No, that’s not a colony of beautiful space aliens from Planet Claire descending upon the nearest amphitheater to entertain us. Bleep bloop: It’s the B-52’s. Despite initially teasing a retirement from touring back in 2022, the band has decided to reverse course and get their wigs back into fighting shape. Together with fellow pioneers of weird Devo — a misunderstood kinship they’re more than happy to highlight — the two acts will fuse together for a double bill they’re branding as the Cosmic De-Evolution Tour, which began on September 24. Fred Schneider, the B-52’s de facto front man whose booming sing-speak is as big as a whale, is joined by fellow co-founders Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson for their live performances. (Multi-instrumentalist Keith Strickland bowed out of touring in 2013, and guitarist Ricky Wilson died of AIDS in 1985.) While Devo and their energy domes have their own lazy interpretations to deal with, Schneider wants to make one thing perfectly clear about his legacy. “I don’t like when people call us camp,” he says. “Camp means you don’t know you’re ridiculous, and we know what we’re doing. We’ve always known what we were doing.”

Another unwelcome aspect that the two bands share? Neither has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame despite decades of eligibility and a cosmic consensus of their greatness. (Last year, the Rock Hall’s chairman told me that the B-52’s had “come up in the room” but never received enough advocacy from the nominating committee.) Schneider, though, has better things to do than think about the snub. “I don’t care anymore. We should have been in 20 years ago because if it’s about influencing other bands, I can’t tell you how many bands said they were influenced by us,” he explains with a chuckle. “I know Kate is really champing at the bit to get in, but I don’t care. It just doesn’t make any sense that we’re not in. Other bands have gotten in who aren’t even rock and roll. I could care less about being in there with John Cougar Mellencamp.”

Song that exceeded your expectations

I thought “Love Shack” had the most commercial potential we had done up to that point, but the record company wasn’t exactly behind it, and top 40 radio wouldn’t touch it. We were just too weird for the powers that be, even though we had sellout tours. It’s a go-figure world with music. I can’t figure it out. Luckily, we had all our college and alternative stations playing it, and it went to No. 1 on all of them. That’s when everyone else started to take notice. It went even further than I had ever hoped, because the most a song of ours had ever achieved was “Rock Lobster,” which, if I’m not mistaken, barely got above No. 50 without any commercial play. Actually, some of the band didn’t even want to finish “Love Shack.” They said, “We can’t nail the end, let’s just forget it.” This was while we were recording, and I wouldn’t have that. I had to be like, “No, calm down, this can be done!”

Your defining vocal performance

“Good Stuff” and the entire album Good Stuff. My voice had really developed because I was more serious about taking vocal lessons. I got great compliments on my vocals for “Dreamland” and “Dry County.” I found my voice through these songs, as cliché as it sounds. I started finding it on Cosmic Thing, and it got more powerful. When I started out, I wasn’t sure what my voice was, because I never sang. There I am, never having sung, singing in front of all of these audiences. I started “reciting,” since I treated it more like poetry. But luckily, it sets me apart from any other singer from what I gather. My voice has gotten a lot better and I have more control. I wasn’t influenced by anybody because the music I like is James Brown and Motown and funk, and my voice was as far as you could get from those. If I had my druthers at the time, I would’ve wanted to be Wilson Pickett.

Song you second-guessed

Some songs I didn’t want to sing on. I didn’t see how I would add anything else to it, even though I had written the lyrics. “Queen of Las Vegas” and “Debbie” come to mind. I didn’t feel comfortable singing them. I’ll get in trouble if I say why. We’ll leave it at that.

Song that’s deeper than people realize

Too many. “Bad Influence” is one of my favorites. It’s even worse now. Unfortunately, “Channel Z” is still the same as everything, but possibly worse. Even a song like “Funplex” was about an incident at a mall where they had two people thrown out for wearing peace-sign T-shirts. They weren’t even hippies. Well, maybe they were hippies because it was near Woodstock, but it was a father and son. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. We do political songs. It’s not all rainbows and polka dots. My idea of funny is the English say the craziest things with a straight face. So, sometimes we burst out laughing as the song starts and we have to start over. We’re one band that can do that. I can’t think of any other band where somebody — and it’s usually me — starts laughing and can’t start the song, but the audience doesn’t care. It shows we’re pretty real.

