[HN Gopher] The B-52's' "Rock Lobster" brought John Lennon back ...
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The B-52's' "Rock Lobster" brought John Lennon back to music (2020)
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-07-11 18:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ultimateclassicrock.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ultimateclassicrock.com)
| thrww20210608 wrote:
| There is a theory that John Lennon sold his soul to the Devil for
| 20 years of success:
| https://www.fisheaters.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=28181
| tclancy wrote:
| Yeah but he was just ripping off Robert Johnson.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I bought the B52s first album (Planet Claire, Rock Lobster et al)
| on vinyl for my little brother as a birthday present - he hated
| it.
|
| Some years later I bought him the Cowboy Junkies "200 More miles"
| on CD as another birthday present - he hated that too.
|
| Haven't bought him any music since.
| adolfojp wrote:
| May I ask what kind of music he liked because I'm dying to know
| what his frame of reference was when he found your music taste
| to be torturous.
| [deleted]
| zabzonk wrote:
| Heavy metal (at least at that time in his life) I'm afraid. I
| don't know what he is up to know - age about 50 something.
| mbostleman wrote:
| >>...only the "kooky" stuff really appealed to him.>>
|
| I bet had he lived one more decade, he would have loved the
| Pixies.
| nickt wrote:
| Surely we can't talk about the B-52's Rock Lobster on HN without
| an obligatory Amiga 500 reference?
|
| http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/b52board.html
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10637447
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Huh. I really like the B52s. Though I've never been a Yoko Ono
| fan. Never would have put the influence together. To me Yoko was
| always a bit out there, even in terms of timing and tone. What I
| hear in Rock Lobster has way better timing and tuning, more
| melodic and less jarring than Yoko for me.
| adolfojp wrote:
| John Lennon heard this:
|
| https://youtu.be/n4QSYx4wVQg?t=295
|
| And equated it with this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgZiPO9V_aQ
|
| What he didn't get was that "kookiness" by itself doesn't make
| good music which can be reflected in the stark differences in
| the careers of the B52s and Yoko Ono outside of her work with
| John Lennon.
|
| Haute Couture works great on the runway but it's not meant to
| be worn on the street. John and Yoko's art for art's sake was
| never going to work outside of the art circuit.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Instances like that second link I think might be why people
| struggle with Yoko. Here is a 'give the people what they
| want' entertainment moment, a fairly straight forward
| presentation of popular music, and here comes Yoko out of no
| where. I think I had the same reaction O_O.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/Rw9Ma
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Site refuses to render properly unless I turn off ublock, and it
| chokes so hard under ads that it brings my MBP to a crawl.
| Ironically, blocking js entirely works well. I hate the 'modern
| web'
| goda90 wrote:
| For me, it loads fine at first, then after about 20 seconds it
| goes all black. Refreshing brings it back, but the same thing
| happens.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Runs fine without JS to pull these hostile shenanigans.
| tux1968 wrote:
| At least here, the links to the Youtube videos aren't
| rendered unless JS is enabled.
| imglorp wrote:
| UBlock lets you disable JS just for one site. I had to do that
| for this one.
| mattbee wrote:
| I'm now a crack shot at hitting the "Reader mode" button after
| an article loads, but before the no-adblock script wheezes into
| life & tries to pull it away from me.
| greggman3 wrote:
| showing my age but the 80s B-52s are one of my favorite bands.
| The songs are so playful and about different topics. Song about
| cleaning the house. Song about wearing a wig. Song about
| Mesopotamia. Song about sex under a strobe light.
|
| I'd love recommendations for similarly fun bands.
|
| Not comparable in style but maybe in crazy topics are They Might
| Be Giants and Aquabats.
| overlordalex wrote:
| Scary Bitches is a good one - my favourites are "Lesbian
| Vampyres From Outer Space", "Birds and Bees", and of course,
| "Bad Hair Day"
| tclancy wrote:
| A band that scratches the same itch for me is Scissor Sisters.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Flaming lips. Their music has gotten a bit too ridiculous
| lately, but songs like "she don't use jelly" and "yoshimi
| battles the pink robots", and many others from earlier in their
| catalog are both silly and heartfelt.
