Totally Tubular Concert

Just attended the Totally Tubular concert. This is an 80s new wave tour featuring:

• Eddie Munoz from The Plimsouls
• Tommy Tutone
• Modern English
• The Tubes
• Men Without Hats
• Bow Wow Wow
• Tom Bailey from The Thompson Twins
• Thomas Dolby

The show was just over 5 hours long and there were 15 minute breaks between acts. This meant the lessor bands had time for only 4 songs. For the Plimsouls, Modern English and Tommy Tutone, that was three songs too many. While their hits sounded great, the other songs left little doubt as to why they were 1-hit wonders.

The Tubes played 5 songs and sounded good musically but Fee Waybill's vocals were very strained. Perhaps he was ill but I joked to my buddy that maybe they should get Biden to substitute on vocals as an improvement. (OK, Fee wasn't that bad.)

I was particularly impressed with the energy Men Without Hats projected from the stage. They opened with Safety Dance and closed with a remix of it. They only played 4 songs but the crowd was really into them. Their lead singer was just bouncing with fun enthusiasm.

Bow Wow Wow was always a favorite of mine and from the first drum beat, you knew it was them. However, their set was only six songs which meant they left off a few of my favorites. Annabella Lwin is no longer the wild hot teeny bopper of her debut years but she still sports a punk hairdo.

The Thompson Twins guy was interesting. His backup band were hot women in white dresses and sunglasses. It was reminiscent of Robert Palmer's hot, expressionless women in little black dresses. Their stage was adorned with 20 or more of the Astera light tubes. My wife loved the lights and asked how much they were. I said they were pricey and her response was, "OK, I guess we'll just have to remortgage the house then." She cracks me up. While they had the longest set at 8 songs, they didn't play "In the Name of Love" which was always my favorite of theirs.

The show ended with Thomas Dolby who interestingly opened with his own redo of New Order's Blue Monday. Then he went into Europa with some Gary Numan Cars sampled in. He had some weird Bowie tribute with Heroes that somehow morphed out of One of Our Submarines is Missing. He finished with Blinded Me With Science which the crowd loved but his overall performance was boring and not a great way to end the night.

The tour has many more US stops to go and the crowd was great fun. You wouldn't be disappointed.

As an extra bonus, we got to watch the latest Falcon9 rocket launch from Vandenburg AFB between two of the acts. I think it was the fourth launch I have seen in the last few months. It never gets old.

Funny follow up. I found out a couple of friends of mine were also at the show. We were sharing our thoughts on it and I mentioned the part about a few of the four song sets were three songs too many. She asked who I was referring to and then we started talking about our seats. She mentions her seats were comped so she didn't choose them. I asked her who comped them and it was one of the artists that I thought sang too many songs. She's their lawyer. Oops. At least the artist didn't hear that conversation. I mentioned my faux-pas to someone else and he was shocked that the artist still needed an entertainment lawyer for their 0 year old hit.

DJ Ricky B said:

Tommy Tutone - 8675309 JENNY! That is probably the only song I really know from him, and the one that sticks out in my mind as a huge number 1 radio hit. I melt with you by Modern English...Don't really know any of their other hits.

Click to expand...

They didn't have other hits. Hence my comment that some of these bands played 4 songs which was 3 too many.