The B-52s live in 1978
Photo: WireImage, Tom Hill. All rights reserved.
When the B-52s first appeared, they were too weird and funny to easily classify.
On their first single, “Rock Lobster,” frontman Fred Schneider rampaged beautifully over a rogue gallery of beach dwellers – mermaids, mermen, boys in bikinis, catfish, dogfish, robins, a bikini whale! — and it was so groovy that you barely realized the song was essentially a seven-minute prog epic disguised as a surf rock rave-up.
The band’s look was part Annette Funicello, part John Waters, but when Schneider and singers Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson made the sound of a piranha on “Rock Lobster,” it was the stuff of an instant classic. Pass me the tanning lotion!