| jkestner wrote:
| Flaming Lips is great kids' music. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
| was a favorite.
| giglamesh wrote:
| Fun may not be the right word exactly, but for crazy topics
| galore I suggest that you look into The Handsome Family.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > I'd love recommendations for similarly fun bands
|
| How about some Shonen Knife?
| duderific wrote:
| Beck's 90's music was quite quirky
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I think you'd like Cibo Matto, try Sci Fi Wasabi, Beef Jerky,
| and 10th Floor Ghost Girl
| BucketsMcG wrote:
| Super Furry Animals. Mullet haircuts, pushy parents vicariously
| living out their dreams through their children, sleep
| deprivation, Che Guevara's asthma, golden retrievers, the 1992
| military coup in Sierra Leone, El Nino...
|
| Quite a lot of it's in Welsh, too.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Gorky's Zygotic Mynci was another one that was a great Welsh
| band, psychedelic folk sort of thing, some similarly
| absurd/surreal lyrics, and the later material some very
| emotive folk with a unique Brythonic feel. Loved their song
| writing.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| They are varied and wonderful.
| exodister wrote:
| Sparks
| flir wrote:
| John Prine never took himself too seriously. Lot of humour
| there. Carter USM might work, or maybe the references would be
| too British.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| Kate Bush and Oingo Boingo
| [deleted]
| 7357 wrote:
| talking heads?
| tptacek wrote:
| And if that's the direction you want to go from the B-52s,
| Parquet Courts and Kurt Vile are two modern standard bearers
| for that kind of songwriting.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRG3R2FmGlY
| prpl wrote:
| Gwar, Deerhoof
| handrous wrote:
| Deerhoof popped right into my head on reading that post, too.
| Kate Bush and Talking Heads, from other posts, are others I'd
| personally second, for the requested qualities.
|
| Older stuff, I'd say the White Album is up that alley, if not
| all Beatles music. Maybe The Zombies?
|
| Other recent stuff to throw on the pile... maybe Scissor
| Sisters? Might be too dark to fit the request, though.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Sparks. Every single one of their songs starts off as a
| meticulously crafted piece of pop perfection, then goes
| severely off the rails at _least_ once. Often more.
|
| They've been around for decades and have changed multiple times
| to match what currently defines "pop".
| okareaman wrote:
| My mind was blow when I first heard Rock Lobster and Planet
| Claire in 1980. I appreciate some of Yoko's stuff and her
| influence on the B-52's, but some of it is hard to listen to,
| like the siberian indigenous music that was an influence. It's
| interesting though.
|
| Arctic Siberia, Olena
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UzarFRmq1c
| rasz wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof in full force. Yesterday I felt like watching
| some rick and morty. https://www.adultswim.com/streams/rick-
| and-morty I clicked the LAST STREAM ON THE LEFT during the
| intermission and this was the exact clip playing :o
| okareaman wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are saying but I'm going to assume you
| are saying I see a connection between Siberian indigenous
| music and the music of Yoko Ono that doesn't exist. If you
| are correct that we shouldn't make unproven connections, then
| the music writing business of describing influences and
| pointing out derivatives is a sham.
| rasz wrote:
| Im saying adultswim runs their material for free on their
| website, and yesterday just randomly this exact Olena clip
| you linked was being streamed on the "LAST STREAM ON THE
| LEFT" show.
| okareaman wrote:
| Ha ha, I get it now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
| ooboe wrote:
| B-52's on stage near their home down before their first album:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnU3WoQZHJE
| milleramp wrote:
| Wow I haven't seen this before, amazing. Thanks for sharing!!
| tptacek wrote:
| If you read to the end of the interview, it seems clear that the
| B-52s were heavily influenced by Plastic Ono in the first place,
| so this all kind of makes sense.
|
| The CBGB-era B-52s were pretty great, and I haven't listened to
| _any_ Ono /Lennon stuff, so now I'm pretty interested.
| moomin wrote:
| There's fine stuff in pretty much every era of the B-52s.
| Bouncing of the Satellites is probably their weakest moment but
| even that has Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland. Cosmic Thing
| is a damn fine album even if Love Shack is overplayed. Good
| Stuff is cracking despite them being down to three and Funplex
| is actually... kind of amazing.
