The B-52's
Self-Titled

We think you will be surprised at just how good the sound can be. And you may or may not be surprised at just how fun the music is.

On the better pressings, the soundstage is huge, spacious and amazingly rich, full-bodied with the uncolored tonality that earned this recording a place in our Top 100.

Who knew that good sounding records were still being recorded in 1979? Candy-O comes to mind, but the B-52's' first album has virtually none of the grit and Roy Thomas Baker heavy-processing of that one, and a lot more Tubey Magic to boot -- when you get a good pressing of course.

What The Best Sides Of This Debut Album Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1979
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

The Best of 79

This recording reminded me of a really good Don Landee / Ted Templeman production, the kind you hear on JT or Simple Dreams or the better Doobie Brothers albums. Everything is laid out clearly: there's a space created for every part of the frequency spectrum from the lowest lows to the highest highs, with nothing crowding or interfering with anything else. The production is professional, clean, clear and real sounding everywhere you look.

Chris Blackwell of Island Records produced the album, recorded it in Nassau, with engineering by a fellow named Robert Ash, whose work I was not familiar with. Turns out he's worked with none other than Rhett Davies and Eno, two individuals we have nothing but the utmost respect for.

Ash did a great job on this album. Until we hear something better we would have to say this is the Best Sounding Album of 1979.

What We're Listening For On The B-52's

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

The Piano

The toy piano Fred Schneider plays on "Dance This Mess Around" is at the back of the stage, placed at about 10 o'clock in the soundfield. On most copies it sounds more like a glockenspiel than a toy piano; the better copies bring out the unique qualities of the instrument. Music has been written for it and classical concerts performed on it, can you imagine? And Fred plays it in concert (or used to anyway).

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

A Rock Masterpiece

We consider the B-52's debut album their masterpiece. It's a recording that belong in any serious Rock Collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

• Planet Claire
• 52 Girls
• Dance This Mess Around
• Rock Lobster

Side Two

• Lava
• There's a Moon in the Sky (Called the Moon)
• Hero Worship
• 6060-842
• Downtown

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

These songs illustrated that the B-52's' adoration of camp culture wasn't simply affectation -- it was a world view capable of turning out brilliant pop singles and, in turn, influencing mainstream pop culture. It's difficult to imagine the endless kitschy retro fads of the '80s and '90s without the B-52's pointing the way, but The B-52's isn't simply an historic artifact -- it's a hell of a good time.