TICKETS TORN IN HALF: August 26,1980-The B-52’s/Pylon@ Wollman Rink in Central Park It has been exactly one year since The B-52’s opened the TALKING HEADS show at this very venue and now we are days away from the release of their second album. There has been some airplay of a few of their newer tunes.We are ready as The B-52’s are becoming huge in NY. This night, after a short but interesting set from PYLON (a band being championed by The B-52’s out of Athens, Georgia) the beehived B’s took to the stage and rocked this NY City crowd into a frenzy. We had a blast with Downtown, Rock Lobster, 52 Girls, 6060842,Planet Claire, Dance This Mess Around,Private Idaho.
From RHINO.COM The B-52’s legend goes like this: in October 1976, Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson, Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson, and her brother, Ricky Wilson, shared a Flaming Volcano at a Chinese restaurant in Athens, GA and soon found themselves in the midst of a jam session. Blame it on the alcohol or the camaraderie, but the end result remains the same: The B-52’s were formed, their name taken from a type of beehive hairdo, which had taken its name because it resembled the nose cone of the aircraft known as the B-52.
Mind you, it took a few months for the newly-minted fivesome to get themselves together enough to perform a real concert, and when they did, it was at a Valentine’s Day party for their friends, so it’s not as though it was at a paying venue or anything, but it hardly matters: by the end of their performance, they’d proved themselves to be a real band. In short order, they were playing around the area, and by 1978 they’d recorded and released their first single, “Rock Lobster,” which turned them into cult sensations.
