Pere Ubu: Classic Or Dud

Actually, I just checked the Ubu web site & found this:
The left & right channels are reversed and the tape transfer left all songs running at a slower speed. All Rough Trade / Twin Tone cd & vinyl releases are affected. These faults were corrected by the 1994 digital transfer & eq. The 1998 cd reissue features the Mayo Thompson / Geoff Travis mixes of "Not Happy" and "Lonesome Cowboy Dave" as released on the 1981 Rough Trade single. The 1985 Twin Tone / Rough Trade releases use the David Thomas mixes done at Suma.

.. So I guess the CD is better than the LP.

I've never heard anything after "Raygun Suitcase" are the "Pennsylvania" or the "St. Arkansas" albums any count?

At least from the reviews, it seems if you like Pere Ubu, the last two albums will be to your liking. They are on my list and I probably will look for them when I go up to Bloomington/Indianapolis at the end of August.

Dub Housing is so classic. Total paranoid schizo vibe. I suppose buying more albums of theirs isn't strictly necessary but surely if you like the box set you'd like others?

Modern Dance > Dub Housing >>>>>>>>> everything else

The Wooden Birds - "Blame the Messenger"
Rockets from the Tombs
& the Peter Laughner disc.

-David Thomas solo records are also great, if you like 'Sentimental Journey'
-Home and Garden records are spotty, but I really love some of em.

xpost...

Pere Ubu = teh classik.

The later stuff varies from meh (Cloudland) to very good (Ray Gun Suitcase), with The Tenement Year being a personal favourite, even tho nobody else seems to like it much - too prog or something, with the doubled drums and accordion and all.

Uh, if you don't count Mushroomhead....

Love the more "rawk" oriented early stuff like Final Solution and Heart of Darkness. And the funky shit that came after, circa The Modern Dance and Dub Housing. Fact, I love both them two records about the same. Dub Housing is darker and woozier, but it totally rules all the way through. Funny, scary and fascinating.

I've got The Terminal Tower and a boxed reproduction set of the first four singles on vinyl (put out by T/K records a decade or so ago). Terminal Tower sucks in comparison.

After "Dub Housing" I dunno that anything the band did is truly essential. I like "New Picnic Time" and "The Tenement Year" well enuf, but almost never play 'em. On the other hand, I spin the early stuff all the time...

only saw them live once, doing the music for roger corman's the man with the x-ray eyes. interesting and funny, especially how they slotted in some of their better-known songs (e.g., playing "the modern dance" during a shot of people dancing at a party). david thomas attempted to "conduct" the band, which meant he made flailing arm movements that they completely ignored. great show, though.

The "reunion" show I saw in 1987 was indeed a return to form for DT but I sorta lost track of all the albums released since then.

what's the ILM buzz on the Rocket from the Tombs reunion? I've got bootleg tapes of RFTT from 1975 that are crazed takes on metallized proto-punk. But my favorite UBU is another bootleg tape from 1976, the last gigs with Peter Laughner. from his bedroom to the baroom.

ah the avant-garage. so many people followed in these guys footsteps it's hard to imagine just how isolated/unique it all was at first.

My favourite moment on Night Network...

more exciting are the Home & Garden Mp3s and these websites:
http://www.homeandgardenmusic.com/index_main.asp
http://www.homeandgardenmusic.com/index_multimedia.asp
http://myspace.com/homeandgardenmusic

and the release of History & Geography on CD ..

after the insufferable mayo thompson joined (did adrian belew really need to be cloned?),

I may not love the Pere Ubu stuff with him on it, but insufferable? Forget the version of Horses done with Pere Ubu and listen to the original. Amazing.

Wow, Tom Herman, haven't thought about him in about 20 years. I auditioned for him around the time of "Long Walk Off a Short Pier". He played some very nasty slide guitar. I wasn't called back.

Saw Ubu on the Urg tour w/The Members, Dead Boys, and Magazine. Devoto was a putz. Thomas should get over himself but I still dig his work. He makes himself such an easy target... and I ain't talking about his size.

Mercury UK has reissued the long OOP first bunch of Ubu Mk II albums. (Tenement Year, Cloudland, Worlds In Collision, Story Of My Life).

I can take or leave the other three, but I've always loved Tenement Year, which IMO yields only to the early singles and first two LPs. But it always sounded like shit, gray, cluttered and muddy. Got the remaster and it sounds fucking marvelous, all the fidgety detail of the double drummers exposed, Ravenstine's synth disclaimers sounding thick and rich, etc etc. I'm very happy to have this album un-lamed.

Cool! That's good to hear. The only time I saw them they were touring that record iirc. Thompson deliberately ruined "Final Solution" by wailing all of the lyrics in an incomprehensible yowl, which was at least, uh, interesting.

