anni
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Post by anni on Feb 13, 2012 18:49:40 GMT -8
A picture from the first scene (of the show, Fee Waybill's first costume/character), an Italian Street Crooner and his guitarist, Roger Steen:
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Feb 15, 2012 0:00:47 GMT -8
I became a lifelong Tubes fan the day their debut album came out in the spring of 1975, when I worked at Here, There and After Records in Montrose. Their blend of progressive rock, glam hooks, high and low satire and plain old testosterone was the perfect tonic for my 17 year old brain. The first time I saw them at the Roxy, where they resided for a week, I bought another $5 ticket for the next night as I left. Since their recording career ended in 1985, the core of the band -- singer Fee Waybill, guitarist Roger Steen, bassist Rick Anderson and drummer Prairie Prince -- have continued as a live act. Ironically, the only sure way to make money in music these days is by touring, not by releasing albums. The Tubes returned to a full house of late middle aged enthusiasts at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills last Saturday, playing two and a half hours of their freak 1970's anthems, modest MTV hits and a few covers with tremendous passion and a minimum of props. The material and their musicianship never wane. Fee announced from the stage that the band was selling the remastered CD's of their "Completion Backward Principle" album after the concert and signing autographs, so I got near the front of the line. Prairie, who must have been beat, did not come out. Rick was characteristically shy and Roger was distracted by his friends who cut in line and the younger women who were ahead of me. But Fee and I talked for awhile about the new polo season and the charity gig he did in 2008 at the stables he rents in Shadow Hills. The only album not represented on Saturday was their masterpiece farewell, "Love Bomb," which will finally be re-released on CD in the U.K. I have it on pre-order.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Mar 4, 2012 0:49:58 GMT -8
I have the "Love Bomb" album on cassette in one of those boxes in my closet that I never unpacked when we moved here, yet I spent a month anticipating a CD in the mail, a new remaster released only in the U.K., to hear the Tubes final -- and best -- album again after many years. Instead of just playing it in my head. Although Fee Waybill, who hardly sings, and many old and newer fans didn't like the record when it came out in May 1985, I loved it immediately. Unlike the Beatles, the Tubes had yet to break up and officially quit recording. Nonetheless, "Love Bomb" is their "Abbey Road" -- with no "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." The 1980's was a lost decade for most of my favorite artists from the 1970's, but not the Tubes. A&M had dropped them after the commercial failure of "Remote Control," a fine concept album produced by Todd Rundgren. But they turned to David Foster and retooled their gifts for melody, harmony and satire to corporate FM radio and their theatrical proficiency to videos for the MTV age, while under contract to Capitol Records. Everybody was happy until most of the band decided to enlist Rundgren for "Love Bomb." Side One is their strongest collection of love songs, wizened by experience and infused with blue eyed soul, even if the production values seem dated now. I have always wondered if they were influenced by a certain drug used for psychological exploration that had yet to be made illegal. Side Two is dedicated to a funky song suite brilliantly presaging trends in music that the Tubes would never survive to cash in on.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Mar 18, 2012 23:22:06 GMT -8
Searching You Tube tonight for "Love Bomb" videos, I found the expected tracks ripped from the CD along with static pictures of the album cover. But I also discovered this fairly high quality clip from what was probably the original band's final concert in San Francisco in 1985. The guy who posted it is selling a DVD. (You know I want it.) In 15 minutes, he gives us the traditional show opener, "Up from the Deep," which is also the lead song of the Tubes' debut album; most of the performance staple from 1975-76, "Boy Crazy;" the single from "Love Bomb," "Piece by Piece," followed by "Night People," the first song on side two:
Anni saw the Tubes in San Francisco in 1975, while I was hanging out at the Roxy here, and at Perkins Palace in Pasadena at the same concert I attended circa 1983, although I didn't know her then -- so she's a fan. But she had never heard "Love Bomb" until the reissue arrived in the mail this month, and she loves it. I've been playing it constantly, both on CD and in my head, even at work. Just give me one good reason/Why I should stay instead of leaving.
