Latest news with #TheModernDance
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Thomas Was Pere Ubu's Heart of Darkness
Here's a long goodbye to David Thomas of Pere Ubu, one of the most defiantly eccentric and uncompromising voices in American rock. He made history with Pere Ubu, a garage band of Cleveland art-noise crackpots sending out a roar from the mid-Seventies' Midwest industrial wasteland. In his early days, he was an imposing and ornery character, reveling in his onstage persona as the fearsome Crocus Behemoth. With Ubu and his earlier band Rocket from the Tombs, he howled and shrieked in a voice full of pulp nightmares, doing for Cleveland what George Romero did for Pittsburgh. The band's motto to the end, as Thomas declared on his website: 'We don't promote chaos, we preserve it.' Thomas had a long and prolific career, right up to his final years, despite his health woes and a famously cranky personality that could curdle soup across the room. But you can make an argument that he achieved a lifetime's worth of greatness in the first three years of Pere Ubu — hell, he could have called it quits after their first two indie singles and he'd still be a legend, with classics like 'Heart of Darkness' and 'Final Solution.' Ubu's early run remains a landmark of American avant-garage proto-punk, especially the trilogy of The Modern Dance, Dub Housing, and Terminal Tower. His voice is the ghost in the machine, a strangely humane presence amid all the urban-industrial pastoral. More from Rolling Stone David Thomas, Pere Ubu Singer, Dead at 71 PJ Harvey Reads Noted Cat Lover Captain Beefheart's Poem About Her Cat Ministry Drop a Menacing Cover of the Stooges' 'Search and Destroy' 'We're into reality music,' Thomas told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in December 1975, shortly before Ubu's live debut on New Years Eve. 'People want to live in fantasy worlds. They think they're stars. They take dancing lessons Monday, foreign language on Tuesday, and macramé on Wednesday and think they're artists. Reality is a scary thing.' But so was Ubu's music. 'The emotion in 'Heart of Darkness' is desperation. We want to make the listener feel as if he is the narrator.' Mission accomplished. Ubu released 'Heart of Darkness' in late 1975, on their own Hearthan label, a debut single that went on to warp minds around the world. 'Heart of Darkness' is a full-on psycho-destructo breakdown — a hypnotic bass line from Tim Wright, primitive EML synthesizer swoops from Allen Ravenstine, the drum pulse of Scott Krauss, the proto-punk guitar of Peter Laughner and Tom Herman. Thomas pleads for his sanity in his paranoid whispers, his voice twisting and flopping like a fish on a line. By the end, he's chanting 'I'm looking into the heart of darkness' until he's screaming for his life. It's one of the most terrifying songs you'll ever hear, proving this weird little band had a unique vision. Mission of Burma did a great nine-minute version on their live album The Horrible Truth About Burma, the only Ubu cover to capture the dread (and humor) of the original. He named the band after Alfred Jarry's surrealist play Ubu Roi. As he said early on, he chose the name as 'an added texture of absolute grotesqueness—a shadow behind everything that's going on, a darkness over everything.' Nobody in Cleveland was paying attention, but for him, that just meant freedom. '[We] were working in isolation,' Thomas said in Clinton Heylin's essential From the Velvets to the Voidoids. 'So we had no hope of ever being successful, which is a heartening and creatively positive thing.' Thomas was already a local rock journalist when he started Rocket From the Tombs in 1974, billing them as the World's Only Dumb-Metal Mind-Death Rock & Roll Band. He met guitarist Peter Laughner, another rock critic — Laughner was into Dylan and the Velvets, Thomas was more into Beefheart and Hawkwind and the MC5, but both were obsessed with the Stooges. They first played together at the Special Extermination Music Night in December 1974, at the Viking Saloon, where Thomas worked as a bouncer. The Rockets played along with two other legendary Cle proto-punk innovators, the Electric Eels and Mirrors. All three bands were part of a local underground that worshipped the Velvets (who always played in their spiritual homes Cleveland and Boston far more than they did NYC). The Eels prided themselves on 'Art Terrorism,' and that's what all three of these bands achieved. Thomas called himself 'Crocus Behemoth,' a professor's kid from Cleveland Heights, inspired by sci-fi and monster movies on late-night TV. The Rockets played future Ubu tunes like 'Life Stinks' and '30 Seconds Over Tokyo,' along with Stones and Stooges covers. Unfortunately, his strict Jehovah's Witness parents threw him out of the house after unwisely attending a gig where he crawled on the floor and howled Iggy's 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' while throwing dog biscuits at the crowd until he threw the whole box and hit his dad on the head. For a while, he got demoted to alto sax when his bandmates decided he couldn't sing. They left to start the bro-punk Dead Boys, taking Rockets songs like 'Sonic Reducer' and 'Ain't It Fun.' Thomas and Laughner moved on to Ubu. Rocket from the Tombs split up without making a record, leaving behind classic bootlegs like A Night of Heavy Music, until the band finally got a proper testament with the 2002 collection The Day the Earth Met Rocket From the Tombs. But Thomas always had more ambition for Pere Ubu. 