No mention of Tripod Jimmie on this thread that I see... Tom Herman's post-Ubu band. They have at least one fantastic album that I still own, archival stuff that came out in the 90's, but I am 2000 miles away from my records right now so I can't look it up.

I like some of Dub Housing, almost none of New Picnic Time. Tenement Years and Ray Gun Suitcase are pretty good also, I imagine Ray Gun is oop after the meltdown on T/K Records (also home of the needs-so-bad-to-be-reissued Peter Laughner double LP).

Ray Gun Suitcase has been reissued on either Smog Veil or Hearpen, can't remember which. It's on eMusic, too.

Someone upthread implies that they auditioned for Tripod Jimmie, actually! I was a big fan of TJ's Warning To All Strangers LP. I'd buy that in a minute if it was on CD. "There ain't NO WAY I'm gonna put MY HAND in THERE without my box."

Luckily Tom Herman was back in the lineup when i saw Ubu in 2003; it was really nice to see him in action.

Pere Ubu is one of those bands that I've wanted to like for quite a long time, but I can't really get past Thomas' voice.

I resemble that remark. It amazes me that people can like this but hate, for instance, Phish, because of their squeaky voices and endulgent "noodling." How do these criticisms not apply to PU (good abbreviation!)? Beats me (and I'm sure many of you would like to right about now). Oh well, I don't have to like or understand everything.

I've never owned Cloudland and have wanted to for years. This is good news.

I interviewed Thomas for a Wire cover story last year, and he mentioned there was some talk of reissuing those discs. Glad to hear they're back out there.

A very enjoyable interview, too. Fun guy to talk to about the mechanics of record-making and live performance, etc. Philosophical "meaning of rock" stuff, not so much. Keep it quotidian and you'll get a great conversation out of the guy. Try to get arty, or fetishize the past, and he'll slap you down in a heartbeat.

Alfred, a phonograph player and a three dollar copy off ebay could have done the job nicely! : D

Ok, slight tradeoff for the much-improved sound on Tenement: A very different mix of one song, "Dream The Moon," is used this time. Bass/Drums/Guitar sound the same, but totally different vocal track. Can't tell yet how I feel about the alt. mix, just 'cause I'm so imprinted on the old one. I'll probably tag the original mix onto the end of the reissue in my library for good measure.

The two B-sides included as bonus tracks are really fun. Two Peel sessions as well.

xpost to unperson-- I read that! Really good article, man.

(Wow-- Peel version of "Miss You" kicks ass...)

Alfred, here's the lowdown on the Cloudland re-ish/remaster.

The album was originally mixed by Paul Hamann at Paisley Park Studios, Minneapolis MN. Subsequently four tracks were re-recorded in London and the others remixed for the 1989 Fontana release. This reissue substitutes in the running order the following Paisley Park mixes by Paul Hamann: Monday Night, Lost Nation Road, Nevada!, The Wire, The Waltz, and Pushin. Five extras have been added: the UK b-sides Wine Dark Sparks and Bang The Drum, the Paisley Park mix of Breath (never previously released), Bus Called Happiness recorded live in the studio for the John Peel Show (never previously released), and a dance remix of Love Love Love.

CLASSIC! Just saw them live over here in Oporto, and they were fucking amazing - some sound problems in the begining, and Dave Thomas seemed sort of SCARY, running offstage and barking at his backing players, but it all got sorted out and he seemed to realise the absurdity of his own position - total charmer through the rest of the set.

The latest album, 'Why I Hate Women' is totally worth getting. Great title too.

I think I lost that album or something. I went looking for it as I'd been doing periodically since I got it and it was nowhere.

I liked it but couldn't totally make up my mind how much. Nothing seems to come close to the Modern Dance and as a result is skewed by it's shadow.

If it's a pissing contest for essential CDs, I'll take 'Terminal Tower' over Modern Dance, but I find everything on the boxset a must. I also have a soft spot for 'Worlds In Collision' - nice pop songs, and a contender for worst cover art ever.

I listened to about half of it earlier this week after having not listened to a new Ubu album since ...Women. I liked what I heard a lot and plan to check out the second half soon.

my post above was largely nonsense, probably due to the fact that the main times i've seen David Thomas recently have been in the experimental Moon Unit format, and an utterly disastrous Pere Ubu gig in Canterbury (Chris Cutler's drumming had fallen apart from someone obscure reasons).

This gig was really good, David Thomas, looked for all the world like some sort of grizzled Gendo, his glasses reflecting the lights, leaning forward and pointing to emphasise obscure but dictatorial pronouncements. He got himself in a pother, as is frequently the case, after a very good actually version of Crocodile Smile off the latest album. He got cranky, and the gig looked like it might turn sour, but he had a cigarette, took his hat off, and suddenly seemed as benign and warm as a sort of punk GK Chesterton. Malevolent, self-destructive to sympathetic and humorous – not a terrible summary of Pere Ubu, and as theatre it was a-grade.

