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Pere Ubu is a fairly legendary band in certain circles and deservedly so, I would say that they were as influential and groundbreaking as a lot of their peers like Television and Talking Heads and all that.

I mean, the first two albums are just stone cold classics, and the second one has probably my favorite album cover:



And it also has what is probably my favorite Pere Ubu song, "I, Will Wait", which is just a ripper- I mean, come on, listen to that guitar groove:

I, Will Wait

And if you listen to that and haven't heard it before, notice the synth player, Allen Ravenstein... he more or less viewed his role as adding texture to the songs, so what might have been an otherwise fairly normal rock and roll tune takes on some harrowing aspects with his synth howls:

Street Waves

Even before those two albums, though, Pere Ubu put out a bunch of stone cold classic singles, usually lumped in with some kind of talk about proto-punk and such but it's really just hard to categorize:

Heart of Darkness

That being said, not really having a home genre to call their own, and not really caring to have one, and with no real chance of them having, like, hits, Pere Ubu basically just did what you would hope: whatever the fuck they wanted.

Sometimes it's pop confection:

Waiting For Mary

Sometimes it's Talking Heads type new wave a little later than you might have expected:

Worlds In Collision

Regardless, if you otherwise don't know the first two albums, check them out.

On the Surface

The Modern Dance

I'm a huge Pere Ubu fan! If you ask me what's my favorite Pere Ubu song, I wouldn't know where to begin. I even love Songs of the Bailing Man and stuff like that. I do have a soft spot for Cloudland simply because that was the first Pere Ubu record I got into, back in the day.

Have you seen them live? I saw their modern incarnation a couple of times. I told David Thomas how much I love The Modern Dance while he was selling t-shirts before the show, and then they proceeded to play that record in its entirety. I dunno if it was already planned that way or if Thomas decided to make an old fan happy.

Anyway, great band! I can understand why some people don't like them, I mean, David Thomas' looks, voice and delivery are rather unorthodox, and all the noise elements may seem a bit strange to many, but THAT'S WHY I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!

I've posted some of their music in the Song of the Day thread. Three songs I love:

Pere Ubu - Laughing

Pere Ubu - Kingdom Come

Pere Ubu - Breath

Yeah, "Laughing" is great... great lyrics in that one.

"Humor Me" is harrowing and heartbreaking.

when your very first 45 is "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" b/w "Heart of Darkness," and your next single is "Final Solution," you've entered the realm of lore right out of the gate. not many bands find that clarity of purpose from the get-go

my favorite live album of all time may be "390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo," a bunch of lo-fi recordings of Modern Dance-era tracks in front of small crowds in Cleveland-area dives and some overseas halls ... the liner notes even allude to a show they played in a cave it's simultaneously cruddy sounding, entrancing and exhilarating, art rock that can only be judged unto itself -

improbably, it was apparently reissued this year on Record Store Day hopefully some more people are stumbling across it, it's amazing

I'm also going to say that Pere Ubu has one of my favorite bass players around, also. Nothing flashy or showy but just consistently interesting bass lines that add interest and counterpoint the way that all bass playing should. I never get tired of hearing those bass lines.

The sort of thing you get when the songs aren't written exclusively by the guitar player, you know?

Cornelius Plum wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 03, 2021 7:16 am

Pere Ubu - Breath

One of my favorite performances ever. What a hell of a song.

I love Pere Ubu; especially Heart Of Darkness. Absolutely amazing.
Also, big love for Rocket From The Tombs; easily the greatest 'what if???' moment in 70s rock for me. I can only weep at the lost album that might have happened for that band.

As it happens I just got hold of the newly recorded first album and it's great. check this if you haven't heard it But the idea of the original album that never was, but was hinted at by the brilliant The Day The Earth Met Rocket from The Tombs compilation is still somehow stronger.

yeah, i'm always disappointed at how little they get talked about, even as more and more bands from that era have been getting re-discovered and placed on music-history pedestals. i suspect they'll be getting their moment soon, but it's a shame it's taken so long.

Amongst the cool kids into punk and then post-punk, it was only the ultra cool kids who were into Pere Ubu. Along with bands like the Pop Group ... possibly an odd pairing, unless you're 10,000 miles from both Cleveland and Bristol as we were. They were amongst the very few bands that the Birthday Party - who didn't dish out praise readily - conceded were in their class.

Thanks for reminding me of great songs like Final Solution.

FrankRay wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 03, 2021 10:41 am

I love Pere Ubu; especially Heart Of Darkness. Absolutely amazing.
Also, big love for Rocket From The Tombs; easily the greatest 'what if???' moment in 70s rock for me. I can only weep at the lost album that might have happened for that band.

As it happens I just got hold of the newly recorded first album and it's great. check this if you haven't heard it But the idea of the original album that never was, but was hinted at by the brilliant The Day The Earth Met Rocket from The Tombs compilation is still somehow stronger.