'The band has always operated on the basic principle of throw everything up in the air and see which way the wind blows it,' Thomas told Rolling Stone's Tom Carson in 1979. 'We're intuitive, we work on intuitive things. If you can explain it, it's not worth doing.' Ubu released a handful of indie singles, collected on the EP Datapanik in the Year Zero, and the 1986 compilation Terminal Tower. On the flip side of 'Heart of Darkness' was '30 Seconds Over Tokyo' was a dirge for a World War II pilot on his final raid, crashing and burning in the synth-and-guitar sludge. 'Final Solution' might be their most famous moment, a wildly funny teen lament in the garage-rock mode of 'Psychotic Reaction' or 'Summertime Blues' or 'Talk Talk.' (He took the title from the Sherlock Holmes mystery 'The Final Problem' — it had nothing to do with Nazis.) Thomas complains, 'Mom threw me out till I get some pants that fit/She just won't approve of my strange kind of wit' — until the guitar comes in like a nuclear destruction. Laughner died in 1977, only 24, destroyed by booze and drugs. (His great career anthology is the 1994 Take the Guitar Player For a Ride; make sure you don't die before hearing 'Amphetamine' or 'Cinderella Backstreet.') Without him, Ubu cut their debut The Modern Dance; the pressing plant sent it back, puzzled at all the distortion. It kicked off with 'Non-Alignment Pact,' one of two songs Husker Du covered at their first gig (the other: Frankie Ford's 'Sea Cruise'), with gems like 'Street Waves,' 'Laughing,' and 'Over My Head.' Ignored in their homeland, it became massively influential in the U.K., always the band's biggest market. But their magnum opus was the 1978 Dub Housing, where Thomas shows off his collection of animal noises, grunts, yelps, screeches, up to his neck in industrial synth-and-guitar factory noise. For Ubu, rock & roll was 'Caligari's Mirror,' and Thomas made music by staring into that distorted mirror and making voices for all the misshapen selves he saw in there. He was never more lovable than in 'Navvy,' raving, 'I got these arms and legs, they flip-flop flip-flop,' over the band's manic slop-beat. In the chorus, he chants, 'Boy, that sounds swell!' Side Two is a joyfully fuzzed-out groove of ambient sludge, from 'Drinking Wine Spodyody' to '(Pa) Ubu Dance Party' to 'Blow Daddy-O,' until the desolate ballad 'Codex.' If you're dipping into the Ubu universe, that's the place to start. These records (and the back cover of Dub Housing) made Cleveland sound hugely romantic to outsiders, especially Europeans. 'A giant, blown-out factory town,' Thomas described it in the NME. 'There's the Flats with all this incredible industry, steel mills going flat out all day and all night, and it's just half a mile away from where all the people live. This gives them the feeling that there's no future for somebody here, and all the musicians seem to be in love with that fact.' Thomas was basically a graduate of the Captain Beefheart Charm School, never an easy man to get along with, as he made increasingly narrow music, broke up the band, made solo records. Ubu made a surprisingly strong return with their 1988 reunion The Tenement Year, a jovial mess that might be their warmest. They next made a string of odd synth-pop records like Cloudland with Pet Shop Boys producer Stephen Hague, proving mostly that writing pop songs is hard. But it was a relief when he went back to the mayhem of Raygun Suitcase (pick hit: 'My Friend Is A Stooge for the Media Priests'), Pennsylvania, and Lady from Shanghai. He did a musical adaptation of Ubu Roi with his 2009 Long Live Pere Ubu!, also playing the title character in the London theatrical production Bring Me the Head of Ubu Roi. As a cult hero, he inspired great tributes from Love Child's 'Crocus Says' to Manishevitz's 'Lonesome Cowboy Dave.' In 2003, Rocket from the Tombs staged a surprise reunion, including Television's Richard Lloyd, touring and hitting the studio for new songs on Barfly). In the 2000s, he gratified fans by playing The Modern Dance at festivals. But he remained a combative type, compulsively abrasive to promoters, audiences, or interviewers. 'I only do what I want,' he told the Village Voice in 2011. 'How many times do I have to say this? I don't need your approval or appreciation. I don't need anything you or an audience can give me. You and the audience give me nothing. I don't do anything for you or for the audience.' That Bartleby spirit came out on his Ubu Projex website, one of his greatest long-running creations, a site full of rules, regulations, and principles. 