For one night in Times Square, the 80s were back in full force. Totally Tubular Fest at Manhattan’s Palladium was filled with spiked leather jackets, color-blocked shirts, and too-tight pleather pants. Like the 80s, it had some high highs and also some low lows.
By the time I was born in the early 90s, most of the bands that performed on December 29th had already been around for at least a decade. I grew up listening to their hits, but I never saw them live. Never viscerally connected with the culture they embodied. Never knew a time before their music. That is to say, I was not the night’s target audience.
If you love first-wave synth music, if you saw the bands previously, or were profoundly impacted by the culture, Totally Tubular would have been the festival for you. It was a walk down memory lane with bands that, in their prime, transformed music and MTV. Bands that were – and in some cases still are – rebellious and push the boundaries of what music can be. However, if you weren’t around in the 80s, the night probably fell flat for you.
In its second year, Totally Tubular’s format is simple: feature six artists – A Flock of Seagulls, Men Without Hats, Thomas Dolby, The Motels, Bow Wow Wow, and Tommy Tuetone – in a three-hour concert. The simple formula, however, was beset by problems at the Palladium and did not allow the bands to bring their best work to life on stage.
In order to fit that many artists into a three-hour show, you have to also fit in five change-overs, something that would be hard in a half-day music festival let alone three hours. Because of this, each artist’s set time was strictly time-limited: the first three artists had 15 minutes, followed by the next two artists with 20-25 minute sets, and then the headliner, A Flock of Seagulls, was allowed 45 minutes.
A fifteen-minute set isn’t enough to get a musician into their groove. It means having 3-4 songs to entertain the crowd. In a normal hour-long set, the third or fourth song is often when the stage nerves burn off, and artists start hitting their stride. To get cut off then, isn’t fair to the artists.
In addition, technical changeovers are hard, and having that many that fast means there will be technical errors. It doesn’t matter how amazing the techs behind the scenes are (I used to run lights and sound); it’s inevitable because of the rush. Unfortunately, those problems popped up throughout the night, as when Annabell of Bow Wow Wow’s mic was set too high, and her vocals kept clipping, or when the mics for Men Without Hats were set too low during their first song – essentially cutting off the first half of “Safety Dance.”
It wasn’t all problems, though. Three high notes from the night were: Motels’ set, Men Without Hats’ stage performance, and Thomas Dolby’s set.
Martha Davis, the only original band member left in Motel, came on stage like a wildfire. Burning with passion and determination, she proceeded to sing through their four-song set as if the fifteen-minute show would never end. The emotional resonance we felt from “Suddenly One Summer” made the song feel like it could have been released last year, rather than 40 years ago.
Men Without Hats’ stage performance – despite having their sound knocked out for part of their set – was incredibly upbeat and active. Lead singer Ivan Doroschuk danced across the stage like no one was watching. While his moves were straight out of the 80s, and I thought a little played out at first, I came around to loving how free he seemed in himself.
Thomas Dolby was far and away the best musical performance of the night. His set felt like he’s never stopped exploring the bounds of music and sound. Having been a pioneering synth artist, his music relied on that to break through with the crowd. At the same time, it was clear he had kept up with modern technology and techniques (using a portable synth that looked almost like an iPad) at one point. His energy solidified him as the top performer of the night.
If you love the 80s and the bands on display, you should stop reading here, because what’s next won’t be easy to swallow.
Despite my love for the artist’s hits and the high notes mentioned above, I walked out of the night profoundly sad. The show’s format did a disservice to the bands, yes, but on top of that, it felt like many of the artists were stuck. Stuck in their musical style, stuck trying to re-live a heyday from 40 years ago, suck being forced to embody some symbol of the 80s, and stuck doing this festival when they may not have wanted to.
Many of the sets just fell flat, with songs that seemed to have been preserved in amber for forty years and only broken out every now and again to be played before being hermetically sealed again. Many of the artists missed a sparkle in their eye and an energy in their playing that, after seeing more than 100 artists in the last year, I’ve come to associate with someone who wants to be up on stage. I can’t pretend to know what’s in an artist’s head, but despite having fast-paced or guitar riff-filled songs, many of the dozen+ musicians I saw on stage didn’t have “I want to be here” energy, let alone show-stopping energy.
Don’t get me wrong, a tour coming to you and saying you’re going to be playing in front of thousands, and playing Times Square two nights before New Year’s would be almost impossible for any artist to pass up. However the constant focus on the past, from the emcee’s focus on a WLIR – a radio station that shut down more than 20 years ago, to the constant call backs to a valorized image of the 80s, made it impossible to see many of the artists as anything other than a focus for nostalgia, museum pieces without the ability to change whether they wanted to or not.
For an industry that is often made and broken by innovation, and for a night featuring bands that drove a whole new wave of music and musical possibility, seeing that stagnation made me profoundly sad.
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