We’ll dance in the garden in torn sheets in the rain.
A love letter to the lyrics of Deadbeat Club by The B-52's.
Some dimly recalled drunken opining.
Something about the crucial, philosophical differences between slacking and dropping out.
Someone, I can’t remember who, commending drop-outs for their active, non-conformist lifestyle choices.
The same someone slating slackers for their refusal to confront, for their passive avoidance of choice.
Slackers as feckless wasters. Drop-outs sticking it to the man. It made sense at the time. It may even have mattered. Whatever.
What about deadbeats in this context? Where do they sit on this spectrum?
Huh, get a job?
What for?
Are the opening words of Deadbeat Club slacker speak? Or are they a disavowal of orthodoxy by a potential drop-out, standing on some kind of metaphorical ledge?
I think it is the latter.
The members of the Deadbeat Club don’t talk and don’t act like slackers. Slacking is defined by inaction and a lack of imagination, whereas these here Deadbeats have dreams and ideas and meaningful conversations.
I was good,
I could talk a mile a minute
On this caffeine buzz I was on,
We were really hummin’.
We would talk every day for hours.
We belong to the Deadbeat Club.
Deadbeats may give the appearance of doing nothing constructive, but only to an outside observer who doesn’t get it. In fact Deadbeat Club is a beautifully evocative depiction of that sadly transient, youthful state of grace which is characterised by the absence of responsibility and consequence. It is a phase, but we only recognise it as such when it is over. If life is like a signal flare then this song is pitched at its apogee; at its highest, its brightest and its most fleeting.
We’ll dance in the garden
In torn sheets
In the rain.
What a wonderfully poetic, instantly nostalgic piece of imagery that is. Painting with words. Capturing that mellow, best-days-of-our-lives vibe through a combination of dreamy lyrics and mellifluous harmonies.
Let’s go crash that party down
In Normaltown tonight.
Then we’ll go skinny-dippin’
In the moonlight.
We’re wild girls walkin’ down the street,
Wild girls and boys
Going out for a big time.
This verse is a reasonable description of the Deadbeat Club video. The B-52's hanging out with friends, dancing like no one is watching, wearing Audrey Hepburn headscarves and driving open-top cars between parties with one hand on the wheel and the other insouciantly draped over the door.
Normaltown, by the way, is a real place, a neighbourhood of Athens, Georgia, whence came both the B-52's and REM.
Indeed, Michael Stipe makes a cameo appearance in the video, part of the circular arrangement by which Kate Pierson of the B-52's sang backing vocals on Shiny Happy People.
In fact the two songs are the lyrical and spiritual equivalent of twinned towns. This verse from Shiny Happy People is also a pretty good description of the Deadbeat Club video.
Meet me in the crowd,
People, people.
Throw your love around,
Love me, love me.
Take it into town,
Happy, happy.
Michael Stipe describes Shiny Happy People as a bubblegum song, and admits to being slightly embarrassed by how big a hit it became.
Deadbeat Club is from the same mold - happy, clappy, fun and irony-free. It is dreamy and joyous. It is nothing to be embarrassed about.
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