Late this week I went to see the B52s play at the Roundhouse near Camden Town, as part of their new tour. Many moons ago, in September 2001, we had tickets to see them at the Hammersmith Apollo but, as you may remember at the time, due to the sad events that took place few Americans were travelling internationally, and the concert was cancelled. So it was lovely to be able to see them this time, and what a show it was!
There was a decent DJ doing the warmup using lots of sophisticated equipment to mix together different tracks, including lots of my favourites including stuff from Pulp, the Cure, Bowie and even Wordy Rappinghood from TomTom Club (who I went to see at the Massive Attack Meltdown) and then the B52s took to the stage. The main set included lots of old material, as well as some tracks from the new album, Funplex, their first original material since the ‘Flintstones’ movie 14 years ago. For some strange reason it seemed to take a while for the crowd to get into the show, even though the venue was absolutely stuffed to the rafters, but eventually people started bouncing up and down and bopping along to the beat. Fred Schneider was on form, with his trademark shouty vocals (why does he remind me of Doctor Smith from ‘Lost in Space‘ I wonder…) and the girls, Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, were having a great time, as were the rest of the band.
The last number of the show was ‘Love Shack‘ and, as you can imagine, the place went wild and the dancing, shouting and clapping continued on as the band exited the stage. I was dissapointed to not hear my favourite track during the main set, but they came up trumps in the encore with a rendition of the absolutely fantastic 1960s style Batman-esque ‘Rock Lobster‘, with its completely mad lyrics Then it was on and then off again to finish with another track that I really love, ‘Planet Julie’.
It was a great night and I hope to be able to see them again before too long, if I have any hearing left by then of course (standing next to big speakers right up at the front – not the best idea ever!)
They have a good site up at the moment where you can check out details of the tour as well as sample some material from the new album here, and you can find all my pictures taken during the show here. Their tour single, ‘Juliet of the Spirits’, inspired by the Fellini movie of the same name, has also just been released for download only , if you can find it…