Pere Ubu biography
Pere Ubu is an experimental rock music group formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975. Despite many long-term band members, singer David Thomas is the only constant. The group is named after Pí¨re Ubu ("father Ubu"), the protagonist of Ubu Roi ("Ubu, the King"), a play by French writer Alfred Jarry.
While Pere Ubu have never been widely popular—usually categorized as "underground rock"—they have a devoted following and are an influential and critically acclaimed band.
Critical opinions of Pere Ubu include, "the most original and important of the new wave bands", "the world's only expressionist Rock 'n' Roll band", and "Pere Ubu will be looked back on as the most important group to have come out of America in the last decade and a half. Either that or they will be entirely forgotten".
Pere Ubu have compiled a list of guidelines for touring, live performances and the like: "Lighting should be theatrical rather than rockist. We are interested in atmosphere, mood, drama, energy, subtlety, imagination-not rock cliché." The Danish Broadcasting Corporation is one of the few organizations they trust to record live performances, "solely on the basis of the King of Denmark's defense of the Jews in WWII".
To define their music, Pere Ubu coined the term avant-garage to reflect interest in both experimental avant-garde music (especially Musique concrí¨te) and raw, direct blues-influenced garage rock. Thomas has stated the term is "a joke invented to have something to give journalists when they yelp for a neat sound bite or pigeonhole".
History
1970s
Rocket from the Tombs was a Cleveland-based group that eventually fragmented: some members formed The Dead Boys, while David Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner joined with guitarist Tom Herman, bass guitarist Tim Wright, drummer Scott Krauss and synthesist Allen Ravenstine to form Pere Ubu in 1975. At the time the band formed, Herman, Krauss, and Ravenstine lived in a house owned by Ravenstine.
Pere Ubu's debut single (their first four records were singles on their own "Hearthan" label) was "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" (inspired by the "Doolittle Raid" and named after a film depicting the raid), backed with "Heart of Darkness"; followed by "Final Solution" in 1976. One review noted that "30 Seconds" "was clearly the work of a garage band, yet its arty dissonance and weird experimentalism were startlingly unique."
Final Solution
Of their second single, "Final Solution" (backed with "Cloud 149"), one scribe writes that Ubu's "call for a 'final solution' was the cry of teen angst run down in the decaying rust belt of America, and unlike the British punks who were looking around England the same year, seeing no future, and hating what they saw, Ubu reveled in it."
The teenage-wasteland theme of the song has nothing to do with the Nazi use of "final solution": Indeed, Pere Ubu has consistently denounced Nazism and neo-Nazi movements, and praised resistance to Nazism and rescues of Jews in WWII. Pere Ubu stopped playing "Final Solution" for many years to avoid association with Nazism.
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