On the last day of Riot Fest, the B-52s played what was billed as their final Chicago show. Founding members Cindy Wilson, Fred Schneider, and Kate Pierson rocked out with their touring band, opening with “Planet Claire” and running through a set of the best-known tunes from their 41-year discography. Schneider bounced around in a hoodie and T-shirt, while Wilson and Pierson wore shimmering spangled dresses and their signature beehive hairdos.
“I got into the B-52s, probably ’79ish, definitely into ’80,” recalls DJ Jesse Saunders, 57, who created the first house music record, “On and On,” in 1984. “They’re one of my favorite groups, actually.”
Saunders’s early dance-music productions with Vince Lawrence have a definite new-wave flavor, and when he listens to the B-52s, he hears the exchange going both ways. “You can hear a lot of those edgy electronic influences,” he says. “One of my favorite songs by them was actually ‘Mesopotamia.’ I used to play that to death! I mean, I would probably play that two or three times a night, ’cause I loved it so much.” Saunders created rhythm tracks as DJ tools, allowing him to segue between fast songs such as “Rock Lobster” and cuts with more typical R&B tempos.
“It wasn’t something that translated as well,” Branch explains. The Village People, she says, wouldn’t typically be played at house parties. “It was just a little too pop and over-the-top. B-52s was more gritty. Even though ‘Rock Lobster’ was a hit, it still felt underground to us because of the venues where it was played, and you didn’t expect to hear it.”
