Pere Ubu's "Cloudland" - Classic or Dud?

oh, and stephen hague did some production on it.

never seen the "waiting for mary" video. what's it like?

But anyway, the video....it's set in a roadside diner with self-consciously '50s decor: beehive hairdos on the waitresses, neon signs, etc. David Thomas, dressed to look like a mustached Jackie Gleason, sits at a table chanting the lyrics. About a dozen dancers wearing red vinyl jumpsuits (it LOOKS like vinyl) waltz with cardboard cutters doing the call-and-response harmonies ("what are we doing here"?). Cut to eggs getting flipped on a grill.

maybe i underestimated "story of my life;" i should go back and check it out again.

"cloudland" was the first pere ubu i heard, too, and i think, like mcd says, it changed the way i heard the other albums. after you know "ice cream truck," it's pretty hard not to see the pop in "dub housing."

The closest both of these bands got!

I love what stephen hague did to 'love love love', this is the one track I can think of where you can hear chris cutler rattling along with monster techno

Agreed-that song rules

As a side note, my roommate in college misheard "Waiting for Mary" as "Working for Larry," noting that his boss at the time was named Larry. He felt this was an odd coincidence, and developed a certain fondness for the song. I did not have the heart to correct him.

Thanks for sendng me back to my cassette collection. I was thinking "Did I miss something here?" but then realized my memory had confused Worlds In Collision (yawn) with Cloudland ... have fished Cloudland off the shelf for digitizing and am looking forward to the revisit. My recollection is I liked it quite a bit, just got lost in the analog bin when my life went digital.

http://ubuprojex.net/hearpen/monster.html

http://www.cookingvinyl.com/acatalog/Cooking_Vinyl_Monster_390.html

"Waiting for Mary" fans - a must see live performance from 1989 with Debbie Harry(!) on backing vocals and David Sanborn (?!?) on sax...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiK-Lvwanq0

My friend became a HUGE Story of My Life fan -- he didn't care for WiC. I'd like to hear this.

Is Monster worth it? I always wanted to hear (in order): 1) Richard Thompson playing w Thomas and 2) his version of Surf's Up.

God, this is a great album until the last four songs, which are just ok.

Matthew, Story of My Life is pretty good and available used in most record stores.

NTI, yes, Monster is worth it. The three album stretch of More Places Forever, Monster Walks The Midnight Lake and Blame The Messenger is solid awesomeness.

There are two editions of the box set.

On the earlier, you get the bonus disc of live 2 Pale Boys stuff, which is great. But the mix of one of the DT + The Pedestrians albums (with Richard Thompson) was all fussed-with by DT, including overdubs done in the 90's.

On the later edition, the live 2PB disc is absent, but DT removed some of the alterations to the Pedestrians album. I don't have this edition so I've never heard the less-fucked-with mix of the Pedestrians album.

This album is so beautiful.

i have owned it for years and never listened to it! (and my copy is 3000 miles away)

the 2007 reissue?

original press lp

I just noticed they remastered this again in 2017 (by Paul Hamann and David Thomas) though the date of the release in 2018. Is this the "director's cut" released in 2007, or a remaster of the original release?

I was curious as to why they released a different version of Cloudland in 2007. I still can't tell why - maybe it was to appease fans who hated Hague's involvement? From an interview with David Thomas in 2006:

https://razorcake.org/archive-interview-with-pere-ubu-the-band-was-doomed-from-the-beginning-but-thats-all-right/

