The B-52s land at Carmel’s Sunset Center.

The B-52s began by way of the divine union of booze, Chinese food and a college town about to become an oasis for alternative music in the Deep South.

In 1976, Fred Schneider, Ricky Wilson, his sister Cindy Wilson, Kate Pierson and Keith Strickland conceived the band after drinks at a Chinese food joint. The result would delight fans and challenge the mainstream for more than decade.

The collective named themselves after the southern name for the tall, flamboyant hairstyles that became a trademark hairdo of their two female lead singers, Cindy Wilson and Pierson.

After an early recording of their campy single “Rock Lobster” became a modest alternative radio hit, they played CBGB and Max’s Kansas City in New York, where they landed a contract with Warner Brothers.

The B-52s pioneered a new medium with their music video for “Lobster,” a spasm of neon, beehive hair, go-go dancing and bubbles.

Their success helped to create an atmosphere of creativity and nonconformity in their native Athens, Georgia, which became a college radio mecca largely due to its ties to R.E.M.

The B-52s’ biggest and most iconic hit to date, “Love Shack,” won a Grammy and peaked at number three on the Billboard Music Chart in 1989.

The B-52s also penned songs with deeper messages. Schneider uses backyard swimming pools and the potato state as metaphors for the oppression of conformity in the single “Private Idaho.”

“You’re living in your own Private Idaho/ where do I go from here to a better state than this/ Don’t be blind to the big surprise/ swimming round and round like the deadly hand/ of a radium clock, at the bottom of the pool.”

The B-52s 8pm, Friday, Sept. 16, Sunset Center, San Carlos Street and Eighth Avenue, Carmel. $78-$135. 620-2040, www.sunsetcenter.org.