Song that doesn’t represent you anymore

I can’t think of any songs like that because we were never as prolific, thank God, as a lot of bands. You’ll notice that because we had no tracks we didn’t put out. Well, there were two or three we didn’t put out. There’s a few songs I’m sort of tired of performing, but it’s not because they’re bad or anything like that. I don’t even get tired of “Rock Lobster” or “Planet Claire.” I’ll never get tired of the songs we did from the first and second album. It’s because we have such a good time onstage and our backing band has been with us a long time making everything fun and fresh. We’re lucky. Kate, Cindy, and I get along better than ever before and interact more than ever. It shows. I hardly change anything. I’ve never seen the point of going off on a “Fred tangent” because I don’t want to throw Kate and Cindy off. I mean, I’ve forgotten lyrics. I’ll admit that I don’t care to do “Quiche Lorraine” anymore. It’s a hysterical song, but I outgrew that one.

Song that wasn’t fully realized until performed live

That would be any new song on any new album. We wouldn’t try out songs until after the record came out, because we were a band that was always on tour and not making much money. I had to become a lot more dynamic back then. If you see some of our early footage from the late ’70s, it’s like, Oh my God, I just want to get the song going. I didn’t have to say much to the audience. I still don’t like phony stage patter. I saw Ike and Tina Turner twice in a row within about a week of the performances, and they had the exact same stage patter for every show. Cher did the same thing. They make it sound like it’s spontaneous, but it’s not. It’s odd. I like to be humorous. I love making people laugh and making the band laugh, especially when I’m introducing them. I think that adds more to a show than me standing there talking about, “Oh, it’s great to be here and blah, blah. And I remember …”

I’ve gotten a lot better at it because I was made the front man when no one else wanted to do it. There I was in the middle, physically, so it was up to me. I didn’t want that role. I like to keep the show moving. I don’t want to stand up there and talk. I like to entertain the audience by saying something totally out there, but acting like it makes a lot of sense. I guess I’m a wannabe comedian. We never claimed to be the “world’s greatest party band.” I think Rolling Stone, who has never been particularly great to us, came up with the term. I would never say anything like that because it’s embarrassing to act like you were the greatest anything. I think we’re one of the best party bands. That word I don’t mind. Remember, we had no budget starting out. We had no budget for clothes. Everyone thought we were promoting thrift-store chic. It’s like, hello. We didn’t have any money and we liked colorful clothes.

Song that should’ve been a bigger deal

That’s a tough one. There’s not that many alternative stations anymore, and they would embrace whatever we put out as a single. I thought we had great songs on every album. On Cosmic Thing, “Dry County” should’ve gotten more love. Living in Athens, Georgia, it was a dry county where you couldn’t buy booze. There are still a lot of those counties down South. The religious nuts have control of things. It’s a well-crafted, catchy, and well-sung song. I’m really proud of that one. I could see how “Funplex” was a little too weird to get a lot of radio play, but I never gave it that much thought. It was like, “If they play anything, I’m happy.” There’s another song from Bouncing Off the Satellites called “Summer of Love.” To my earlier point, we do have serious songs. I think people don’t want politics in music except if you’re Bruce Springsteen. I think, Oh, Bruce, you do it, you have the audience for that.

How the band’s SNL performance changed your life

It put us on the map. Our first album was starting to drop off the charts. We did Saturday Night Live, and it bounced way back. It was a gold record by summer and later went platinum. It boosted our visibility around the country and people were like, “Wow, this band is weird.” What people didn’t realize is we were paralyzed with fear. We had never been on television and all of a sudden, we’re on one of the top-rated shows on television. We had done radio, but we hadn’t even done local television. We looked really punky and we sang punky, because we were punks back then. New Wave music hadn’t kicked off yet. We were singing the craziest stuff, messing around, and writing surreal lyrics. But we were able to give the most amazing performance. The whole time I was thinking, I hope nothing goes wrong. I hope Ricky doesn’t break a string. That always happened at shows later on. I’ve heard from a lot of musicians that they saw our performance and it made them want to be in a band. It’s the greatest compliment I can ask for.

 “I don’t like when people call us camp. Camp means you don’t know you’re ridiculous, and we know what we’re doing.”