The Seventh Seal Opens, A Look Back

The world is full of crucial moments that signal the transition between two distinct eras. After much contemplation, I've decided that the most important one in recent memory happened in 1978 when The B-52's released Rock Lobster which reached #56 on Billboard's Hot 100. Here are the lyrics, to refresh your memory. You go read, I'll wait.

. . . . .



Okey doke.

That song is complete nonsense with a synthesized crappy sound bed. A crucifix in a jar of piss has more artistic value than Rock Lobster. Who bakes potatoes at the beach? How did your ear lobe get into the deep? What does it mean to be fruggin, exactly? Why are you morons not able to properly identify a rock lobster, which in fact does not look much like a rock? Perhaps you simply went to a beach and with a child like sense of wonder started trying to find things that might possibly rhyme? That's what I think.

Unfortunately, this type of song wold become all to familiar of music "created" in the cultural dead zone known as the 80's, while it simultaneously signals the end of the 60's/70's. The two times couldn't be more different. Music in the 60's and 70's might not have always been good but for every crappy Carpenters song there was a little CCR, Doors, Van Morrison etc. to even it out. Even disco was clearly superior to manufactured 80's pop. The Bee Gee's get a lot of crap but lyrically the were fairly competent and the music had actual instruments and not just a Casio keyboard with low batteries.


Before Rock Lobster there was free love and bong loads, after Rock Lobster there was cocaine and AIDS. Not a great trade off unless being terrified during every sexual encounter was your particular fetish, then game on to you sir.

Ironically, this massive, decade long drop off in substantial artistic/cultural depth happened at the same time as the reverse was happening politically, as we traded the Nixon/Ford/Carter debacles for the return to prominence under Reagan.

Maybe that explains it. Politically speaking, the United States was a nightmare from Kennedy getting killed until Reagan was elected. Maybe all the tough times during the 60's/70's simply became too much for that generation (notoriously selfish and weak minded) to take and when they couldn't sing, sex or dance their problems away, they just gave up, brought Reagan in to clean up the nation's problems and went into a cultural void. Or died, in some cases.

And like all voids it had to be filled by something. In this case it was filled by Madness, Eddie Money, a seriously crappy Moody Blues, a seriously modern-rocked Chicago, John Hughes movies, the inexplicable rise of Paul Reiser and finally, the B-52's.

An absolute 180 cultural turn that can first be traced back to a crappy song from a crappy band. Who knew in that dark day in 1978 when that aural date rape first came on the air that it signaled an end of an era? Who knew it was the tip of a crappy spear? Probably nobody. It was just the new-fangled song that came on between Le Freak and You Don't Bring Me Flowers. Only time can provide the proper historical context for world changing moments. Much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker the forward pass, we now know that the release of a little known song about a Cousteauian beach party gone wrong was in fact a massive transitional moment in history that would change the world forever.

Here comes a sting-ray
There goes a manta-ray
In walked a jellyfish
There goes a dogfish
Chased by a catfish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha
There goes a narwhale
Here comes a bikini whale

ROCK LOBSTER!