Party Mix / Mesopotamia

B-52's | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (December 29, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Reprise / Wea
• ASIN: B000002LN6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #70,749 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: B-52'S
Title: PARTY MIX/MESOPOTAMIA
Street Release Date: 01/29/1991
Domestic
Genre: ROCK/POP

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, April 10, 2000

By 

Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Party Mix / Mesopotamia (Audio CD)

I guess I must be the only person in the world who thinks Mesopotamia was the B-52's finest achievement. Don't get me wrong, I love their other stuff, and to this day listen to them often. They are their own selves. Completely original. But with Mesopotamia, they stretched beyond even their own ziggy boundaries, and reached, for lack of a better word, some kind of "zone."

This is not an easy album. I think I must have listened to it about ten times before I "got" it. But it's worth the patience. Maybe the best thing to do is to start with the beat. Don't be distracted by anything else. Just the beat. The rest will come later.

"Loveland." Throbbing, pounding bass, the minor note, and you are there. How can you stay off your feet? And listen to Kate Pierson. She has never sounded better. Passionate. Savage. Beautiful. Angry. "Loveland?" I suppose. This is where I fell in love with Kate Pierson.

Then "Deep Sleep," which is mostly a hypnotic kind of psychadelic thing, but again with the great back beat, and dreamy sultry vocals. These women, you think, they are like sirens.

The next two songs are the B-52's at the apex of their career. Mesopotamia is again a great rock song, with the trademark brilliant female harmonies, and here comes Fred Schneider, with his hilarious, absurdist lyrics. You'll note he is a great stylist as well, contributing greatly to the beat with his vocals, in the tradition of the greatest rock'n'roll singers. The song would still be wonderful, but this sense of timing puts it on another plane.

And then we come to "Cake." There has never been a song in the history of rock'n'roll like "Cake." What is it about? It is about baking a cake. What's so special about that? Well, these girls sing more passionately about baking a cake than anybody ever sang about anything. Peace, injustice, war, hunger. You want passion? Listen to "Cake." Oh, and then maybe think about irony.

This is where I fell in love with both Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson. And with what skill! The B-52's have always been famous for their harmonies but on this album, and on this song, they are mind-boggling. They must have practiced singing this song--God, I don't know--hundreds of times. More. I try to sing along with them every time and, well, forget it.

And again you have the pounding, danceable beat, with horns and guitars and keyboard. I never get tired of this. It just hasn't happened. There is no other rock band in the world which sounds like this. Like them, at their peak.

The last two songs are excellent, ("Throw that Beat in the Garbage Can,") and you will love them, but they can not match the spectacularity of the first four. (Only six songs on the whole thing! Nooooooo!)

So what happened here? Was it David Byrne, the producer? I don't know. I've never been a big fan of him or his band. He played a part though. Sometimes it is pointless to ask. But they hit greatness here. Somehow.

They hit it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars MESOPOTAMIA REMIXES....WHY????, November 25, 2004

By 

Tame (Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Party Mix / Mesopotamia (Audio CD)

First of all i want to say that i LOVE this record (i'm talking about "Mesopotamia"; nothing to say about "Party mix!" besides it's excellent). Well, i LOVED the ORIGINAL RECORD, the one i knew when it came out. I had no idea it had been remixed in 1990, and istening to the results...i can't figure out why it was remixed. I had it on vinyl and thought i'd buy it on cd. "That's great, "Party mix!" and "Mesopotamia", the 2 ep's on one cd", that's what fans may think...And then you realize...song timings are different...WHY?WHY WAS IT REMIXED?
"Loveland" and "Cake": 5 minutes long each?? They where 8 and 7 minutes long respectively. The remixer's work it's incredibly horrible; the B-52's said that they wanted to make a danceable record when it came out, and they made it, really well. The remixer, though, has taken away all the spirit: verses, choruses and arrangements are removed, new effects (echoes on voices, louder guitars)are thrown in without a single tiny bit of taste, the volume of the "sytethized" claps is unheardable when not removed too, and vocals that where not used in the original record are here misused...The song structure is rewritten too...Was the band happy with these remixed version? I just can say that fans are gonna be very very disappointed, i know that for sure cause i am still. And NO OPENNING HORNS ON "CAKE"???That had to be the biggest disappointment of 'em all.
Today i've taken my vinyl to a record store near my home where they'll put it on cd for 6 euro. I had no choice.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars a big fan's big disappointment, September 12, 2005

By 

Jason Knapp (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Party Mix / Mesopotamia (Audio CD)

When pop artists work entirely on instinct, the results can be inexplicably good. It's often hard to take apart the pieces and explain what makes the whole thing so wonderful, because it feels like the music sprang up, fully grown, right out of the band's collective brain. And that's the way most of the B-52's music feels: inspired, soulful and really nuts.

But this double-EP is a good example of how too much thought can destroy a work of instinct. The remixes for "Party Mix!" are just annoying, but easy to dismiss, since you're getting "Mesopotamia" on the same CD. But I was just crest-fallen when I got this disc home and listened to one of the most brilliant pieces of early-80s pop gone sour.

I'd heard that the band didn't like the results of Mesopotamia's original production and felt that it sounded more like David Byrne, their producer, than their own work. But Byrne took the band's wonderful qualities and pushed them in a new and unexpected direction. It was a very successful experiment.

For the CD release, the band went back and re-mixed the whole EP, dumbing down the hard, syncopated percussion, adding cheesy echoes and reverbs, and just cutting time out of some tracks all together. The result is an uncomfortable grafting of bad pop clichés onto the stark original. It doesn't sound like the original or like the B-52's better music. Fortunately, for those of us who still have decent vinyl copies of the original, we can rip our own CDs and pray they come to their senses in time to release the original version.