chair, and several people sort of lounging as if the day, or the year, had totally depressed them.

Everyone wore a variation of black, and no one much was talking or even that interested that a stranger to them had shown up. I can no longer recall how I got there or who brought me, or at least told me about this gathering, this “happening.”

The lights were strangely bright, and even stranger, no one was drinking beer. I didn’t know you could have a party or any gathering at this age without beer. So no, I don’t know what everyone else was or had been doing. I was mildly stoned and likely hanging out with some of my film friends.

It is just a little dislocating to walk into a group where no one remarks your presence but instead goes on talking, or muting, as they had been, and the only movement is to reload the record player or tape deck every time a record, or perhaps a bad song, ended.

And while no one much moved, at one point a red-haired girl I had seen on campus at random times, sat up and started semi-dancing. I don’t know if dancing is the right word for what she was doing or thought she was doing. Not as bad as “Elaine” from Seinfeld, but definitely no moves that would get her selected for anyone’s chorus.

There’s party music, and then there’s music for people who aren’t lovers, or partiers, or even that interested in what else the night will hold. So I remember the song this girl had to stir to:

The B-52’s “Dance This Mess Around.”

Of course, I knew the band, had danced myself to “Rock Lobster” at grad school parties, where even my Victorian Lit professor was seen dancing to these beats with an exotic-looking female student — someone else none of us understood, or even really tried to.

But at this odd gathering, when the B-52’s wailed, I felt altogether out of place. Sometimes the wrong combination hit too hard, so I left at that moment and was glad not to have to see what else might happen — what those lying across beds and broken-down chairs might be willing to offer.

A year or so later, our university’s program office announced that the B-52’s would be playing at the same small gymnasium (5000 seats) where I had seen The Clash just a few months earlier. My friends and I bought tickets immediately and gathered before the show to “ready” ourselves.

This was the original band, before Ricky Wilson succumbed to AIDS. The New Wave scene had hit even the deep southeast, and all along the campus strip, New Wave and post-punk bands cropped up from disaffected student life. We had bands called the Hostages (later morphing into Smokin’ Dave and the Primo Dopes), Candy Creme and the Wet Dream, The Five Twins, and The Squad. Trust me, you didn’t last long at a “Squad” show. Another girl I knew (someone I could have known better, but sometimes instincts save us) belted a guy in the mosh pit of a Squad show. Mainly, though, the bands held their own, over and over, Friday night after Friday night for as long as we all lasted.

At the B-52’s concert — somehow this had to be the mothership of New Wave — everyone was decked out in sleeveless t-shirts, Doc Marten boots, and whatever other anti-glamor look they could get into. My friends Les, Martha Jane, and Carol all went with me and during the show, we semi-slam-danced, shook each other, and laughed along to the party that the show instigated.

The band played all their hits — “Planet Claire,” “52 Girls,” and their spectacular cover of Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” If you’ve ever seen them live, you understand that their records can barely contain them, just as the gymnasium could barely contain Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson’s beehives. There was a moment during “Downtown” when Kate and Cindy started doing The Twist. I’m not sure I’ve been the same since. I was too young for the groovy 60’s discotheques where caged dancers in go-go boots danced the night away. Still, life manages to keep finding you, and two hours of B-52’s tunes left us all sweating and craving more.

Life in Victorian Lit the next day, I confess, was appropriately drab.

But before the show that night ended, of course they had to play “Dance This Mess Around.” If you’ve never heard it, here goes:

The gym rocked, and everybody within my plain sight danced in their own proper form. The lights were low, not bright, and I kept staring at the band wondering just who we all were, and if they might like to go walking with me later to a place I knew, where the people held their own sort of party, listening to the rhythms of their city.

But that was merely my mind trying to make sense of people, places, and things I both knew and sometimes ventured into, most unknowingly. The kind of messes we all are and occasionally wish to be.

Thank you for reading and thanks to Noah Levy for managing our local herd. If you missed the previous post in this series, here t’is:

And while you’re perusing The Riff, check these writers for their clarity, authenticity, and rocking lobsters:

Kevin Alexander, Jessica Lee McMillan, Kathryn Dillon, Rob Janicke, Kathy Gerstorff, Oliver Norris, Steven Hale, Mike Marolla, If Ever You’re Listening, Frank Mastropolo, Aoife Chaney, Nia Simone McLeod, and MDSHall.