Roaming where they want to

ROAMING HERE: The B52s

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The B52s' Kate Pierson talks to VICKI ANDERSON about her own Love Shack motel, beehives, apostrophes and their new album Funplex.

The B52s got together after sharing a Flaming Volcano drink at a Chinese restaurant in Georgia in 1976 and they've been touring ever since. Speaking from her home, Kate's Lazy Meadow Motel in Woodstock, New York, Kate Pierson, 61, still likes to party. Together with the other B52s - Cindy Wilson, Fred Schneider and Keith Strickland - she is at the Mudhouse Winery next Friday as part of the A Day on the Green festival series.

"It's crazy because none of us expected it to last this long, " she laughs. "Some bands stop and then 10 or 20 years later they reform but we've been an active touring band for all these years. New Zealand is one of our favourite places to play."

Needless to say their live act is tight. The B52s sound is a quirky juxtaposition of Wilson and Pierson's distinctive vocals and musical banter between Schneider and Strickland.

The group are touring their latest album, Funplex, released last year which reached No 5 in the US Rock charts. While sitting up the night before our interview I was tuned into Insomnia on C4 and the video for the single Funplex came on. As wacky as you'd expect, it features Fred zooming around galaxies and shopping malls on a Segway. Not long after that the video for Love Shack was on and it didn't appear as if any of the group have aged.

"Love Shack only feels like yesterday to me. The video for Funplex was a really fun video to make but it didn't get much video play here.

"The album was a big project but we felt we needed new material. We get together for shows all the time but because we live all over the place to get together to write was difficult."

It's been more than 30 years - does she get sick of singing Love Shack, Roam, Rock Lobster or Hot Pants Explosion?

"I never get sick of doing Rock Lobster or Love Shack, Cindy and I get to extemporise our sounds.

"We've added in some songs from Funplex into our set, mixed them with the classics we know people want to hear and it's given new life to the show. Our drummer has reworked some of the beats and Keith has modernised some of the older songs and changed the rhythm a little bit to more of a dance beat. We have the party mix version and then we do the new songs.

"Love In the Year 3000 - that one gets a great reaction from the audience. Fred gets his two laser guns out and he has a little megaphone that alters his voice, he sounds like an alien. We're really high tech."

Pierson says she expected life to be more exciting in the 2000s.

"Fred and I grew up expecting jet packs, monorails and space food and regular trips to other planets. I'm hoping that by 3000 we'll know about life on other planets."

Together with her partner Monica Coleman, Pierson runs a motel in the Catskill Mountains, Kate's Lazy Meadow Motel, and has played host to a member of Flight of the Conchords after she played the role of a club owner in the What Goes On Tour episode.

"It's so funny because I'm such a huge fan of that show and then they called out of the blue and then one of them stayed at Lazy Meadow, too. I wanted to do more, I said 'give me more lines'. It's a really good show."

Pierson has worked with a variety of big names throughout her career - you can hear her on REM's hit Shiny Happy People and Iggy Pop's song Candy.

"They give me so much freedom, both Iggy Pop and REM, they just wanted me to do what came naturally. The video for Shiny Happy People was really fun to do. A teacher friend got her class to do the backdrop."

You may or may not have noticed but The B52s dropped the apostrophe from their name last year. They had a very serious meeting to discuss the fate of their apostrophe.

"We were discussing updating our logo and Keith, Cindy's husband, had originally done the logo way back when and we thought we'd update it and make it a little more modern and then we decided we can't change it because it's classic. We dropped the apostrophe because it didn't make any sense - the B52's what? And with the internet it seemed superfluous. Do you miss it?"

Well no, but I do like the mental image of The B52s sitting around in the Love Shack discussing apostrophes. "It's been there for a long time, some were attached to it. It was a very funny conversation."

The band's name comes from a particular beehive hairdo resembling the nose cone of the aircraft of the same name and Cindy and Kate have sported magnificent examples over the years; surely she must be able to whip one up pretty quickly?

"We've loosened up on the hairstyle, we have a lot of hair so we wear our hair differently depending on our mood. We don't stick to the beehive any more, it's hard to beat the Amy Winehouse beehive. It just became so popular that it seemed like everyone had one so now we're rebelling against it."

She says that she believes the secret to keeping the group together for so long is their ability to make each other laugh. "The other night there was someone funny in the audience and I looked over at Fred and we laughed. We still get amused by the audience, it's like a dance party to us. Fred likes to tell jokes, he has his zingers. We have a sense of humour and we have common interests, we talk about politics, sometimes we get very doomsday but we always end up laughing at the end of it."

The last time Pierson was in New Zealand with her partner they didn't bungy jump but are looking to take the leap this time around.

"I think it was in 2005, Monica and I drove up the west coast of the South Island and we just had a great time. Monica's going to bungy jump, I'm not. I love hiking and I'm looking forward to having a dip in a lake. It's so beautiful. During the dark Bush years a lot of people in America were saying 'let's move to New Zealand, it's so perfect'."

Does she care to share the recipe for a Flaming Volcano? Obviously it's a potent brew.

"It came in a kava bowl with five straws so we each had a straw and that inspired us mightily to run over to a friend's house and start jamming. He was writing a letter or studying or something at the time. He was a musician so he had all these instruments in his basement and we wrote this song about killer bees - killer bees coming from Brazil, we never recorded that one.

"Then we started getting together and jamming. It was like spontaneous combustion, no-one ever said 'let's start a band' it just happened.

"That Flaming Volcano really had some magic juju in it."

A Day on the Green featuring The B52s, The Proclaimers and Dave McArtney and the Pink Flamingos at Mudhouse Winery and Cafe, Friday, December 11. Visit adayonthegreen.co.nz. Tickets $152.50, $129.90, $101.80, if available, from Ticketmaster: ticketmaster.co.nz or ph 0800 111 999.

Bus information: General admission and transport package, if available: Discovery Travel Ltd, ph 03 357 8262; Canterbury Wine Tours ph 0800 081 155; Rail Tours NZ, ph 03 342 6450.