Pere Ubu: Classic Or Dud

Make a box set companion to Datapanik.

That and there are certain artists whose work I prefer to cherry pick due to inconsistency or simply not wanting to have to wade through a dozen or more albums.

Monster Dreams of the Days He's Going to Sea
^^^ is that the title? In any case, a track from Monster Walks... that needs to be in yr box. So beautiful.

"Monster Thinks About The Good Days". Excellent suggestion, I missed that one.

That bass melody comes into my head all the time

I'm confused about "Monster Walks", though. How many versions of it are there, didn't it get reissued yet again recently? I've read it's "radically remixed" for the "Monster" box set. Which version is the one to hear?

I "learned" it from the LP, and I don't remember the box set version jarring me the way the box set version of More Places Forever did. (I have the first version of the box set, with the live disc)

I listened to Long Live Pere Ubu again for the first time in a few years... Man that record has a vibe like no other record I know. Some incredibly strange, grotesque sounds.

Saw them the other night. They'd departed from recent Moon Unit/Carnival of Souls stuff, and delivered a very rocking set selected from their recent albums. I've seen the more attenuated stuff quite a lot, both from before and after the release of CoS so this was a v welcome departure and was very good too.

D Thomas seems extremely frail and unwell though, more so than at other times - he said he'd just come out of intensive care, which may have been typical posturing but certainly didn't look like it.

A session on Vic Galloway earlier this week, which I didn't hear, but I believe iplayer radio is now doing full replay (and download on apps) for recently broadcast content, as with its tv stuff now.

He's having health problems? I had no idea :(

i posted this link on the jackie leven thread but i should put it here too. best interview.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jul/23/pere-ubu-david-thomas-music-interview

Why have you started singing from a chair?

Because my legs don’t work any more. To sing the way I want to sing, you have to get right in there and I noticed I was spending a lot of mental energy worrying about falling over into the drums.

Found a recent photo accompanying this review of one of this week's shows.

http://m.theargus.co.uk/news/13440077.Pere_Ubu__Komedia__Gardner_Street__Brighton__Thursday__July_16/

I see what you mean, fizzles.

With early Ubu, the fact that you can’t quite hear the words and your voice is almost one of the instruments gives it a tremendous mystery and power.

I used to say that the bass player is actually the band’s guitarist, the guitarist is the bassist, the synthesiser is the vocal and I’m the horn section. Then I changed my vocal approach and it became more extreme, almost hysterical. Lately I’ve been going for legibility.

You’ve written hundreds of songs, but hardly any of them follow the pop convention of confessional lyrics: “I met Mary and fell in love” etc.

Self-expression is evil, so we don’t do confessionals. I use the first-person narrative almost exclusively, but that’s not because I’m talking about myself. I find the singer-songwriter confessional crap truly irritating. What do I care what you think about something? I don’t care about your [spits] feelings. I want ideas. I want to see how things look. We use the first person in the same way Picasso drew flowers. The point of the painting was not the damned flower. It was Picasso’s state of mind.

I used to say that the bass player is actually the band’s guitarist, the guitarist is the bassist, the synthesiser is the vocal and I’m the horn section.

^^^ I actually hear this

yep

/ And he did "Final Solution." The only contribution I had to that was the moment in there where it says 'guitar's gonna sound like a nuclear destruction' and he (Taylor) had a great big explosion there and I said 'no, that should be the opposite. It should be a vacuum.' And so they made the sound suck itself up and that's my contribution to "Final Solution." That's the only thing I did.

PSF: You played that part on the record?

No, I didn't. I just told them that was what they needed to do at the moment. That's all I did for that song. But then they dumped Dave (Taylor) and then I was back. /

man i had NO IDEA ravenstine didn't play on "Solution"

(and some great synth work too)

That Guardian interview is entertaining:

Hi David! What’s happening in Hove? (1)

It’s sunny at the moment, by the sea. I stay in my flat, go down to the local pub. That’s about it.

I hear you don’t do much on the road either – no reading or watching television. Is it important to clear your head?

My head is usually damned clear, but the whole day is focused on the performance. That’s why we forbid radio, TV, noise or talking. You’re allowed to say “Toilet!” and we will stop the bus.

Thomas has been diabetic for years - not a surprise that he's having problems at his age.

He's a great interview; I did a cover story on him for The Wire in 2006 or so and was scared as hell going in, because of the hostility factor, but he turned out to be really interesting to talk to. We had a long discussion about the whole anti-confessional thing; his attitude is that he's a performer, he's there to perform for you, not to read to you from his diary, so if you take a first-person lyric as a confession, you're the idiot. It's theater.

I used to say that the bass player is actually the band’s guitarist, the guitarist is the bassist, the synthesiser is the vocal and I’m the horn section.

at the risk of sounding (too) literal-minded, when i saw pere ubu in '79 tom herman and tony maimone would trade gtr/bass at times so yeah

DT sounded more like a flute/clarinet/bassoon than sax or trumpet though

Sometimes when I listen to early Ubu I think it's the coolest music ever made, totally aligned with my tastes, but fortunately (ironically?) I don't listen to it that often, so that when I do listen to it it remains fresh and inspires the same reaction.

That's what I posted a couple of weeks back, anyway. They are one of my Platonic ideals.

Listening to monster walks... this morning for the first time in ages. A lot of its tracks are up there with the most breathtaking stuff in the Ubu universe. "Bicycle" gave me cosmic chills. It's such a great ravenstine showcase album too.

Xposts

Yeah he is definitely a reed instrument and not brass.

