{"id":22578,"date":"2022-03-27T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T09:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22578"},"modified":"2022-03-28T11:39:08","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T15:39:08","slug":"march-through-time-the-tubes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/03\/27\/march-through-time-the-tubes\/","title":{"rendered":"March Through Time: The Tubes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-22579\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_tubes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"705\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_tubes.jpg 397w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/mtt_tubes-149x300.jpg 149w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>Satirical group? Yes. Hard rockers? Sometimes. Progressive band? Now and then, yes. Punk? Not quite, but the spirit was there. One of the greatest live acts of all time, the Tubes got it right on their albums more often than not. Save for a brief time in the early \u201880s, they were destined to remain a cult act. But what a cult!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i><b>The Tubes<\/b><\/i><b> (1975)<\/b> \u2013 Punk wasn\u2019t quite a thing in \u201875 when this album was released, but the Tubes were prescient in seeing it coming. Even with its sometimes grandiose production (thanks to Al Kooper), the debut has punk energy alongside the satire. An auspicious and eclectic debut.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Young and Rich<\/b><\/i><b> (1976)<\/b> \u2013 A strong follow-up with loads of great tunes and attitude to spare. This record built on the creative success of the debut and set the template: satire wrapped in ambitious, high energy songs.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Now<\/b><\/i><b> (1977)<\/b> \u2013 Arguably the eclectic approach was taken <i>in extremis<\/i> here, resulting in the band\u2019s least commercial offering (a Captain Beefheart cover? What?). But there are still a handful of classics, including \u201cYou\u2019re No Fun\u201d and \u201cThis Town.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Remote Control<\/b><\/i><b> (1978) <\/b>\u2013 Nobody saw a concept album coming, and in some ways this really isn\u2019t one. With the best production yet (thanks to Todd Rundgren) and a great set of songs, it looked to point the way toward a very bright future. <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/01\/a-look-back-at-the-tubes-remote-control\/\">Deeper analysis here.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><i><b>What Do You Want from LIVE<\/b><\/i><b> (1978)<\/b> \u2013 As effective as the studio albums are, live onstage has always been the best way to experience The Tubes. And this double LP recorded in London is a searing document of their live show. It featured some new material, too, something that set it apart from many of the era\u2019s live releases. Alas, A&amp;M dropped the band.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>The Completion Backward Principle <\/b><\/i><b>(1981) <\/b>\u2013 Scaling back their expensive live show didn\u2019t dull the band\u2019s sharpness. Even with the involvement of producer David Foster and several members of Toto(!) this is a great record, full of snark and visceral, arena-sized rock.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Outside Inside<\/b><\/i><b> (1983)<\/b> \u2013 Less commercial but perhaps even better than its predecessor, this record found the Tubes with what looked like a renewed career. Great songs, too.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Love Bomb<\/b><\/i><b> (1985)<\/b> \u2013 And then came this. Members of the band look upon it as their high water mark. I find it near unlistenable, thanks in large part to a rare Rundgren misstep: the brittle, sterile production aesthetic is wrong-wrong-wrong. With a couple of notable exceptions, the songwriting is weak, too.<\/li>\n<li><i><b>Genius of America<\/b><\/i><b> (19<\/b><b>9<\/b><b>6)<\/b> \u2013 A decade later the band returned with some fundamental lineup changes having occurred (no <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/02\/24\/a-talk-with-the-tubes-founder-bill-spooner-part-one\/\">Bill Spooner<\/a>) and with lead singer Fee Waybill\u2019s songwriting partner Richard Marx (no, really) helping out. It\u2019s better than all that would suggest, but the band\u2019s audience had long since moved onto other things.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fun fact: Several years ago I had commitments from all but one band member to cooperate on a book telling the history of the Tubes. Then, one dissenting member (I\u2019ll leave you to speculate on that individual\u2019s identity) scotched the whole thing. In unrelated but relevant news, a long-gestating documentary by keyboardist Mike Cotten \u2013 begun some 15 years ago \u2013 has yet to appear. The band\u2019s story deserves to be told, but it doesn\u2019t seem to be happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Satirical group? Yes. Hard rockers? Sometimes. Progressive band? Now and then, yes. Punk? Not quite, but the spirit was there. One of the greatest live acts of all time, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,65],"tags":[2188],"class_list":["post-22578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","category-review","tag-the-tubes","cat-27-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22578"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22668,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22578\/revisions\/22668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}