"Love Shack": Don't Call It A Comeback AKA "Roam" (Up The Charts) If You Want To

Take that Patagonia vest-wearing attorney, that cat meme-obsessed housewife, that Bible-thumping Mormon schoolteacher, that Tesla-driving tech bro, gather them together at a wedding reception, play "Love Shack" and "Roam" on the stereo system, and what will they be doing? They will be dancing. Sure as the lord made little green apples, they will be dancing.

Herein lies the beauty of '80s music. No matter how weird your band, no matter how how "deviant" the majority of the record-buying public might have deemed your lifestyle, no matter how unlikely it would have been that you and your listeners would have ever frequented the same zip code, with the right song, you could still crash into the mainstream and find yourself permanently lodged there for all eternity. Witness Devo and "Whip It." Witness the Clash and "Rock the Casbah." And with all due respect to "Rock Lobster," in 1989, The B-52's did this not once, but twice. Little did the straitlaced public know, however, that the ride to the top hadn't been all fish and candy.

To those paying attention in the early '80s, the B-52's probably came off like a non-stop party (in bounds or out of bounds). It would have taken a serious dose of bad vibes to kill that buzz. Well, if anything could do it, a band member dying of AIDS might have been just the thing. From Wikipedia:

During the recording [of their follow-up to Whammy!], guitarist Wilson had been suffering from AIDS, though none of the other band members were aware of his illness except for Strickland, as he "did not want anyone to worry about him or fuss about him." Wilson died from his illness on October 12, 1985, at the age of 32 ... Cindy Wilson was devastated by her brother's death, and her bandmates were depressed about Ricky's passing. The band went into seclusion and did not tour to promote their album. This was the beginning of an extended hiatus from their musical careers.

Many bands break up for trifling reasons. The guitarist stole the drummer's toothbrush. Their last single only peaked at #7 instead of #6. You know, little stuff. A member dying of AIDS ... is not that kind of reason. Talk about a party out of bounds. If the B-52's had honestly called it quits at that point, who could have blamed them?

But cue the saccharine made-for-TV movie music, because in arguably the most feel-good twist in all of '80s pop, not only did the B-52's re-group after the passing of Ricky Wilson, they essentially tripled their popularity. "Love Shack" and "Roam" were certainly the first B-52's songs I ever heard, although, to be fair, I didn't frequent gay clubs very often when I was nine years old.

"Love Shack" and "Roam" are so much more ... how can I put this? ... melodically graceful than the usual B-52's fare. It's a little suspicious. Even their best tracks tended to sound like free association jam sessions that barely skirted novelty status. "Love Shack" and "Roam" are like ... actual songs. At times I've wondered if they weren't even written by the band themselves, but it turns out the only outside contributor was Robert Waldrop, lyricist of "Roam." The traces of post-punk from their debut album apparently weren't allowed into this particular love shack. What I find so uplifting about these two post-Ricky hits is that they aren't mournful or defeatist in the least. The B-52's literally partied their grief away, and the public must have found the unexpected positivity infectious - assuming they were even aware that one of the non-singing members had died anyway (I mean, there's the two girls in wigs, the awkward MC guy, and ... some other people?). Like the Pretenders before them, the B-52's turned New Wave tragedy to New Wave triumph. I'm tempted to recommend this approach to other bands, but if biblically bleak misfortune was truly the fuel that down-and-out recording artists needed in order to return to commercial relevance, then DeBarge would have had as many comebacks as Cher by now.

Fred Schneider was lucky, I say - damn lucky. Because the two other singers in his band possessed such rich, powerful, distinctive, sensual voices, it allowed him to get away with murder. Funny, but back in the day I never thought there was anything remotely weird about Schneider's off-kilter delivery (which Wikipedia defines with a German word too magnificent to be real: "sprechgesang"). Sure, their male singer sounded like Jerry Lewis on Benzedrine, but come on, that David Bowie guy sounded pretty weird too, and no one seemed to comment on that. He knows just when to drop in and just when to cut out, hardly ever stepping over Kate and Cindy's parts (Flava Flav, take note). He's like the spice, not the key ingredient.