'Pere Ubu does not recognize swarm think.' 'Nearly every Pere Ubu song is funny in some way and meant to be funny.' 'David Thomas is in sole possession of the Nuclear Trigger.' 'Pere Ubu does not dabble in irony—it is the last refuge of the weak-willed and cowardly. We are no cowards.' 'When a member crosses the line they become poison in the system that must be purged.' 'The best guitar part is the one that requires you to move your fingers the least.' And perhaps most fundamentally, 'The most important sentence in any musician's vocabulary (quoted below in full): 'No.'' 'Pere Ubu will never end,' Thomas vowed in 2011. 'I am already grooming my replacement in the band. The plan is that he will be taking over in approximately five years, or sooner if he makes more rapid progress in terms of songwriting.' But he never did quit; he held on to Ubu down the line, with his noir farewell in 2019, The Long Goodbye, and the 2023 coda Trouble on Big Beat Street, with its tributes to the Carter Family and the Osmonds. 'I'd been listening to commercial pop radio non-stop for months,' he explained in his notes to The Long Goodbye. 'That's what I wanted to rewrite and reimagine. Pop music shouldn't be without meaning or truthfulness. We live in desperate towns and we keep on going regardless of the stench. It's not often you're gonna find the answers. If ever. But here is pop music the way it should sound.' Needless to say, it didn't sound a thing like commercial pop. Instead, it was the sonic stench of those desperate towns, where Thomas always felt at home. That was the music he heard in his head, and it's the music he spent his life making, right down to the end, always exploring that same heart of darkness. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Thomas, frontman of experimental rockers Pere Ubu, dead at 71
David Thomas, the live-wire frontman for experimental rockers Pere Ubu, has died. He was 71. The band posted news of Thomas' death on its official Facebook page, where the cause of death was given as "a long illness." Thomas "died in his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest stepdaughter by his side," the statement continued. "MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be 'thrown in the barn.'' Thomas, born in Miami, was a pivotal figure in Cleveland's experimental rock underground (a regional scene that would go on yield the Dead Boys, Devo and Nine Inch Nails). Thomas first came to prominence in the group Rocket From the Tombs, which, despite never recording an album, became an influential act locally in its brief tenure. Known for his near-falsetto high voice and contrarian fondness for professorial suits onstage, Thomas cut as distinct a figure onstage as his music did on record. Several Rocket From the Tombs members split off to form Pere Ubu — named after a play by French writer Alfred Jarry — in 1975. The band was wildly progressive for its era (and continues to sound bracing today), forgoing the sneering blasts of the simmering punk movement for arty dissonance, paired with ponderous rhythms, affection for B-movie soundtracks and Thomas' idiosyncratic, sung-spoken literary allusions and bruised poetry. The group's 1978 LP, "The Modern Dance," was a landmark of post-punk and new wave ambition that arrived just as punk itself crested in the U.S. While never a commercial success during its initial run from 1975 to 1982, Pere Ubu would inspire generations of experimental rockers and producers, and re-formed over the years with a revolving lineup around Thomas. The group recorded 19 studio albums, including its highly regarded 1978 LP, "Dub Housing," and 1979's "New Picnic Time," a stressful and abrasive record that helped inspire acts like Sonic Youth. Thomas' solo career included collaborations with singer-songwriter Richard Thompson and "Saturday Night Live" music producer Hal Willner. New Pere Ubu music may come posthumously. "David Thomas and his band have been recording a new album. He knew it was to be his last," Pere Ubu wrote on Facebook. "We will endeavour to continue with mixing and finalising the new album so that his last music is available to all. ... His autobiography was nearly completed and we will finish that for him. "We'll leave you with his own words, which sums up who he was better than we can," the band's statement continued. ''My name is David F— Thomas … and I'm the lead singer of the best f— rock n roll band in the world.'' Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
David Thomas, frontman of experimental rockers Pere Ubu, dead at 71
