Pere Ubu
To be honest, I don’t feel like I have a keen enough intellect to adequately analyze and expound on Pere Ubu. While I like the band and their music on a high level, I feel like I’m missing something critical that everyone else is getting - kinda how I feel whenever I listen to Jazz. Kinda how I felt when I failed advanced calculus, or tried to read Dostoevsky. Just plain dumb. So I’ll leave it at that, but suggest you head over to Vinyl Mine to check out Jim’s take on Pere Ubu’s first album The Modern Dance.
Deconstruction aside, I’ve grown comfortable with the majority of material Pere Ubu released in their “Historical” period (1975-1982). The band produced 3 fine albums (Modern Dance, Dub Housing, and New Picnic Time) in little over a two year span, in addition to a couple of fantastic singles. If you can put aside David Thomas’ off-key yelping/mewing and the band’s more artsy-fartsy avant weirdness there’s much to enjoy. The tracks here come from the band’s 5-song 1978 12″ Datapanik in the Year Zero, originally released in the UK on Radar Records. The EP collects cuts from the band’s early releases on their own Hearthan label, including the first single from 1975, the b-side to their second single (”Cloud 149″), a demo version of “The Modern Dance” (marked as “untitled”), and the b-side to The Modern Dance single (”Heaven”). A nice sample of the band’s early output, though the exclusion of “Final Solution” is puzzling:
from 1978 EP Datapanik in the Year Zero
Pere Ubu - Heart of Darkness.mp3
Pere Ubu - 30 Seconds Over Tokyo.mp3
Notes:
> Photo from official Pere Ubu website: Ubuprojex > Rocket From The Tombs tracks are still available from an earlier post. I prefer the RFTT early version of “30 Seconds Over Tokyo”
> The entire Datapanik EP is included in the Terminal Tower singles, etc compilation and the Datapanik in the Year Zero boxset.
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Great stuff… thanks…
A couple other really good Ubu tracks are: “Final Solution” and “Street Waves” — which get at their weird way of rocking without too much artsy-fartsiness.
I rarely listen to Ubu’s records either. One night I caught these guys live after I had overdid it with the chemical stew. They were fucking brilliant. The same stew made Metal Machine Music sound cool too. Dig?
I concur. I don’t get the appeal. It’s like people who rave on about how brilliant a movie “Eraserhead” is. THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES!
Re “Final Solution”’s omission, from the Ubu faq:
Q: Why did ‘Final Solution’ disappear for years?
A: Because of the title. A Sherlock Holmes story called “The Final Problem” was the inspiration for the song. If there’s a final problem there’s got to be a final solution. Didn’t think about it very much until the punk movement came along with its nazi tokenism. The band decided to drop the song rather than risk association.
A great band, even if their knowledge of European history wasn’t too sharp.
Good stuff, great d/l speed. Just so you know, the link for Heart of Darkness points to a jpg of the band, not an mp3. Cheers!
Pere Ubu is one of those bands that at a certain moment you just get, and once gotten, you’ve got it forever. I bought the Datapanik box set when it came out and keep coming back to it. They are a brilliant band if willfully cryptic at times. Only David Thomas can write a song about his hands and make at you look at your own with new eyes.
Pere Ubu is a band of many subtle pleasures. They don’t knock yer socks off with every song but they’re intense in their own way, like how Television was said to be live in their prime. They’re more Patty Smith than Dead Boys, that’s for sure.
I really like 93’s Story Of My Life, especially “Postcard”.
I can’t say everyone has to love them, but at least listen to their early work with all your attention and don’t expect The Sex Pistols.
Pere Ubu is a band of many subtle pleasures. They don’t knock yer socks off with every song but they’re intense in their own way, like how Television was said to be We should remember the time when Pere Ubu came out and the quirky art-school scene, that is where the “rub” of their influence lies. If you listen to Talking Heads for instance, you can obviously hear the influence of David Thomas vocal stylings in David Byrne, almost to a mimic. The Heads were obviously more adapt at writing more hooky and mainstream songs than UBU but thier influence I believe is still felt and that is ok in my book.
And Punk back in the late 70’s early 80’s encompassed anything(Dead Boys, Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith etc. all quite diverse ) that wasn’t the typical major label crap that was being released, It really was about supporting each other to fight the good fight against bands like REO Speedwagon, AXE and god knows what else.
I think Dub Housing is one of the greatest albums of all time.Evertyhing that makes Pere Ubu great(including David Thomas’ voice)comes together on this one. I had the original Rough Trade cd for about five years before i “got it”.Now they are one of my all-time favorite bands.I also highly recommend Worlds In Collision(everyone else likes Cloudland)from their “commercial” period.
I concur with marcdark. I’d like to add that “non-alignment pact” & “final solution” will out rock anybody. They were also cool because they had an Roxy- Music-era-Eno-type-setup with a synthesizerist that processed signal throughout the show. David Thomas once said in an interview that if he could pay his bills and have a couple of hundred bucks a week left over he’d do this for the rest of his life.
http://www.somethingilearned.com/pereubu/pere%20ubu%20-%2001%20-%20heart%20of%20darkness.mp3