Ryan: Getting back with Pere Ubu, you recorded Cloudland and had a minor brush with commercial success with “Waiting for Mary.”
David: Very minor.
Ryan: Yeah. And it seemed like you received some flak for the production on that.
David: Well, we didn’t produce it.
Ryan: No, I mean…
David: No, we were really into it. I think Cloudland is a really strong album.
Ryan: Yeah, I agree.
David: I wish they’d put it out again. Steven Hague, who was a big time producer at that point—he had done all of the New Order, Pet Shop Boys, and tons of other people; he had endless hits—was a big fan, going back to the ‘70s. And he really wanted to work with us. Incredibly expensive. But the record company was up for sending us into a digital studio, which, again, in those days, was incredibly expensive. And we had this opportunity to work with a top producer. And we thought, “Yeah. What the hell? It sounds like fun. We’ve never done it before. Never had access to any of that sort of stuff.” We always recorded our records very, very quickly. We never spent more than a week on a record from beginning to end.
Ryan: Damn.
David: It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot from that. I loved what Steven Hague was doing. And I learned a lot from watching him work in terms of his patience and the concentration he put into things. So then after that it was Gil Norton, which was a hideous experience. It sort of convinced me I wasn’t going to work with a producer anymore; although we ended up working with one more (Al Clay), who was the engineer for Gil Norton, for Story of My Life. That was okay. Along that time, I was just getting the feeling that I’d rather make my own mistakes. The Hague thing had been really brilliant. It was a lot of fun, and it brought out a lot of things. But I was never comfortable not working at Suma (studio where Pere Ubu has cut the vast majority of their records). And the Gil Norton thing, which was a really fraught experience. We just had endless troubles getting the vocals. He would try to get something out of the vocals that I wasn’t capable of doing. I was constantly on edge. Towards the end, we went off and recorded four or five songs to be B sides on our own, just by ourselves. And we came back and Gil said, “The singing is so much better on this, so much freer. Why can’t you do that with me?” And I didn’t say anything, because I was fuming at that point. Then, at the last day of the session as everything was mixed and done and we were just finishing it up, he said to me—which was a nice thing to say in his terms, but it infuriated me—“Well, I never should have tried to tell you what to do because I don’t understand what you do.” And it’s like, “Gee, thanks.” Eights weeks of utter hell. Doing take after take after take. I took it graciously, and I like Gil personally, but we just didn’t get along.

And from an old interview in Perfect Sound Forever with Allen Ravenstine:

http://www.furious.com/perfect/allenravenstine4.html

PSF: By the time of the 2nd reunion album (Cloudland), the sound of the band changed a lot.

Allen: I don't think I was involved with that one! Wasn't that Eric Feldman?

PSF: No, he was on the one after that (Worlds In Collision). On Cloudland, you were credited as part of the band then. Chris Culter was still in the band and Stephen Hague was producing.

Allen: Oh... OK. I actually have NO recollection of that. Sorry!

PSF: Do you remember that there was any tension about the direction of the band in terms of the music then?

Allen: I think you're finding out why you haven't read many interviews with me! (laughs)

PSF: Chris told me that at that time, David had wanted to go in one direction (more commercial) but you and Chris fought against that.

Allen: I remember that... (pauses) I think that I did a Wooden Birds (David's solo project) tour and I remember now that I think about it, at some point deciding that I liked the idea of the acoustic stuff a lot better, that it seemed like it was a lot more open. And one of the things that used to trouble me, that I used to hate, was the kind of wall of sound thing where I couldn't pick one thing out from another. It was just this kind of wall. And I think during the period of time when Chris was in the band, it really kind of opened up and there was a lot more room in it. And then I did enjoy that because I felt like I could do something and I could hear what I was doing and I could hear where it was and I could play with it. Whereas before, I was just sort of 'well, I'm hitting these keys here and I don't really know what's happening.' So yeah, for a short period of time, there was an openness to the music itself. It had space in it, which was something that it had not had in a very long time and I did enjoy that. And Chris was part of that.

PSF: So what finally happened where you decided that you had enough of Ubu once and for all?

Allen: Well, I think that it was that I never really did like touring. And so in '88, I just decided that I wasn't going to do it anymore. And then in '91, I got the job with the airline. And then there just wasn't any time to do anything (else) anymore at that point. So I really just stopped. I think I cut a record with them in '91 but I think it was the last thing I did.

PSF: You mean on Worlds in Collision?

Yeah, I think I had a couple of songs on there. I remember going out to Suma (Studios) a couple of times and had some minor part in it.

PSF: So you made the decision that you didn't want to be a musician anymore?

Yeah. It was a conscious decision that I was going to try to dedicate my free time to being a writer.

Story of My Life is good

I've no idea how much MTV and real college airplay "Waiting For Mary" earned in spring '89, but it sure earned plenty of play on Classic VH-1 ni 2004-2004.

er 2003-2004

It was in the top 5 or so of the commercial alternative radio chart in Toronto.

Re-posting cos it still blows my mind. Waiting For Mary live with Debbie Harry and David Sanborn from 1989.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiK-Lvwanq0