The B52s have always made the most infectiously happy dance music in rock and roll. It was just absolutely about feeling good and celebrating — even celebrating outsider status. Oh sure, there were some songs that were vaguely political — Channel Z, Bushfire — but overwhelmingly the music just made me smile, laugh and dance.
Well, the new B52s album is out: Funplex. And the title song is as usual, something that’s hard not to move to. Except it is anything but happy. This is "it’s-the-end-of-the-world-so-I’m-going-to-dance-anyway" music.
Funplex is what happens when the B52s meet Reverend Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping. It’s a searing indictment of mindless consumerism/materialism as a drug that numbs as us all as the planet goes to hell. This is seriously depressing stuff.
This is a song about drug addiction, sex addiction, shopping addiction. And the emptiness in our hearts that these compulsive behaviors try to assuage. It’s really sad.
And here I am listening to it on my ipod, bopping my head and wanting to dance. And cry.
And celebrate. Because rock and roll is also supposed to be deeply subversive. And this song certainly is that. Will it help wake America's youth from the trance — the George Bush lie that the most patriotic thing Americans could do in the face of terror was to go shopping. Shop your fear away.
This is the way of the Jester: speak the truth in a way that is funny. That isn't threatening. Maybe people will wake up. And certainly coming out of the trance is something to celebrate, even if one wakes up to a world that doesn't exactly inspire optimism at the moment.
Yes Fred, the world is going to hell. But if I can’t dance, it’s not my apocalypse.
Comments