This recording, like the band’s first album, 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 — with a difference.

Like the abovementioned 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.

But…

It’s rare for those albums to sound as PUNCHY and LIVELY as the best copies of Wild Planet do. The B-52’s first album has that sound in spades. The producers and engineers apparently knew a good thing when they found it and succeeded in leaving well enough alone here (at least on the better copies; the mediocre copies are always going to be missing some of the life of the music).

Chris Blackwell of Island Records produced the album, taking the band down to Nassau to record it, with one of our favorite knob-twirlers, none other than Rhett Davies, on board as engineer.

The result is one of the Best Sounding Albums of 1980.

Rich, smooth, natural sound in the ’80s? Not many have managed to pull it off, but these guys did.

What to Listen For

A big, solid, punchy kick drum. It’s prominent in the mix on the best copies and really drives the music.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Party Out Of Bounds 
Dirty Back Road 
Runnin’ Around 
Give Me Back My Man 
Private Idaho

Side Two

Devil In My Car 
Quiche Lorraine 
Strobe Light 
53 Miles West Of Venus

AMG 4 1/2 Star Review

Conventional wisdom has it that all the B-52’s’ subsequent releases are highly inferior to their debut. While Wild Planet is not the rarefied wonder their first platter is, it’s still darn good.

The songs here are generally faster, tighter, and punchier than previously, though production values are not as wonderfully quirky and detailed; fewer songs here are as over-the-top crazy as the first album’s “Rock Lobster” or “52 Girls.” These formless selections continue to exhibit a cunning mix of girl group, garage band, surf, and television theme song influences, all propelled along by an itchy dance beat.

“Give Me Back My Man” allows Cindy Wilson a unique opportunity to croon a broad, expressive melodic line. Fred Schneider parades his inimitably nervous vocals on chucklesome ditties like “Quiche Lorraine” and “Strobe Light.”

The best songs here are “Private Idaho,” a wonderfully jittery number that employs a variant on the famous melodic snippet from the Twilight Zone theme music, and “Devil in My Car,” a delightfully loopy hoot that lays the craziness on very thickly.

Performances and sound quality are fine. This album is well worth hearing and recommended.