Album: The Tubes, Goin' Down (Cherry Red)

Since the deaths of Frank Zappa and Warren Zevon, satire has become a vanishingly small part of the rock music scene – though lord knows, there’s far more to be cynical about in the current music biz than ever before.

Presumably, today’s aspirational youth don’t want their illusions pricked, let alone demolished with the ruthlessness of a Zappa. Besides that, satire can be a costly business, particularly if staged with the theatrical gusto of The Tubes.

This double-disc retrospective thus suffers from the absence of visuals, though the classic Tubes show-stoppers – the perv-anthem “Mondo Bondage”, materialist sneer “What Do You Want From Life?”, teensex singalong “Don’t Touch Me There” and mighty rock-culture demolition “White Punks On Dope”– still pack a formidable impact three decades on.