|
| Honestly I wish they'd record another, but they're probably
| happier touring.
| splitstud wrote:
| Weird coincidence. Digging through corp KeePass for a logon for a
| 15 yr old system this morning. Password? d0gd13ddarkgr33n
| JPKab wrote:
| "Upstairs, they were playing disco, and downstairs I suddenly
| heard 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52's for the first time. Do you
| know it? It sounds just like Yoko's music."
|
| It was always sad and gross to see the way he venerated her god-
| awful, pretentious "high art" over his own.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| Yoko is a genius with significant contributions to visual art
| who also made incredible music ranging from ballads like
| "Listen, The Snow Is Falling"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQG46cHgZ4E to avant noise
| grooves like "Why" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlY4oxfma_Y
| Joeboy wrote:
| I want to give her stuff a chance, and I concede that she has
| some great moments, but her bad stuff is _so_ bad, and is
| _so_ much more abundant.
|
| What a Bastard the World Is starts very well, but then goes
| frustratingly off the rails. Walking on Thin Ice is great.
| riffic wrote:
| heartbreakingly beautiful music.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I decided last year to give Ono a chance, and found I actually
| enjoyed some of her music.
| dbt00 wrote:
| Black page. Multiple javascript errors in console.
|
| Open in a different browser, and more than half the page is
| covered in flashy junk.
|
| Good story though.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I suspect you're running ublock origin or similar. I get the
| black page with it, but it renders correctly when I temporarily
| disable it.
|
| If that is the case, I'm not really sure why you would expect
| developers to control for the situation where the user agent
| doesn't actually download the resources that the page requests.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It breaks reader mode, too. I only got the title, main image
| and a random paragraph from the article.
|
| But yes, good story, and made me think B-52s inadvertently led
| to his death? :(
|
| I played "Rock Lobster" when I spun the whole self-titled for
| my kids the other week. They weren't sure about some of the
| songs, but that one they understood and had fun dancing to.
| [deleted]
| hbosch wrote:
| Not sure what led to the downvotes, but page is broken for me
| too.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then
| friendly feedback might be helpful._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| monocasa wrote:
| For anyone else not wanting to disable adblock or whatever it
| requires to read:
|
| > How the B-52's' 'Rock Lobster' Brought John Lennon Back to
| Music
|
| > Martin Kielty Published: April 3, 2020
|
| > In the mid-to-late '70s, John Lennon wasn't playing music. He
| wasn't thinking much about music. He was trying to be a good
| father to son Sean. He'd lost interest in trying to persuade
| people to listen to the work he'd done with wife Yoko Ono, and
| his last release had been in 1974.
|
| > Around five years later, he exploded back into action in a
| matter of moments.
|
| > "I was at a dance club one night in Bermuda," Lennon told
| Rolling Stone in an interview recorded three days before his
| death in 1980. "Upstairs, they were playing disco, and
| downstairs I suddenly heard 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52's for
| the first time. Do you know it? It sounds just like Yoko's
| music."
|
| > In particular, Cindy Wilson's scream toward the end of the
| song was reminiscent of Ono's approach. "I said to meself,
| 'It's time to get out the old ax and wake the wife up!'" Lennon
| said.
|
| > Almost immediately he and Ono started working. He'd write a
| song and sing it to her on the phone; in New York, she'd come
| up with a song of her own as a reply. The result was Double
| Fantasy, the last full album Lennon ever worked on before his
| death in December 1980.
|
| > It's a story that circulated for some time, but B-52's'
| guitarist and original drummer Keith Strickland said in 2012 he
| eventually had to uncover some solid evidence. He found it in
| the form of an audio interview on YouTube.
|
| > While it's not clear if it's the same interview used by
| Rolling Stone, one recording includes Lennon saying people
| tried to turn him onto contemporary music of the late '70s, but
| only the "kooky" stuff really appealed to him.
|
| > "Aha, they've finally caught up to what we were trying to do
| all the time, which is another form of expression!" he said,
| name-checking "Rock Lobster." "And we thought, 'This time,
| surely, they're gonna understand it!'" He asked fans to listen
| to something current and compare it to his output with Ono:
| "See if we weren't on the right track in 1969."
