Sushi Girl:The Tubes

Artist: The Tubes

Album: The Completion Backward Principle

Appears On (Mixes): Revme.Vox.Com

Song Notes: I've been a Tubes fan for a long time, although I kind of lost interest with their post-A&M stuff on Capitol. While the early records were really, really strong, the Capitol stuff ended up having a few really good tracks and some filler (except for Love Bomb which, to this day, I've NEVER actually made it through the entire record, which is kinda sad). This is actually FROM the Capitol era, however, and from the first (and best) record of that era, The Completion Backward Principle. I've talked about this album before -- the basic idea was that Bill Spooner had claimed he'd found a book with that title that told how to write a top-selling record album (perhaps the KLF's The Manual -- except that was about a decade late). In actuality, though, he listened to what was popular on the radio at the time, and worked backwards to write sound-alikes -- and, oddly enough it worked. The thing is, while it's a great idea for a record, and a great concept album (which is what the Tubes basically had done exclusively up to this point), the problems are twofold: A) It's really, really dated now. and B) Record labels have a tendency to request upon making the best-selling album of your career and a bonafide hit anyway, that you do EXACTLY THE SAME THING for any other records you do, as if something works once, it will obviously work over and over and over again.

So, the next album, ''Outside Inside, which did have its moments (i.e. "She's A Beauty") didn't have a concept, nor did it particularly expand on the Tubes' identity. The humor was still there (as it's obviously in this cut, which is, like so much of their work, basically a dirty joke in a 3 minute pop song), but the music started to sound forced and phoned in. You could tell Bill Spooner wasn't writing the stuff he wanted to anymore, and was writing stuff to sell records. Which, well, they did for a while, but then the band fizzled out, their sales went down, they fired Bill Spooner from the band, Fee Waybill did a solo record, some acting, and then went on to co-write songs with Richard Marx. Then, the Tubes reformed... minus Bill Spooner, but.. with.. Fee's buddy... Richard Marx. Needless to say, the resulting album, Genius Of America is somehow even LESS successful than Love Bomb. Oi.

But here, check this song out, back from when the Tubes were still at the top of the slide! It's goofy, and funny -- disposable, sure, but it was intended to be. - Rev. Syung Myung Me