Post #47210 by martiki on Sun, Aug 10, 2003 4:42 PM

From the SF Travel section today:

It all began with a cocktail. Just one cocktail. One really enormous punch bowl of a cocktail.

And five straws.

"I think of it as the Night of the Flaming Volcano," says Cindy Wilson, of the B-52's. She's the blond one, with the yearling eyes.

"We all pitched in for this giant rum drink at a Chinese restaurant," says Keith Strickland, the band's pretty-boy drummer and guitarist. "It had a Sterno can burning under it."

"It was all very ceremonial," says Wilson. "Then we went and played."

And played. And played. And played.

And they're playing still. Wilson, Strickland and three other young arty- party hang-abouts -- Fred Schneider, Kate Pierson and the late Ricky Wilson, Cindy's brother -- left that restaurant for a rum-buzzed jam session at a friend's house. Sometime in the wee hours, a lean surf-guitar vibe began to coalesce around an irresistible dance groove and a Lava lamp sense of fun. By morning, a band had formed that would lay down the funk-pop dance beat of an era. The B-52's were born, and a small Southern college town -- Athens, Ga. -- emerged as the center of the expanding underground universe of alternative rock.