Look: you know "Love Shack," I know "Love Shack" ... what can I say about "Love Shack" other than that it grooves harder and more effortlessly than most of the '60s dance singles it's imitating (mainly the Temptations' "Psychedelic Shack") and feels about as dated to me as an Ansel Adams photo of Half Dome. Highlights:

• 0:01 - Opening drum fill possibly lifted from the Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song," followed by handclaps possibly lifted from the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back" (all perfectly allowed, of course)
• 0:29 - Mmm, those harmonies on "Lookin' for the love ... getaway"  - eat your heart out, Bee Gees
• 0:59 - The little keyboard glissando that punctuates the double-timed drums after "get too-geh-thuh!"
• 1:47 - Cindy stretching "highway" into a four-syllable word, resembling something like "highway-uhh-eee!"
• 3:44 - The horns taking several seconds to haphazardly slide downward at the start of the "call and response" section, as if someone had just unplugged their power cable
• 3:58 - The surprisingly lusty "call and response" section, which sports a good deal more of a "battle of the sexes" feel than the corresponding section from the Isley Brothers' "Shout" that most likely inspired it
• 4:48 - Fred hollering "Your what?" and Cindy following with three of the most misinterpreted words in all of '80s pop. "Hen room ... busted"? "Can rule ... resting"? When informed one day that the words she utters are "tin roof ... rusted," I thought to myself, "How does that make any more sense than all the other mondegreens people have come up with over the years?"
• 4:53 - The "crowd" inside this supposed "Love Shack" (I assume made up of the B-52's and sundry companions horsing around in the studio), having continuously kept its presence relegated to the background (a la Johnny Rivers' "Live at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go" hits like "Memphis" and "Seventh Son") suddenly letting out a prominent yelp or two in reaction to the news of Cindy's tin roof allegedly rusting

Watching the "Love Shack" video is always a frustrating experience for me because I'm so used to listening to the 5:34 album version, and the video features the 4:18 single version, which chops up the call-and-response section so thoroughly that, I mean, they might as well have cut out the whole thing, but otherwise I find it a hoot from start to finish, looking like the Russ Meyer/John Waters collaboration that the world was just not deserving enough to receive. The roof of the Love Shack - excuse me, "Shaque D'Amour" - is a giant chess board! They pour soap suds into your martini! Even the goats are having a great time! Does this look like the sight of a band whose guitarist just passed? Well, that's probably how Ricky would have wanted it.



As for "Roam": while it's not quite as quotable and not quite as kitschy as "Love Shack," I'd say it's just as infectious in its own swirling, kaleidoscopic way, not to mention just as popular (both songs peaked at #3 in the US). It has something that very few B-52's songs have: wistfulness. I think Fred wisely knew to sit this one out. Question: have handclaps ever made a chorus worse? If anyone out there can find an example of this, please mail your response to Little Earl c/o Cosmic American Blog, 113 7th Ave., New York, NY 10026. A colleague at work recently asked me to name my top five favorite songs produced by Nile Rodgers, offering "Roam" as a possibility. I nodded and said, "Oh yeah, that's probably one," as if I was well aware that Nile Rodgers had produced "Roam." But I wasn't! Nevertheless, I kept my cool under pressure. Hemingway would have been proud. Funny but the production doesn't sound markedly different from the production on "Love Shack," which was produced by Don Was. I mentioned that I got a Pee-Wee's Playhouse vibe from the "Stand" video, but I definitely get a Pee-Wee's Playhouse vibe from the "Roam" video, which features the band members literally "roaming the world" via blue screen (I wonder if they've found Lisa Stansfield's baby) and what appears to be hand-drawn, stop-motion graphics. Check out Fred's face as a banana flies through a donut hole at 1:26. The studio they filmed it in was probably so cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if the tin roof had rusted.