Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Happy Birthday, Cindy Wilson

Today (February 28th) is the fifty-fifth birthday Cynthia Leigh Wilson, vocalist and founding member of the Athens, Georgia, party band the B-52’s.

Cindy was working as a waitress at age 19 when she and her old brother Ricky joined up with other local musicians for a little jam session. On Valentine’s Day in 1977, they played their first concert for a party for friends. And thus the B-52’s were born.


Besides working with the group, she has also done her own solo work in 2003. Over the years she has also worked with other artists like Bill Withers, Debbie Harry, the Ramones, and Vince Clarke.

In the past year I’ve reviewed a number of albums by Cindy and the B-52’s:

- for their 1979 self-titled debut The B-52's, click here

- for their 1980 album Wild Planet, click here

- for their 1982 EP Mesopotamia which just celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, click here

- for 2011 first-ever live album release With the Wild Crowd!, click here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello Martin. Just read your blog and was interested to know what work Cindy Wilson has done with Vince Clarke? Cheers. Dom, Melbourne.

Martin Maenza said...

Dom, according to Wikipedia: "The Family Fantastic, a side project by Yazoo (Yaz)/Erasure mastermind Vince Clarke features a short sample of Wilson saying "Uh, gosh, I'm ready to dance" on the track "Doin' This Thing" from the 2000 album Nice!."