The Tubes
Remote Control
(A&M, 1979)

San Francisco art-rock legends the Tubes defied easy categorization. Combining the satirical bite of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention with the camp theatricality of rock glitterati like Alice Cooper, the eight-piece ensemble was a highly visual act best experienced in concert. Fee Waybill, as rock star “Quay Lewd,” getting trampled by his oversize amplifier stack was a key element to appreciating “White Punks on Dope” from the band’s eponymous 1975 debut. Unfortunately, that album and follow-ups, Young and Rich and Now were, of course, audio only, and the Tubes’ flair for conceptual brilliance was matched only by their lack of commercial acceptance. Factor in the costs associated with a fully costumed and choreographed touring show and the imminent end of their A&M deal, and the Tubes found themselves at a crucial time in their recording career. Perhaps, they hoped, a star producer could nurture their latent pop sensibilities.

Enter Todd Rundgren, the studio wizard who’d previously tapped his magic wand over artists as diverse as the New York Dolls, Foghat, Sparks, Badfinger, and Hall & Oates, and who was still riding high from producing Meatloaf’s legendary Bat Out of Hell two years earlier.

Rundgren, a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, and songwriter in his own right, felt a natural affinity with the Tubes and his own live shows, often with Utopia, were similarly well-staged spectacles. Together, they created 1979’s Remote Control, a perfect marriage of Rundgren’s compositional instincts and the Tubes’ road-seasoned ensemble unity.

Conceptually, Remote Control deals with the all-encompassing, hypnotic effects of television culture and one man’s fetishistic desire to “enter”—carnally or otherwise—the seductive TV world beamed into his brain with mind-numbing regularity. Think Sidney Lumet’s Network and David Cronenberg’s Videodrome mixed with a healthy dollop of Pete Townshend’s Tommy (the sensory theme) and Quadrophenia (the ubiquitous bleeping and blooping synthesizers throughout).

The dominant theme—man’s desire to merge with his electrical appliance—is introduced by the album cover’s depiction of a baby being cradled by a space-age mini-TV, while on the back, the Tubes are photographed occupying the panels of the Hollywood Squares game show set.  

Musically, Remote Control immediately hooks in the listener with three big songs in a row. A short, buzzing synth pattern trips off “Turn Me On”, an urgent introductory anthem in which a full-throated and manic Waybill accepts his own electro-erotic invitation to “put your hand on the power.” Next, another farty synth sequence rips into track two, a Todd-Tubes co-write called “TV is King”, the catchiest song on the album.

I wish I was the man in the soundproof booth
I wish I had a chance to stump the band
Or maybe tell the truth
And maybe I could win a color television
TV is King
You’re my everything!

Calming down slightly, the band wades ever so gently into new wave territory on “Prime Time”, with female vocalist Re Styles seductively purring, à la Debbie Harry, over a Talking Heads-ish groove. Then, our hero gets sucked down the vacuum tube, like Alice in the Looking Glass, only to discover there’s “No Way Out”:

I am stuck here behind the window
Tangled in the wires and burned by electricity
And there’s no place left to go for me
And there’s no way out for me
Stranded in the great vast wasteland of my TV

A powerful instrumental, “Getoverture”, is followed by the Broadway ready “No Mercy” and a couple of dramatic rockers that set the stage for the emotional climax of the album’s final two movements.

“Love’s a Mystery (I Don’t Understand)”, another Rundgren co-write, features Waybill testifying in Daryl Hall mode and is an over-the-top, radio-ready love ballad with a passing similarity to Rundgren’s “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference.” I don’t remember ever hearing it on the radio, but it sure sounds like a hit single now. The stage is set for Remote Control’s big finale, “Telecide”, wherein our protagonist announces his inevitable plan to commit suicide, fittingly, on live television.

“I used to know him,” deadpans Re Styles, sounding like a bystander on the local eyewitness news. “He seemed like a regular guy,” as the Tubes plow ahead to a punk-rock finish, with stops in funk and show tunes. Then, after a brief instrumental reprise of “Love’s a Mystery”, Remote Control fades like the dot on your screen at the end of a broadcast day.

Remote Control was meant to be the Tubes’ big, commercial breakthrough, yet that wouldn’t truly happen until 1981, when ultra slick producer David Foster crafted The Completion Backwards Principle and the band went sushi fishing with John Candy on SCTV’s The Fishin’ Musician. Remote Control remains, however, the Tubes’ most accessible and intellectually cohesive album. A pop/rock masterpiece that coulda and shoulda but ultimately didn’t.

Watch: The Tubes perform “I Want It All Now” [at youtube.com]

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