In January 1980 I was in Paris, France with Leonie, my girlfriend at the time and we were wandering the streets after dinner taking in the cold night air as you do. It was early evening and as we passed a record shop down tucked into one of narrow streets this strange music came bouncing off the walls. It was other worldly but definitely pop music. But of a different kind. It reminded of Roxy Music and Yoko Ono all at once.
More importantly I thought I had found a French band. Which would be exciting. To take back to Australia something no one had heard yet from a slightly exotic country. It was exciting buying the Specials debut in a French department store the day previously but this topped that. In the record store the man behind the counter explained that they were an American band and the album was fabulous but he was playing his very own copy. They had no more. Sold out. So I left Paris without the B-52s.
I didn't matter because when I got back to Australia they had just started playing Rock Lobster on the radio and the B-52s were about to become a hit making machine.
On my first visit to Missing Link Records when I was back in Melbourne I saw they had the B-52s record in their racks, The cover just jumped out. Great I could buy it here, I was in Missing Link to see Bruce from Au Go Go. A UK distributor called Stage One were starting a record label and wanted to put the first Little Murders single out as their debut release. I was at the counter when Nick Cave came over to me and started asking me questions about the UK. Which surprised me since even though my bands had played a number of times with the Boys Next Door I had hardly spoken to him at all. But he really wanted to know what was going on in London. I said there weren't too many exciting bands around playing live. And a lot of the venues are quite small.
At the time I didn't know they were planning to move over there.
Got so caught up talking to Nick and then Bruce that I walked out of the shop without the B-52s record. I didn't get it for another few months because Rock Lobster was everywhere. I couldn't listen to that track any more. Then I picked it up second hand. And it was brilliant even if I had to lift the needle over Rock Lobster.
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