Ancient Culture: Mesopotamia Revisited

Artist Name
The B-52's
Release Date

3CD/LP Deluxe Edition Restores Band’s Vision For 1982 EP With Unreleased Outtakes, Plus Alternate Mixes, And A Previously Unreleased 1982 Concert, Arrives August 21  

PRE-ORDER NOW

Newly Remastered “Mesopotamia” Available Digitally Today

LISTEN HERE
 

In 1981, The B-52’s set out to make an album with producer David Byrne of Talking Heads, but their management cut the sessions short—rushing out the six-track Mesopotamia EP instead. While it didn’t realize its full potential in the studio, the release still became a Top 40 hit in January 1982. A new deluxe edition from Rhino finally restores the band’s original full-length vision with unreleased outtakes, expanding the story with alternate mixes and an unreleased 1982 concert. 

Ancient Culture: Mesopotamia Revisited will be available August 21 as a 3CD/LP set from Rhino.com. Pre-Order Here. The collection will also be available the same day via DSP. To celebrate the announcement, the newly remastered version of “Mesopotamia” is available digitally today. Listen Now.

Following the rapid-fire success of their first two albums coupled with nonstop touring, Ricky Wilson, Cindy Wilson, Keith Strickland, Fred Schneider, and Kate Pierson were exhausted and short on material when it came time for their third album. To write songs for it, management relocated the band from Athens, Georgia to a communal house in Upstate New York—an experiment Pierson later linked to The Shining. 

The studio proved equally challenging, as the band’s deliberate, democratic writing style conflicted with Byrne’s ambitious studio approach. He introduced outside session players like saxophonist Ralph Carney, shifting the group away from their signature surf-punk style and toward denser arrangements on “Loveland” and hypnotic grooves like “Deep Sleep.”

The new “Full-Length Version” of Mesopotamia featured on CD and LP in Ancient Culture assembles the track list as originally intended. It pairs newly remastered versions of the original six songs with three outtakes: unreleased recordings of “Big Bird” and the highly sought-after exotica-tinged “Adios Desconocida,” along with “Queen Of Las Vegas,” which first surfaced on The B-52’s Anthology (2002). 

The new collection gathers essential alternate mixes that trace Mesopotamia’s evolutionary history, starting with “International Mixes” for three songs mistakenly included on early versions of the EP released in the U.K. Fast forward to 1990 and Tom Durack’s crisp remix of the EP, which debuted that year on the expanded Party Mix / Mesopotamia.

Rounding out the collection is a previously unreleased recording of the April 19, 1982, concert at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom. It provides a detailed snapshot from the band’s “Meso-America” tour, with the Georgia quintet feeding off the massive New York crowd to deliver high-energy live versions of Mesopotamia standouts like “Nip It In The Bud” and “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can,” alongside dance-floor staples like “Rock Lobster” and “Private Idaho.”

 

Ancient Culture: Mesopotamia Revisited 

3CD Track Listing

Disc One: Mesopotamia (Full-Length Version)

  1. “Mesopotamia”
  2. “Deep Sleep”
  3. “Adios Desconocida” *
  4. “Queen Of Las Vegas”
  5. “Nip It In The Bud”
  6. “Loveland”
  7. “Cake”
  8. “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can”
  9. “Big Bird” *

 

Disc Two: Mixes

  1. “Loveland” (International Mix)
  2. “Cake” (International Mix)
  3. “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can” (International Mix)
  4. “Loveland” (Tom Durack Remix)
  5. “Deep Sleep” (Tom Durack Remix)
  6. “Mesopotamia” (Tom Durack Remix)
  7. “Cake” (Tom Durack Remix)
  8. “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can” (Tom Durack Remix)
  9. “Nip It In The Bud” (Tom Durack Remix)

 

Disc Three: Meso-America: Live At The Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY, April 19, 1982

  1. “Party Out Of Bounds” *
  2. “Give Me Back My Man” *
  3. “Big Bird” *
  4. “Cake” *
  5. “Lava” *
  6. “Loveland” *
  7. “Mesopotamia”
  8. “Planet Claire” *
  9. “606-0842” *
  10. “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can” *
  11. “Dance This Mess Around” *
  12. “52 Girls” *
  13. “Nip It In The Bud” *
  14. “Rock Lobster” *
  15. “Private Idaho” *

 

LP Track Listing

Side One

  1. “Mesopotamia”
  2. “Deep Sleep”
  3. “Adios Desconocida” *
  4. “Queen Of Las Vegas”
  5. “Nip It In The Bud”

 

Side Two

  1. “Loveland”
  2. “Cake”
  3. “Throw That Beat In The Garbage Can”
  4. “Big Bird” *

 

* Previously Unreleased