B-52's Dance This Mess Around

My favorite B-52s song of all time. It sits on the fabulous first side of the self entitled debut album, smack between the poppy 52 Girls and the worthy single Rock Lobster. The song itself is minimalistic, a characteristically mock retro. yet the fanciful setting is a dance party, and the tone is darker than the other songs on the album, so it is easier to transport yourself into the imagined world. The song is driven by the organ, with a heavily reverbed electric guitar providing subtle accents. despite being less prominent than in the guitar centric Rock Lobster, the guitar still defines the mood.


The subtle music is a good indication that the song was designed to be a showcase of Cynthia Wilson's range. She blows the roof off the house with both melody and passion, starting out like a seductress ("remember . . . ."), letting out a bratty growl worthy of Bikini Kill ("why won't you dance with me?"), and bringing about the songs sweet first resolution only measures later ("everybody goes to parties"). The male/ female conversational interplay her and Schneider seals the deal - only to be followed by Wilson taking on a spoken word feel, sounding like a mock beatnik instead of a goofy proto rap like Blondie. A+ job.


However, I always wondered, how do you do those dances? Apparantly there are 16 of them, but only 8 are expressly mention by name: the shugaloo, the shy tuna, the camel walk, the hipocrit, the coo coo choo, the aqua-velva, the dirty dog, and the escalator.


I did a youtube search, and the only one i could find was the hipocrit