The Tubes
Live at Hammersmith Odeon (R.I.P.)
June 1981

Written by John Coldstream and originally publish in the Daily Telegraph June 22nd 1981

Lord Chamberlain and the boards of censors could never have held much sway in the realm of rock music, so quintessential are it excesses. But The Tubes, America's vastly entertaining harvesters of "shock horror" headlines, have occasionally fallen foul of our watch committees full of firemen - more, one suspects because of the possible risk to the public's safety from chainsaws than to its morals.

Their shrinking effect on the Hammersmith Odeon is well known. The breakneck pace of the music, coupled with verbal and visual aimed unerringly at "consumerism," kindles suggestions of "Not the Nine O'clock Tubes". For sheer frantic energy there is not an act to touch it.

Against a striking and suitably tubular new set designed by synthesiser player Michael Cotten, little remains of the group's earlier shows, apart from nodding, or rather more explicit, re-acquaintances with the evil of smoking, television, smooth talking medium massagers and of course those climatic "White Punks on Dope".

All six musicians sport uniform grey suits, ties, brief cases and even folded newspapers to join their lead singer Fee Waybill for the lightly drilled pastiche "Work, Work, Work," a pause in the frenzy as welcome as Bill Spooner's sensitive delivery of "Don't Want to Wait Anymore."

As ever Waybill, the hyperaactive whirlwind from Omaha is the cynosure, following gymnastic feats with costume changes at a speed that would alarm Danny La Rue. To say he is variously a Mekon, baseball player, sinister bag man, passable Harlem Globetrotter, near naked fetishish, snorkeller and cutless wielding pirate gives some idea of the diversity but none of the authority he invests in each role.

As in so many of the numbers, the uncomfortable moment when as an urban guerilla he plunges into the crowd and takes a "hostage" is made more convincing by the skill of the three dancers - Shelley Pang, Cindy Rhodes and Cheryl Hangland.

Their apparent abandon belies a company discipline which makes the laughs for this outrageous show come consistently from the heart, not the belly.

Special thanks to UK Tubes fan Mike Freeman for sending this great Tubes article!!