|
| > "I just wanted to hear it with my own ears," Strickland said.
| "That was really something. I've always been a huge Beatles
| fan. ... Yoko was such an inspiration for us in the early days.
| That's definitely an homage to Yoko when Cindy does that scream
| at the end" of "Rock Lobster."
|
| > Strickland called the "she broke up the Beatles" argument
| "bullshit," and noted "there was this whole generation of kids
| that just loved her. We just thought she was fantastic, so it
| felt good that we were kind of able to give back and say,
| 'Look, we love what you did.' And they heard that. Then, in
| turn, it inspired John to continue writing."
|
| > Ono told Songfacts that the stories were most definitely
| true. "Listening to the B-52's, John said he realized that my
| time had come," she explained. "So he could record an album by
| making me an equal partner and we won't get flack like we used
| to up to then."
|
| > In 2002 Ono made a surprise appearance with the band. "The
| audience didn't know, and we started doing 'Rock Lobster,' and
| then she comes out and does the scream," Strickland recalled.
| "It was so exciting. It was one of the highlights of our career
| for me."
|
| > "Constipated for five years, and then diarrhea for three
| weeks!" Lennon laughed during his last interview, discussing
| how quickly he completed his writing tasks. He recited an old
| story once told to him by Ono about a king who commissions a
| painting from an artist, pays in advance and then runs out
| patience after 10 years.
|
| > "A messenger comes back and tells him, 'The king's waiting
| for his painting,' and the painter says, 'Oh, hold on,' and
| whips it off right in front of him and says, 'Here,'" Lennon
| said. "And the messenger says, 'What's this? The king paid you
| 20,000 bucks for this shit, and you knock it off in five
| minutes?' And the painter replies, 'Yeah, but I spent 10 years
| thinking about it.' And there's no way I could have written the
| Double Fantasy songs without those five years."
| [deleted]
| ilamont wrote:
| B-52s first two albums are absolutely brilliant. They were just
| breaking the rules with their instruments, vocals, songwriting,
| and recording, and (importantly) making great music.
|
| To this day, playing side 1 of the first album starting with
| "Planet Claire" late at night just puts me in a mood that is hard
| to describe.
|
| I feel that they lost their songwriting edge after Ricky Wilson
| passed away in the mid 1980s and Strickland moved from drums to
| guitar. The later stuff was very pop oriented and slickly
| produced and expanded their audience, but it was missing that
| experimentation and irreverence from their early years.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| I never hopped on the Love Shack bandwagon. I'm with you, their
| first few albums were the best.
| adolfojp wrote:
| It was an important bandwagon though.
|
| I only know of the B52s because of watching Love Shack on TV.
| Without it many like me would have never learned of the band
| and would have never listened to their previous albums.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > breaking the rules
|
| I love the B-52s, but isn't all good music breaking the rules?
| vlunkr wrote:
| (to anwser with another rhetorical question) I don't know, is
| it?
| zwieback wrote:
| I'd say there's good music that doesn't try to break rules. A
| lot of country music is like that to me, incredible skill,
| solid songwriting but usually within a very traditional
| frame.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Yes, came here to mention _Planet Claire_ and _Private Idaho_
| and _Mesopotamia_ as my favourites.
|
| I discovered these about twenty years ago when going a Paradise
| Garage fascination, especially records Larry Levan played that
| weren't the `obvious' disco / post-disco records (such as some
| B-52s). Before that, only knew them for _Love Shack_ and Kate
| Pierson on R.E.M. 's _Shiny Happy People_.
| adregan wrote:
| I just saw the documentary "The Sparks Brothers"[0], and this
| story really reminded me of their story. Sparks are a band who
| have perpetually been ahead of the curve and are generally
| rewarded in the same way that Lennon and Ono were (ie. no
| reward), but instead of packing it in, they have pressed on for
| 50 years.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sparks_Brothers
| tclancy wrote:
| Ha, I just saw a review last month asking if 2021 would finally
| be The Year of Sparks.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I have been an enjoyer of Sparks for years and I feel like
| The Year Of Sparks is about as likely as The Year Of Linux On
| The Desktop.
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(page generated 2021-07-12 23:00 UTC)