She's right here behind the glass, you're gonna like her cuz she's got class

There are bands that I thought were way cooler than they actually were. Take the Tubes. The first I can remember them, they had a proto-new wave-ish song called "Talk To Ya Later" which combined American crunchy guitar riffs with neo-keyboard solos taken from a Halloween show. It came together with some throw-off kiss-off lines to make a pop nugget that has aged much better than the majority of American rock in 1981. That was followed two years later by "She's A Beauty", which catapulted them into the pop top-10 and provided me with hairbrush lipsyncing bliss for weeks. Basically a song built from a hundred hooks, it was at the time a rock masterpiece in my ninth-grade eyes. Little did I know both those songs are the product of a fledgling producer names David Foster, who would go on to curse/bless the world with the likes of Celine Dion and pussy-era Chicago.These two songs anchor EMI-Capitol's The Best Of The Tubes 1981-1987, which collect 10 songs from 2 albums with a stray promo track. Six of these songs are from 1981's Completion Backward Principle, and aside from "Talk..." and the top-40 ballad "Don't Want To Wait Anymore" (which definitely sounds like Bill Champlin with aforementionned Chicago more than the Tubes, since second-lead Bill Spooner is singing), the other tracks are definitely movie-soundtrack background-music fodder. Three songs are taken from their biggest hit album, and #18 Outside Inside, with "She's A Beauty" and the equally white-boy-funky "Tip Of My Tongue" (think an American ABC) standing miles above the karoake cover of Major Lance's "Monkey Time". The final track, "Sports Fans", is an unlistenable products apparently meant for segueing into am-sports radio shows. The band actually was actually putting out workingman pop since 1975, and it would've been nice to include some of their older material from A&M (like the fab "White Punks On Dope" instead of most of this. For a listen to that, check out their 20th Century Masters: The Millenium Collection set. Also there's no excuse to at least include a track or two from their third Capitol album, Love Bomb, being produced by power-pop god Todd Rundgren, and him not totally sucking, and them getting a single on the charts from it and all. Oh well. For the budget price, The Best Of The Tubes 1981-1987 does deliver 4 classic power-pop songs, though you'll find yourself skipping through everything else.

Grade: C-
Best Cuts: "She's A Beauty", "Talk To Ya Later"
Weakest Links: "Sports Fans", "Sushi Girl"

"Talk To Ya Later" hit #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart.
"Don't Want To Wait Anymore" hit #35 pop, #22 rock, and #60 in the UK.
"She's A Beauty" made #10 pop, #1 rock, and #79 in the UK.
"Tip Of My Tongue" made #52 pop.
"Monkey Time" hit #68 pop and #16 rock.

You can pick up a copy of The Best Of The Tubes 1981-1987, you can go to sites like here and here.

To listen to the song "Tip Of My Tongue" you can click here to download (right-click to bring up another window).

And here's a clip of them in 2001 doing "She's A Beauty", which actually does it justice so many years and live as well later...