It’s hard enough being one of the hundreds of bands trying to reach the record-buying public these days. More and more, battling for music-television exposure, a slot on corporate rock radio’s playlists, and a slice of a label’s recession-squeezed promotional budget amounts to a musical Darwinism in which “fittest” too often means “easy to market.” So the capacity crowd that greeted Pere Ubu at their recent Cabaret Metro appearance represented a small victory for one band that attempted to change the rules of the music promotion game, just as the impassioned performance the band gave that night proved the worth of their rule-breaking music.
Inspired by the punk movement, but with influences and artistic ambitions that range far beyond punk’s narrow confines, the band emerged out of Cleveland in 1977. On early singles like “90 Seconds Over Tokyo” and “Final Solution” and the first two albums–The Modern Dance and Dub Housing–that followed, Pere Ubu presented a harrowing, sometimes humorous picture of life in late-20th-century urban America. That picture portrayed Cleveland’s chemical and manufacturing plants, its crowding and confusion, as well as an urban dweller’s isolation, loneliness, and fear.
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In 1987 band members found themselves coming together in different combinations (Thomas had been recording albums with the Pedestrians, a band that included Ravenstine and Maimone), prompting a reunion. The Tenement Year, of 1988, consolidated Pere Ubu’s previous work, merging jazz-fusion compositional structures and heavy percussion (Pedestrian Chris Cutler joined the group as a second drummer) with Ravenstine’s effects and more prominent guitar playing from new member Jim Jones. On their return Pere Ubu recaptured the muscular energy and compelling anarchism missing from much of their work since The Modern Dance.
Certainly the early material retained its sonic wallop. There was the roaring, ascending guitar riff that launched “Non-Alignment Pact”; the eruption in “Caligari’s Mirror” from a traipse through a surreal landscape into a surging, nearly out-of-control chorus (“Hey, hey, the drunken sailors / What a mess, tie ’em down!”); and the suspense and menace conveyed by “90 Seconds Over Tokyo” as Thomas moaned “This dream won’t ever, ever end” before the band exploded into an industrial-noise free-jazz cacophony. But for all the power of these moments, there was something archival about the songs; they betrayed their origins in an earlier period and cultural milieu.
Mostly, the rest of the band indulges his antics. During his repeated attempts to bind a soloing Jones with his coat, belt, and tie, Jones shook him off as he would a mischievous child. And during “Pushin’ Too Hard” Thomas, whose only instrumental proficiency seems to be on the accordion, borrowed Jones’s guitar to produce several minute’s worth of feedback, while his bandmates looked on tolerantly. He looked to be discovering as a child might that making noise is a way to get noticed.
Something weird is coming this way
