The B-52s formed in 1976 Athens, Georgia, when singer-songwriter Fred Schneider (born in Newark, raised in Belleville) drunkenly got up to sing at a Chinese restaurant with a friend. That friend was Kate Pierson, another transplanted Jerseyite, born in Weehawken and raised in Rutherford. Together with Keith Strickland, Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson, they formed a band, named it after a popular bouffant hair-do, and played their first gig at a private 1977 party. Soon, with their thrift-store fashion sense and genre-defying material, they became the darlings of the post-punk era.