David Thomas, the live-wire frontman for experimental rockers Pere Ubu, has died. He was 71. The band posted news of Thomas' death on its official Facebook page, where the cause of death was given as 'a long illness.' Thomas 'died in his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest stepdaughter by his side,' the statement continued. 'MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be 'thrown in the barn.'' Thomas, born in Miami, was a pivotal figure in Cleveland's experimental rock underground (a scene that would go on yield the Dead Boys, Devo and Nine Inch Nails). Thomas first came to prominence in the group Rocket From the Tombs, which, despite never recording an album, became an influential act locally in its brief tenure. Known for his near-falsetto high voice and contrarian fondness for professorial suits onstage, Thomas cut as distinct a figure onstage as his music did on record. Several Rocket From the Tombs members split off to form Pere Ubu — named after a play by French writer Alfred Jarry — in 1975. The band was wildly progressive for its era (and continues to sound bracing today), forgoing the sneering blasts of the simmering punk movement for arty dissonance, paired with ponderous rhythms, affection for B-movie soundtracks and Thomas' idiosyncratic, sung-spoken literary allusions and bruised poetry. The group's 1978 LP, 'The Modern Dance,' was a landmark of post-punk and new wave ambition that arrived just as punk itself crested in the U.S. While never a commercial success during its initial run from 1975 to 1982, Pere Ubu would inspire generations of experimental rockers and producers, and re-formed over the years with a revolving lineup around Thomas. The group recorded 19 studio albums, including its highly regarded 1978 LP, 'Dub Housing,' and 1979's 'New Picnic Time,' a stressful and abrasive record that helped inspire acts like Sonic Youth. Thomas' solo career included collaborations with singer-songwriter Richard Thompson and 'Saturday Night Live' music producer Hal Willner. New Pere Ubu music may come posthumously. 'David Thomas and his band have been recording a new album. He knew it was to be his last,' Pere Ubu wrote on Facebook. 'We will endeavour to continue with mixing and finalising the new album so that his last music is available to all. ... His autobiography was nearly completed and we will finish that for him. 'We'll leave you with his own words, which sums up who he was better than we can,' the band's statement continued. ''My name is David F— Thomas … and I'm the lead singer of the best f— rock n roll band in the world.''
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
David Thomas, Frontman of Pere Ubu, Dead at 71
The post David Thomas, Frontman of Pere Ubu, Dead at 71 appeared first on Consequence. David Thomas, frontman of the influential bands Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs, died Wednesday (April 23rd) at age 71. The news was announced via Pere Ubu's Facebook page, which noted that Thomas passed away after a 'long illness.' Thomas formed Rocket From the Tombs in 1974 in Cleveland. Their first stint was short-lived, only lasting about a year, but they reunited in 2003 and remained active through 2017. Following the initial breakup of Rocket From the Tombs, Thomas formed Pere Ubu, while other members of Rocket From the Tombs went on to form Dead Boys. Pere Ubu were active until 1982, and then again from 1987 until Thomas' passing. The statement on Pere Ubu's Facebook page reads as follows: 'David Lynn Thomas, lead singer of Pere Ubu, Rocket From The Tombs and multiple solo projex, has died after a long illness. On Wednesday, April 23 2025, he died in his home town of Brighton & Hove, with his wife and youngest step-daughter by his side. MC5 were playing on the radio. He will ultimately be returned to his home, the farm in Pennsylvania, where he insisted he was to be 'thrown in the barn.' David Thomas and his band have been recording a new album. He knew it was to be his last. We will endeavour to continue with mixing and finalising the new album so that his last music is available to all. Aside from that, he left instruction that the work should continue to catalog all the tapes from live shows via the official bandcamp page. His autobiography was nearly completed and we will finish that for him. Pere Ubu's Patreon will continue as a community, run by communex. We'll leave you with his own words, which sums up who he was better than we can: 'My name is David Fucking Thomas… and I'm the lead singer of the best fucking rock n roll band in the world.' (Frigo Documentary) Long Live Pere Ubu.' Pere Ubu's combination of post-punk, art-rock, new wave, and even industrial music has had a long-lasting influence on acts like R.E.M., Sonic Youth, Pixies, Sisters of Mercy, and more. The band released its first album, The Modern Dance, in 1978, and has issued a total of 18 studio albums during the course of its career. As noted in Pere Ubu's statement above, Thomas and company were working on a final album that will see the light of day. Thomas remained the only constant member of Pere Ubu throughout the years, although current bassist Michele Temple and drummer Steve Mehlman have been in the band for roughly 30 years themselves. Rocket From the Tombs never released an album during their initial '70s run, but later released three LPs during their 21st century reunion, including 2004's Rocket Redux, which featured re-recordings of their '70s material. Our condolences go out to David Thomas' family, friends, and bandmates during this difficult time. Revisit his music with Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs below. Popular Posts deadmau5 Apologizes for Blacking Out During Coachella Set New Pornographers Drummer Joseph Seiders Charged with Child Pornography The 100 Best Guitarists of All Time Lady Gaga Battles Tech Issues at Coachella: "At Least You Know I Sing Live" Beyoncé's "COWBOY CARTER TOUR" Set to Kick Off with Thousands of Seats Unsold Keanu Reeves to Play Villain in Weezer Movie: Report Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Harnessing chaos and charm, Pere Ubu's David Thomas rewrote rock'n'roll