Music was as the album, and the album is really good I think. I had a bit of trouble structuring it, and I think it works best if you impose the side a/side b of the vinyl onto the cd main tracks. I haven't got to the extra tracks yet. Love, death and departure, death and eternity, US delta blues and highway symbolism are all present. It's the mood of the music that is most compelling though. The group shifts the tempo and mood of the music in strange, rich ways, never the same thing twice, recombining continually throughout tracks and through the album. It does have the sort of dynamism I'd associate with a lot of Pere Ubu, but mixed with the exploratory methods of Moon Unit, and the effect is like... well, what's it like? I've got an unhelpfully hackeneyed image in my head of a painter improvising a painting as part of the performance, with exuberant brush strokes expressive of emotional shifts in the moment, but contributing to a completed, final piece of work that captures the freedom of composition as it does the original intent. Sorry that's terrible - i'm awful at writing music.

Alex Ward's guitar and clarinet adds a *lot* imo. Full disclosure, he's a friend so i would say that wouldn't i, but it adds a substantial new element governed by his own creative wellsprings in improv and rock, and his playing. The whole group is now well used to playing pere ubu material together in more improvised scenarios now anyway, and it really comes together on the album. will repay repeated listens I think. i may not listen to enough music, but it's hard to find music - at least in the post-punk tradition - that has this level of invention to it imo.

Shame they're against tape sharing, at least on dime etc. Would love to hear this lot live. I thought Ward was pretty great with the Flying Luttenbachers when I saw them a few years ago.

though there are bits of them appearing on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83xzLp_YSsU

Will have to check out those bits, thanks.
Fizzles, your description is perfectly valid, going toward the xpost rock & improv, also jazz, ideal: "The song turning into itself," as the poet Al Young puts it.

And your report on the album is even more appealing.

Yeah good write-up Fizzles. I like the new album too. There are moments that remind me of specific elements from past Ubu/DT projects: "Love Is Like Gravity" starts off sounding exactly like something from one of the DT + Two Pale Boys albums, "Crocodile Smile" makes prominent use of an actual sample of "Drive" from Pennsylvania, the creepy whispered vocals on "Let's Pretend" make me think of Mere Ubu from Long Live Pere Ubu, and "Nyah Nyah Nyah" almost feels like a darker take on some of the goofier stuff from the early 80s Ubu and David Thomas albums, but at the same time it does seem like this is a new era of the band -- I keep thinking of it as "The Pere Ubu Big Band." In that regard it's almost the opposite of The Long Goodbye, which to me felt more like an actual solo album from David Thomas than maybe anything else he's done, with Pere Ubu or otherwise. (Pretty sure it's the only album he's been involved with where's got the sole writing credit on every song.) I wasn't really able to get into that album, so this is a welcome change-up.

Found this last night while I was trying to find the current tour footage from Rich Mix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNG4QHHvOPE

Incidentally watched the Rich MIx footage last night and does the Face in the video behind the band during Worried Man Blues morph into a load of Gerry Anderson puppet faces from Stingray and Thunderbirds or is that me? Probably a number of other notable popular culture sci fi faces too from Dr Who and Star Trek among others.

Man I would like to see them on stage with maimone and ravenstine!!!

Here's a glimpse of them at LPR in NYC covering 'Kick Out the Jams' for obvious reasons.

Don't sleep on the recent live album, "By Order Of Mayor Pawlicki (Live In Jarocin)". It's relentlessly great.

Oh yes. And highly good-natured.

Dave T is *funny*

(Always knew this)

There is a guy that's PISSED on my tl about seeing a show on their current tour and calling it "creativity bankrupt"!!

Don't sleep on the recent live album, "By Order Of Mayor Pawlicki (Live In Jarocin)". It's relentlessly great.

― Blood On The Knobs, Friday, 30 June 2023 06:14 (ten hours ago) link

Great record, greater stage banter

"I'm not yelling at you...yet"

been enjoying the album on this swampy uk morning. i’d been feeling it takes a worried man got in the way of the album, sucked the energy into a not particularly outstanding track, but this morning it worked. the bass provided the swampy feeling appropriate to the mood - the chains around the heart, ‘i asked the judge what might be my time’, death and love again, thomas’ psychic landscape overlaid onto the music and geographic spaces of the south.

in general tackling this album i’d been turning round the view that the music is better than the DT element. A precondition or implication of this is that the music is separable from the DT element, which is ofc RONG. the interplay is complicated though, it’s almost like a (very successful) extrapolation and interpretation of the DT’s mental landscape.

Anyway, good listen.

oh and the last seven tracks really add some murk and strangeness, as a sort of side 3 coda. i don’t think they’re really intended to perform that function as such, but they feel pretty essential tbh. odd, intriguing album.