I seem to remember that Guns and Roses covered this one
To me nothing comes close to the original version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh0HKfnAl5o

The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs might be one of the albums I listened to the most when I was 20. The other two albums would have been The Modern Dance and Dub Housing. I'd just moved to a new city and managed to get thrown out of the place I was supposed to live before I had even moved in. I ended up sharing sharing this tiny studio flat with an old friend from school. We were into the same music. The state of the flat was horrendous - empty beer crates everywhere, unidentifiable flora growing in the kitchen sink, and I might have been responsible for bringing headlice & crabs into the mix. We had those three records on repeat for six months, they felt like the perfect soundtrack. Even 'Sentimental Journey' made perfect sense - we had a habit of throwing empty bottles at each other and they often smashed against the walls.
The other guy ended up having a massive breakdown and meeting god, and I went on studying clinical psychology. Those were strange times, but those early Tombs / Ubu records always take me back, with an odd fondness for that stupid, drunken version of ourselves.

I went to an Ubu gig in Manchester, probably in 2014. David Thomas had trouble walking but he insisted on going to the corner shop by himself to get himself a few bottles of wine. Carnival of Souls had just come out and they played most of the record, plus a few oldies and some improvised stuff. It was one of the most intense & strangely wonderful gigs I've been to, one of the rare instances when a 'dinosaur' band doesn't make you feel short-changed. My wife bought me one of Thomas's books and I carried it around with me for ages, one of those fun books you can dip in any time you feel bored and get something out of.

One thing that often get overlooked with the Ubu catalogue is how emotional & humorous a lot of it is. They seem to have that reputation of being an intellectual band. The Tenement Year is a good example. A lot of the tracks make me chuckle, I mean, accordion surf music? Wow.
The opening track is still one of my favorite Ubu tunes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDuJAYHbC1s

epizootics wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 14, 2021 9:51 pm

I'd just moved to a new city and managed to get thrown out of the place I was supposed to live before I had even moved in. I ended up sharing sharing this tiny studio flat with an old friend from school. We were into the same music. The state of the flat was horrendous - empty beer crates everywhere, unidentifiable flora growing in the kitchen sink, and I might have been responsible for bringing headlice & crabs into the mix. We had those three records on repeat for six months, they felt like the perfect soundtrack. Even 'Sentimental Journey' made perfect sense - we had a habit of throwing empty bottles at each other and they often smashed against the walls.
The other guy ended up having a massive breakdown and meeting god, and I went on studying clinical psychology. Those were strange times, but those early Tombs / Ubu records always take me back, with an odd fondness for that stupid, drunken version of ourselves.

Sounds like Withnail and I; ever seen it? You might relate to the chaos.

FrankRay wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 16, 2021 2:38 am

Sounds like Withnail and I; ever seen it? You might relate to the chaos.

Haha. Yes, I've seen it. My English girlfriend at the time (with whom I'd actually 'retired' to a relative's cabin in the Lake District for a while - although our stay involved more hiking and surviving on bread and beans than catching live chickens) said that this was my 'Withnail meets the Young Ones phase'.

Back to Pere Ubu, I remember reading about the band before listening to them and thinking 'this band has to be cool', simply on the basis of their name. Alfred Jarry's plays, Ubu Roi and its sequels, were the only piece of 19th century French literature I could ever stomach as a teenager. His work didn't feel contrived and my French teachers in school hated him (much like Samuel Beckett). I asked them why we didn't ever study the guy who'd pretty much single-handedly invented modern French writing and they'd go 'Yeah, Jarry is interesting...but there is NO WAY I'll devote one of my classes to his scatological drivel', then we'd go back to boring, humorless Victor Hugo.

It was years until I could actually listen to the band. The library in my town didn't carry any of their records and the whole streaming music thing was still a ways ahead. When I finally bought The Modern Dance, it was everything I'd expected, much better than The Soft Machine's pataphysics tracks (the library did carry their records.) David Thomas really nailed the Jarry vibes, where crass humour conspires with excellent writing to make you feel that one should work as hard on being stupid as on being clever.

If you take a little trip to the liminal space between Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn, you can track with bassist Tony Maimone at Studio G.

øøøøøøø wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:23 am

If you take a little trip to the liminal space between Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn, you can track with bassist Tony Maimone at Studio G.

He is a wonderful bassist, I had read the other day that he was still active in music. What a great player, everything a bass should be is represented in those albums he played on.

Larry Mal wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:34 am

øøøøøøø wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:23 am

bassist Tony Maimone

He is a wonderful bassist

he was still in Pere Ubu when they toured with Pixies around 1990 or so. saw them a few times during that tour, and also saw him in Bob Mould's band around that same time. talked to him for a few minutes before one of those shows, seemed like a cool guy.

EDIT for memory jog: i think on that Mould tour, his backing band was Tony Maimone, Anton Fier and Chris Stamey ... it was the Husker Du, Pere Ubu and dB's all-stars