{"id":42303,"date":"2014-03-10T12:30:15","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T17:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42303"},"modified":"2014-03-10T13:37:28","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T18:37:28","slug":"things-im-supposed-to-like-but-cant-stand-the-b-52s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=42303","title":{"rendered":"Things I&#8217;m Supposed To Like But Can&#8217;t Stand: The B-52s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard about the B-52s in probably tenth grade.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re so fun!&#8221;, I was told. \u00a0&#8220;They&#8217;re, like, a party band!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I was directed to listen to &#8220;Rock Lobster&#8221;. \u00a0They were indeed a party band.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/szhJzX0UgDM\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I hated party bands. And I hated the B52s.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But Mitch!&#8221;, you might respond, &#8220;how could you possibly hate the B-52s? \u00a0They were\u00a0<em>fun<\/em>!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Music wasn&#8217;t supposed to be fun.\u00a0 Not to me, anyway.\u00a0I was an over-tall, under-coordinated, anti-popular kid, a\u00a0fish-out-of-water, sick of high school cliques and pecking orders, all hormoned-up with no place to go, already banging my head against the bars of small-town life.<\/p>\n<p>Music for me was about channelling explosive adolescent rage. \u00a0I listened to the Who, and the Clash and Generation X and the Sex Pistols (and the bleeding passion of Beethoven and the crusader-esque purposefulness of H\u00e4ndel and the over the top expressionism of Tchaikowski, for that matter), and Springsteen in my\u00a0rare introspective moments.\u00a0\u00a0For me, music wasn&#8217;t about dancing; it was about breaking things and people, and furious adolescent angst.\u00a0 The sound in my imagination at age 15 was me windmilling an open A5 chord on a Les Paul Standard through four Marshall stacks cranked to 11. \u00a0No wussy third tones. \u00a0No subtlety. \u00a0No shelter.\u00a0\u00a0Certainly no murtha-farging &#8220;parties&#8221;.\u00a0 Just pure un-subtle angry noise, blowing away the things that broke my heart and the lies that left me lost and brokenhearted&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;whatever they were. \u00a0 \u00a0It was a song, so they weren&#8217;t so much something I &#8220;knew&#8221; as &#8220;felt&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And I didn&#8217;t feel &#8220;party&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m digressing.<\/p>\n<p>The B-52s? \u00a0Yeah, they were &#8220;fun&#8221;.\u00a0 And I was not. \u00a0I was very, very un-fun.\u00a0\u00a0They played intentionally cheesed-up Farfisa organs, and I was all about the teeth-clenched throb of a Hammond B3 through an overdriven Leslie speaker.\u00a0 \u00a0They were lightweight, eggheaded college kids, and I was not. \u00a0They went to parties, and God knows I was never invited to parties.\u00a0 Screw &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, yeah. \u00a0Lead singer Fred Schneider&#8217;s voice annoyed the bejeebers out of me. \u00a0No, it wasn&#8217;t &#8220;homophobia&#8221;; at that age, I literally didn&#8217;t know what &#8220;gay&#8221; meant (and even if I did know what it meant?\u00a0 I loved Freddy Mercury&#8217;s voice). \u00a0 I didn&#8217;t actually know that guys <em>could<\/em> dig guys until college. \u00a0(Note to my 3-4 high school friends who, it turns out, were gay? \u00a0Even though you were all the girls&#8217; best friends, and you actually did sit by the piano before play practice playing show tunes? \u00a0Hand to God, never figured it out until after high school.\u00a0 And figuring it out didn&#8217;t make me like y&#8217;all any less &#8211; or show tunes any more). \u00a0So no, it wasn&#8217;t that Schneider was gay, even if I had known at the time what that meant.\u00a0\u00a0No, it was that his voice annoyed me like few other sounds ever have.\u00a0 I could literally listen to fingernails scraping on chalkboards all day long &#8211; but Schneider&#8217;s voice sent me racing for the volume knob.\u00a0\u00a0 And it still does.<\/p>\n<p>But time went on. \u00a0My tastes in music broadened. \u00a0I lived a little more life. \u00a0Moved to the big city, started a career, ended a career, maybe mellowed out ever so slightly, knocked around, worked in bars&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;when &#8220;Love Shack&#8221; came out:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9SOryJvTAGs\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Nope. Still hated the B-52s. Part of it was residual disdain for &#8220;Party&#8230;&#8221; anything.<\/p>\n<p>Part of it was that I had to play the damn song so ungodly often. I was at KDWB at the time; we&#8217;d play it every couple of hours on the air. Then I&#8217;d work my money gig, at the bars, and play it at least once a night, 4-6 nights a week, sometimes more. But then I played a <em>lot<\/em> of music way too much back then; I actually bought a car that had no radio, I was so sick of music.<\/p>\n<p>But even with that context, the B52s still annoyed me half to death.\u00a0 That voice.\u00a0 That beat.\u00a0 That contrived retro-sixies triviality.\u00a0 Blech.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And they still do.<\/p>\n<p>Except for anything involving Kate Pierson.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iNwC0sp-uA4\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Then, all is forgiven.<\/p>\n<p>That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I first heard about the B-52s in probably tenth grade. &#8220;They&#8217;re so fun!&#8221;, I was told. \u00a0&#8220;They&#8217;re, like, a party band!&#8221; I was directed to listen to &#8220;Rock Lobster&#8221;. \u00a0They were indeed a party band. I hated party bands. And I hated the B52s. &#8220;But Mitch!&#8221;, you might respond, &#8220;how could you possibly hate the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[211],"class_list":["post-42303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-love-and-hate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42303"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42305,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42303\/revisions\/42305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}