There’s an argument to be made — hell, I’ve made it myself — that Ricky Wilson died, it just wasn’t the B-52’s anymore. And yet I keep finding myself going back to Cosmic Thing, the first album the surviving members recorded after his death.
Surely that’s not because of the wildly-overplayed “Love Shack.” I was working mornings at a Top 40 station in Arcata, CA when that song was released, and believe me when I say it’s OK if you want to skip playing that one. But the rest of the album is, for the B-52’s, strangely bittersweet. It’s about old times and wasted youth. The last track on the album is called “Follow Your Bliss,” and it’s an instrumental. I can hear Ricky’s missing vocals every time it comes on. Maybe we’ll get to that track another day.
Tonight, we have the companion song to “Love Shack.” It’s called “Deadbeat Club,” and it never fails to take me back to my old times and wasted youth with great friends in my crappy apartment on D Street in Eureka, CA.
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