Rock journalism in the 1970s was never short on hyperbole, but when Jon Landau described seeing the young Bruce Springsteen as 'rock'n'roll future' – a line which subsequently became part of Springsteen mythology – the singer felt so 'suffocated' by the quote he tried to stop it being used and even reputedly tore down his own posters. However, some years later, when a similarly excitable Rolling Stone magazine declared that 'modern rock'n'roll reached its peak in 1978' with Pere Ubu's debut album The Modern Dance, the band's singer David Thomas took it as a challenge. 'I wasn't going to stop making music in 1978 just because everybody said 'they've ended rock'n'roll',' he insisted later. 'I had – I have – other things to say.' Thus, by the time of his death this week aged 71, he'd made a further 18 studio albums and dozens more live albums with Pere Ubu, plus many others as a solo artist with a myriad of backing bands. He performed in theatrical productions and delivered lectures. Another LP was apparently almost finished, along with an autobiography. He carried on performing even after technically dying twice and subsequently requiring kidney dialysis and a Zimmer frame. 'I'm sort of glad that I can't jump around any more because I don't have to worry about falling into the drums,' he gleefully insisted. 'All my concentration goes into singing.' Absurdly, given his gargantuan critical reputation, he once attributed his almost pathological desire to keep working to a feeling that 'artistically, my entire life is failure. I want to get it right'. In fact, had this son of a literary professor stopped at The Modern Dance, he would have already sealed his legacy as one of rock's great outsider innovator-pioneers. Thomas's infamously self-destructive first band, Rocket from the Tombs, were only together for a few months in Cleveland, Ohio between 1974 and 1975 yet created a prototype for punk cited as a major influence by Ramones, Devo and the Fall. Then, Pere Ubu's 'avant garage' – a turbulent mix of punk, garage, art rock, jazz, experimental noise and influences ranging from MC5 to Sun Ra – ushered in a no wave/postpunk sound and inspired bands including Joy Division, Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, REM and Pixies. Other fans ranged from Rebus writer Ian Rankin to Beach Boys lyricist Van Dyke Parks, who once introduced Thomas to Brian Wilson with the words: 'Meet the other genius'. On a mission to 'challenge the narrative' and 'rewrite the rules of musical production', Pere Ubu's groundbreaking early albums laid out Thomas's mission to take rock music into new areas, whether those areas welcomed it or not. A colossus of a man with a yelping, howling voice, in his earlier years he would career around the stage, leaving audiences open-mouthed. He put on 'Disastodromes' – festivals of noise acts promising 'confused, liberating disorder' – and even a rock adaptation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He was a fearless, vivid, literary lyricist, describing guitars as sounding 'like a nuclear destruction', and visions such as 'the stars on fire, the world in flames', as he insisted that rock could and should be 'smart'. Musicians who worked with him knew they had to be on their mettle. There would be freaky pre-gig monologues, or lyrics they'd hear for the first time when he sang them. Original Ubu keyboardist Allen Ravenstine described 'brutal' creative sessions, yet Thomas insisted that the 20 musicians he worked with in Ubu over the years would welcome further work together. His stature and fierce intellect could certainly make for an intimidating presence, but behind it all were a gleeful, childlike playfulness and thrilled fascination with the absurdities of human life. Once, in Manchester, he started a show with a hilarious monologue in which Bon Jovi and Madonna were reduced to playing Holiday Inns while Pere Ubu had a global No 1. When he mock-cantankerously forbade the audience to clap, they cheered him to the rafters. Although the band spent time on a major label, Thomas was one of the few great artists of his generation who never compromised his art to become popular, declaring: 'The only reason I would have liked to have been rich and famous is because I would have spent the money on even more outrageous projects.'
