Mr. Tube's a big band with a big backstory

Fans of the Black Heart Procession or anything that hometown singer/guitarist/composer/producer Pall Jenkins has ever done will love Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects. Their story begins in the 1950s when a failed stuntman named Freddie Dillinger started a band called Freddie Feelgood and the Real Good Feelings. They robbed a bank to finance their debut recording. The entire band went to prison, during which time Freddie invented the original “bendy straw.” After, Freddie changed his name to Mister Tube. From the late ’50s through the early 1990s, he continued to write original music and he supported himself by fixing televisions. Then, in 2002, Jenkins took his TV to a repair shop in National City where he met Freddie Dillinger and heard the man’s story and agreed to start a band to record Mr. Tube’s stuff.

A touching story, even if it is 99 percent not believable.

Mr. Tube and the Flying Objects likewise can’t be about the money, what with 10 or 11 guys onstage. That’s way too expensive in today’s withered nightclub economy. No, Mr. Tube is more about the whoop of playing large music that is amusing and likeable but impossible to park in a genre. Fuzz-tone guitars with a rhythm section and a bunch of rudimentary (and not necessarily in tune) horns working out to some kind of sweaty indie-rock-funk-R&B originality. Pall Jenkins showed us how far out he could go with Three Mile Pilot; Mr. Tube seems danceable by comparison. They actually have a couple of albums: their 2006 self-titled debut, and this year’s No Wrong, No Rights.

Yeah, this is a real band, and one with a definable future; more than a few dates are posted on their Facebook page. But whether or not Freddie Dillinger and his backstory are real, and whether or not any of that even matters in the final analysis, well, you make the call.

The Bassics and Lumps (NY) also perform.