Meanwhile, I have another reissued package, the "Young and Rich" and "Now" albums, on pre-order.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 1, 2012 0:37:52 GMT -8
I didn't expect to start a Tubes binge after I saw the current touring band again in February. But I kept listening to the remastered "Completion Backward Principle" CD that I got autographed at the show. Then "Love Bomb" was finally reissued in the U.K. And last week, the mailman brought a new package of the "Young and Rich" and "Now" albums on Universal's Real Gone Music label. Unlike the first two re-releases, these discs are not remastered, and there are no bonus tracks. Let's talk about "Now" first. I was working at the record store in the spring of 1977 when I caught three Tubes shows at the Whisky, which they took over for two weeks, playing twice each night while recording their third album at the Record Plant. Onstage and on vinyl, they tried to reconcile two musical trends, one just emerging and the other not to be appreciated again for three more decades -- punk rock and cabaret music. All of us at Here, There & After in Montrose were pulling for the Tubes to break through. Even the band acknowledged they had fallen short, but not for lack of talent or musicianship. I never bought "Now" on cassette or CD, so I probably hadn't heard the album for 30 years. It's still a mess. "Now" was a product of their most ambitious stage show, including new band member Mingo Lewis on congas. They also introduced Fee's character Johnny Bugger and unleashed a bevy of dancers, an acrobat and a dog onstage, led by choreographer Kenny Ortega at the beginning of his career. Some beautiful dude with a black and white camera captured a concert in San Francisco 35 years ago this month. Here's a clip of them covering Captain Beefheart's "Gimme Dat Harp Boy" and segueing into "This Town," a Lee Hazelwood song from 1967 that was a minor hit by Frank Sinatra: From the best song that made it to the "Now" album: My arms are just two things in the way until I can wrap them around you You can make a sad song happy And a bad world good...
Heart won't beat Until I can wrap my arms around you Heart won’t beat Until I’ve found you My head is my only house unless it rains -- Captain Beefheart
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 7, 2012 23:41:56 GMT -8
I remember so much from the two dozen Tubes shows I attended from 1975 to 1983. Yet You Tube has brought back so many other wonderful recollections. Somebody posted excellent audio from a 1976 Buffalo concert in a series accompanied by photos of the costumed shenanigans onstage. This is part 9:
That clip starts with "I'm Proud to Be an American," the only song worth recalling from our bicentennial year, followed by covers of Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" and Jimi Hendrix' "Third Stone from the Sun," which Bill Spooner introduces as our new national anthem. The three pictures cannot capture the rapture.
All I wanted when I was 18 was a progressive rock band with a sense of humor. They're still here.
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anni
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Post by anni on Apr 19, 2012 9:16:03 GMT -8
As if the evening weren't perfect enough, our friend Sam caught Brian chatting with Fee (and getting an autograph) after the show. Brian had just asked Fee about his horse and his Polo game: see center of the pic
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Apr 21, 2012 23:42:50 GMT -8
"Young and Rich" is another Tubes album that I hadn't heard for at least 20 years because I never bought it again on cassette or CD -- not until the Real Gone Music set came out last month. Thanks to Ken Scott, who produced one of the greatest records of all time four years earlier, David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars," it still sounds great. But its residual appeal is mostly nostalgic. When I was a teenager in the early 1970's, sensitive white boys like me who had loved the Beatles, the Kinks and Bob Dylan turned to so called progressive (or art rock) groups like Genesis and Yes, who fused new concepts of onstage theatrics with extreme musicianship. By 1976, however, most of us -- including our favorite bands -- had given up our ambition for the Next Big Thing. So we got disco and punk instead. The Tubes had hoped to fill the gap. For our bicentennial year, "Young and Rich" satirically depicted an America populated by pimps, religious zealots, stoners and jingoists in a land of rock and roll excess, where the greatest comfort might turn out to be "light bulbs with shades, in every room." Since then, we've outsourced our economy and lowered every tax on the rich. We've gotten older and poorer, but no wiser. Every song sounds dated yet makes you feel perfectly at home, every time the Tubes still take the stage.
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Post by anni on Apr 23, 2012 16:56:32 GMT -8
The Tubes at the Canyon Club, Agoura Hills, 2/12/2012: Not so young and less than rich... Fee Waybill as the iconic glam rocker Quay Lewd. Photos by our lifelong friend Sam Scibetta.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Aug 4, 2013 1:25:05 GMT -8
When the Tubes sent me an e-mail months ago about their gig at something called the Pershing Square Downtown Stage on Saturday, August 10, I made plans to attend but didn't follow up. They gave no link. Last night, I found this City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks webpage: www.laparks.org/pershingsquare/downtown-stage-2013.htmlIf I had seen that a few hours earlier, I would have caught Peter Case and the Smithereens on Saturday night. I also missed Dave Alvin and Johnny Vatos & Boingo Dance in July. Oh, well. I consoled myself by watching a lot of You Tube videos of the Tubes' appearances in California last month and last February. The band sounds great but all of the posts I saw lack decent audio or video, if not both. Only this 2012 clip from their annual Fourth of July concert at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk made me happy again -- Fee Waybill as Quay Lewd singing Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life."
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