So we can all agree: The TUBES were the best band from the 70's-80's!

[Bennyboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iFN_pvUi_A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBWCljS4380&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwivHPit22A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fgjfi1DU1mQ

[mcctatas]

1. I don't know about the best band, but they definitely had the

lead singer with the best name in Fee Waybill :P

[HopeHoops]

2. Ah, but the best "Credit" goes to Berlin - Terry Nunn: Vocals, BJs

It is on the album cover, I kid you not. That's exactly how her credit reads.

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. The best show band, probably

I never saw them, but "What Do You Want From Live" is just freakin' aMAZing.



Our lead singer's drunk! If you don't scream, he won't come out! QUAY LEWD! QUAY LEWD! QUAY LEWD! QUAY LEWD!







:headbang:

[bbernardini]

4. Yeah, pretty much. Although Utopia is right up there, too.

It's a whole Todd Rundgren thing, you see. :)

[ghostsofgiants]

5. Not quite.

Way too gimmicky based on what I've seen.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. It was an age of gimmicks

Anyway, the Tubes used gimmicks to mock stuff, like dancing cigarette packs in "Smoke (La Vie en Fumer)," Johnny Bugger and the Dirtboxes to satirize punk, and the whole "Baby's arm holding an apple" bit.









And, yes, that was appropriate use of an Oxford comma. It does happen.

[mcctatas]

6. I think I would have to go with The Replacements

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pEs8PMevMk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj3SJ2w5n5c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXAmzGD7Vc0&feature=PlayList&p=FCADBD2FEF9C0AEA&playnext=1&index=67

[KamaAina]

7. Talk to ya later...

:P

[Greyskye]

8. First band I ever saw live

At 'Galactica 2000' in Sacramento. I was perched on a column about 15 feet from the stage. Good times!

[Bennyboy]

27. I was at that show.

galactica 2000, now that takes me back. Did you see the show where iggy Pop had some guy fall out of the ceiling?

[RandomKoolzip]

10. What?! No fucking way.

Third-rate Zappa rip-offs, philistine American musos who perceived punk rock as a cultural threat (dumbasses), soulless twerps who eventually morphed into such a great pop group that they felt the need to inflict that goddamn "She's one in a million girls!" sexist screed on us early 80's music fans. No thanks.

[redqueen]

13. +1

[ghostsofgiants]

23. So my instinct was correct.

:thumbsup:

Also: Where the hell have you been dude?

[LynneSin]

11. only if we can wipe out from existance about 200-250 other bands from that era

then yeah you might have a point.

[geardaddy]

12. No...

So many better bands:

The Ramones
The Clash
The Specials
Madness
and so on

[Forkboy]

14. A great live band, but their hits were pretty bad.

Some of their lesser known tunes are good though. They were definitely a cool live band.

[Oeditpus Rex]

18. 'Hits' are generally not reflective of a band's talent

But you knew that. :)

[Forkboy]

24. Do I ever.

The hits are consistently the worst songs on the CDs. Thank God I listen to bands that never have hits. :)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. They put their ass on the line for their music

Near the end of the original run...before they brought in "hitmakers" like Todd Rundgren and started recording songs like "She's A Beauty"...they were a powerhouse, definitely the most original band in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On "Now" (the third album) they stretched their sound even further by adding Mingo Lewis on congas / pecussion / etc.

He started as a featured player, but by the time of the double live album "What do you want from LIVE," all of the money they had invested in their stage shows hadn;t come back to them in revenue.

Mingo wanted to join the band as an official member. They said "no," and for one reason.

They knew they were going to hit the wall financially and they didn't want him to shoulder that burden.

I saw them three times at Bimbo's and once at the Berkeley Community Theater. I've shared this before, but during the Berkely show, Boz Scaggs (then riding HIGH on the charts with Silk Degrees) came out for "White Punks On Dope." He was wearing a navy pinstripe suit and played a white Strat and had to be the sharpest bastard I've ever seen on a stage in my life. They also had a guy in a gorilla suit with a Strat, and Tubes guitarists Roger Steen & Bill Spooner (along with bass player Rick Anderson) plus Scaggs & the gorilla bobbed the necks of their guitars up and down in perfect unison during the instrumental break, which caused Fee Waybill to scream "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE LYNYRD SKYNYRD GUITAR SECTION!"