Ok a casual perusal of and comment in this thread has sent me off digging back into my copies of the box and Tenement Year, scrounging what's available on Spotify and begging friends to share copies of the OOP and hard-to-find entries in their catalogue. It's not really healthy.

A few observations:

These guys have next to no duds in their catalogue. Everything is interesting in its own right – the difficult, downtown-y post-Dub Housing records w Mayo, the pop era, the aughts records w Wheeler and the reed player. I still have some gaps, but it seems that all of it is at least worth digging through.

The "pop" records—Cloudland, Worlds in Collision (or, as Letterman called it when they performed in '91, Worlds in Collusion) and Story of My Life, are incredibly solid. I still don't have a copy of the former but these records are like a model for what art bands should do when they try to reach the masses. Ubu had always been catchy, even at their most abstract, but in some ways it took this era to reveal the extent of it.

Even after having records by them for 20 years, I still feel like I am only scratching the surface of Ubu and Thomas.

I am feeling totally overwhelmed at the moment.

And yet...

I really want Monster.

One question after reading the Guardian piece:
Is Thomas' distaste for self-expression related at all to his background as a Jehovah's Witness?

listening to the Manhattan Max's recording from 1977 that comes w/ the new box set. killer, but why isn't the whole thing included? you gotta download the rest over here: http://www.hearpen.com/hr169.html

Naive Teen Idol have you ever heard A Warning To All Strangers by Tom hermans power trio Tripod Jimmie? A totally essential piece of ubu-satellite debris

The recent live BBC radio appearance was both funny in the interview segments and on point musically.

Thomas is about the most magnetic front person I've ever seen.

Naive Teen Idol have you ever heard A Warning To All Strangers by Tom hermans power trio Tripod Jimmie? A totally essential piece of ubu-satellite debris

The only thing I know by TJ is "Autumn Leaves" on the box rarities disc – but Herman is really fantastic. See it's available on Hearpen. Hmmm...

(PS, "Autumn Leaves" is fantastic)

I go to the dances almost every friday night
I do the dances that everybody likes
OH, MISS?!?

Ok Jon, now you gotta make a playlist called "Ubu Satellite Debris" containing the best non-Ubu/Thomas material.

I don't really know the other satellite stuff, sadly. Have never heard jim jones band or the ravenstine wheeler thing. Or that band two pale boys come from. Was Michele Temple in something notable before Ubu?

I desperately wish more of this stuff were on Spotify.

I find Rocket From The Tombs pretty essential but then i do like a lotof early 70s hard rock/heavy psych. & that has guitars where Ubu has synths.

When the remastered again reissue of the Datapanik cd boxset came out a couple of years back Amazon had it for about £12. Not seen what it is now though. Has all of the preretirement Ubu apart from live stuff.

I noticed there was a cd of the band live at Longbranch Saloon in 77 or 78 available from Ubuprojex. Haven't heard it but its a very good era.
& Shapes Of Things from Cleveland in 76 is a great gig too.

I quite like those two Rocket from the Tombs reunion CDs they did early in the 2000s.

My band has done a few gigs with Craig Bell, he's a cool dude. Bell lives in Indy and has a couple bands called The Down Fi and Deezen while still doing shows with David Thomas and sometimes Cheetah Chrome in the Rocket from the Tombs, playing shows with the reformed Mirrors and also playing with the reformed 70s Bloomington punk band The Gizmos. It's definitely worth exploring if you are a fan of the old Cleveland punk bands like Ubu, Dead Boys, Peter Laughner etc. Fyi.

man I love The Gizmos

those Tripod Jimmie records are great

the backward guitar riff on "street waves" is something i have yet to get over all these years later

Do you mean the solo? Was trying to figure out if that was backwards or just played that way. Either way, amazing song and performance.

Do you mean the solo? Was trying to figure out if that was backwards or just played that way. Either way, amazing song and performance.

Why I still kind of love youtube - watch enough Pere Ubu clips and it eventually links you to this :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQIJiIQjoRU

Oh wow!!!!

I saw a really fantastic local production of Ubu Roi a few years ago. Right before the lights went down, they played "Final Solution" in full over the soundsystem.

Hey Jon, I finally got around to hearing the two Tripod Jimmie albums, fantastic weirdness in the tradition of early Ubu. These desperately need to be reissued!!

I've actually never heard the first one.

Death is not the end:
Pere Ubu: The David Thomas Death Protocols

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Pere Ubu: The David Thomas Death Protocols

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the Classical 11 minutes ago
THE DAVID THOMAS DEATH PROTOCOLS

Members of the Ubu Projex bands shall be informed three months after the event, not before, and will at that time receive an instruction pack. No one else is to be informed, including record company and agents.
David will continue to 'answer' his email and all social media will be regularly updated - if anything there should be an uptick in posting frequency. All interviews shall be by email - since the questions rarely change there is a sufficient backlog of answers that can be cut and pasted.
A Pere Ubu album shall be produced. Keith Moline is to be in charge of assembling lyrics and vocal performances from pre-existing material. A tour will be booked to coincide with the album release. At an appropriate point a band photo with David's replacement shall be released.
Someone is bound to ask, 'Where's David?'
The response shall be 'Oh, he died two years ago.'
Q. 'What happened?'
A. His body stopped working.
Q. 'What was the cause?'
A. 'Death.'
Q. Why didn't you say anything?'
A. 'It's none of your damn business.'

lol
pretty strange to think of someone replacing Thomas

<3 and everything, but yeah that's not ever going to work, is it?

He's said that he already has his replacement identified...

haha, really? does his replacement know? is it ME?