The uninitiated need to head over to Wolfgang's Vault...now...and listen to a great selection of vintage concerts, free.

For the first three studio albums and the live album, they were the greatest band on the planet. With "Completion Backward Principle" (Talk To Ya Later, Sushi Girl, Don't Want To Wait Anymore) they became a gathering of gifted musicians who needed to pay the bills and were in search of a hit. My "posse" of the time and I didn't brand them as sellouts, because we knew the history, but if had been any other band, we would have been screaming "sellout."

:toast:

[Bennyboy]

21. They had me CONVINCED!

I was at the Berkeley show (not long after Boz played the Paramount in a tux if i remember correctly)and saw a ton of the Bimbos shows. (who can ever forget Fee singing "everybody needs somebody" to about 50 people in the crowd and about thirty naked girls on stage?)

i saw them a ton of times, they were like the worlds best kept secret. Did quite a few private parties with them out at the grand island mansion too.

And yeah they did get a free pass on the sellout thing, we just wanted to keep the band going and we all knew that the show was not making it.

BTW< the first time I saw them they opened for Led Zep at Kezar. And blew those sorry ass fuckers away.

(BTW I am also a huge Zappa fan but I don't think that satire belongs to one musician).

[Amerigo Vespucci]

31. You're right, it was the Paramount, not Berkeley...

...and it could have been a tux...for some reason, I remember a blue suit, but I've killed at least a few brain cells since that show.

:rofl:

I feel better about the 2009 Tubes than I did about the "Completion Backwards" Tubes, even though Vince and Spooner are gone. As you well know, "Sputnik" was the front man, the guy who kept the momentum going, while Fee was offstage during his many costume changes. He just had this attitude, and for me, the Waybill-Spooner thing was a Mick-Keith thing.

:toast:

[bbernardini]

32. Now now...you're connecting Todd Rundgren to the wrong time period.

Todd worked on the first studio album after "What Do You Want From Live," "Remote Control", not the big commercially successful stuff. Admittedly, the songs were slightly less experimental, but considering the album was a concept album about a "television-addicted idiot savant" (according to Wikipedia), it still had that unique Tubes twist.

It was after "Suffer For Sound" was rejected by A&M that David Foster came in, giving them hits like "Talk To Ya Later" and "She's A Beauty". Prairie Prince once told me that for "Outside Inside", Foster wanted to give the Tubes one side to do whatever they wanted, and the other side would be Foster and his crew (basically Toto), with Tubes vocals. They rejected that. Todd's return for "Love Bomb" was an attempt to get away from the Foster-type "sellout" material, and I think it succeeded in that regard (at least on side 2).

[Amerigo Vespucci]

33. You're right, but...

...I've always considered "What Do You Want From Live" to be the last "real" Tubes album. The Foster stuff, for me, represents the worst of it (kind of like Aerosmith partnering with songwriter Dianne Warren for "Don't Want To Miss A Thing").

:toast:

[Taverner]

16. Great 1st album, everything else was mediocre at best

But every tune on their first album is awesome

[Oeditpus Rex]

20. 'Young and Rich' had some great stuff

"Proud to Be an American" is one of my favorites of theirs, with "WPOD" and "What Do You Want From Life?" I also like "Don't Touch Me There," "Stand Up and Shout" and "Poland Whole/Madam, I'm Adam" ("He's stronger than a tree!").

But it had a few clinkers, yeah.

[Left Is Write]

17. No, I don't think we can all agree with that.

[victoryparty]

19. Top 50 at best, but still a geat band

[Danger Mouse]

22. Uh, no, not even remotely close, but thanks for playing.

[martymar64]

25. I discovered them in 1975 at the tender age of 11

Here's the first song I ever heard from them

I'm sure you'll recognize it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoTBwIAf-8E

[Phillycat]

26. In that they're not The Police, I can't agree.

[MilesColtrane]

28. I don't know about best band, but...

"Tip of My Tongue" is pretty damned funky for a bunch of white boys. (of course they did have Maurice White helping out on that one.)

[Deja Q]

29. BOLLOCKS!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf7e3P7N7Zc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioYbjLGBbLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c86TAbudJEk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyNU_sXiFTU

[MrSlayer]

30. Su-Su-Sushi!

Um....no.