{"id":687,"date":"2013-09-12T18:53:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T18:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/?p=687"},"modified":"2013-09-12T18:53:50","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T18:53:50","slug":"stand-still-an-interview-with-pere-ubus-david-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/out-of-bounds\/687\/stand-still-an-interview-with-pere-ubus-david-thomas","title":{"rendered":"“Stand Still” — an interview with Pere Ubu’s David Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ubu_ica4\"<\/a>The first time I encountered David Thomas was at a club called Rahar\u2019s in Northhampton, Mass. in 1978.\u00a0 When he took what passed for the stage there wearing a black suit and narrow-brimmed hat, he looked to me like a larger-than-life preacher come to scream out a sermon to the assembled Saturday night faithful.\u00a0 What proceeded to come out of Thomas\u2019s mouth and the PA system, though, was anything but liturgy\u2014or if it was, it was a liturgy of sounds and ideas the likes of which my young, preppy ears had never encountered before. Today, Pere Ubu\u2019s remarkable frontman more closely resembles Walter Brennan than a frothing holy roller, but the passion he puts into his music and his shows has not diminished.<\/p>\n

Pere Ubu was born from the ashes of another Cleveland band, Rocket from the Tombs, in 1975. The band\u2019s first album, The Modern Dance<\/i>, introduced a form of rock music that was unprecedented at the time and remains uniquely theirs. That album, and subsequent mind-blowers like Dub Housing<\/i>, New Picnic Time<\/i>, Worlds in Collision,<\/i> and its most recent release Lady from Shanghai<\/i>, represent an unlikely artistic journey that has now, almost 40 years later, brought Thomas and today\u2019s version of the band back to New England for two shows this weekend: Friday night at the Fete Lounge<\/a> in Providence and Saturday night at The Brighton Music Hall<\/a> in Boston.<\/p>\n

If you want to see the best American rock band that ever took a stage, you\u2019ll be there. A word of warning, though: my definition of what constitutes a rock band may be markedly different from yours.<\/p>\n

Pere Ubu\u2019s music is characterized by a solid beat, with layers of synthesizers, guitars, bass, other forms of percussion, an odd clarinet or bassoon or theremin\u2014and Thomas\u2019s tortured-canary vocals\u2014layered over it. What it is not characterized by is any kind of reverence for the traditional notions of melody and harmony that have enslaved so much of the rock music world during its glacial progress toward the new<\/i>. You might mistakenly describe Ubu music as \u201cexperimental.\u201d It\u2019s not. It has one foot solidly in the roots of rock n\u2019 roll\u2014Brian Wilson, Roy Orbison, Elvis\u2014and the other in a place that your feet can\u2019t reach but this band\u2019s can. Ubu rocks as only Ubu can. But its music does much more than get toes tapping. It gets synapses firing.<\/p>\n

\"pere-ubu-a8a58c41560705fe4d7401b0ce9dfbbce6cc1dd3-s6-c30\"<\/a>One aspect of Pere Ubu\u2019s music that has always intrigued me is the sleight-of-hand with which it combines a vocal celebration of bedrock American culture, a folk-rock look-back at a life and a land that it overtly mourns the passing of, with a musical style that flat-out refuses to pay homage to anything but itself. Ubu songs may eulogize things like the bulldozing of barbecue joints to make way for parking lots, but they do so in a way that is not at all retrospective; musically, the band has always been riding a train that moves in one direction and one direction only. Forward.<\/p>\n

As an Ubu fan and someone who enjoys writing about music, I approached this interview with no small amount of trepidation. Even when he was younger and cared to some degree what the world thought of Pere Ubu and its music, he still routinely chewed up interviewers and spit them out when they asked the wrong questions. Today, in his 60\u2019s, Thomas is even less interested in suffering fools.\u00a0 As he says on the Ubu Projex <\/a>website:<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m an old man facing the end of his life. I can’t be bothered with crap any more. I’ll talk at length, be entertaining, be insightful\u2014all of it\u2014but don’t approach me like I’m a fluffy pop wannabe… and don’t make me do all the work. Forty years ago I too was a music journalist. I know the game. Bottom line: I have expressed my thoughts on the subject. I trust you to make the needful decisions on how to deploy my time and talent.”<\/p>\n

In the end, I shouldn\u2019t have been worried.\u00a0 During the interview, Thomas willingly and thoughtfully talked about his approach to music making\u2014though his characteristic impatience was certainly on display, and the fact that the band had just rolled into New York City to play the 7th<\/sup> of 17 straight nights may not have made for the smoothest of interview situations. But as always, Thomas delivered. He talked about the extreme nature of the musicians who comprised the small rock music scene where he got his start in Cleveland. The balance between horror and humor in the band\u2019s music. The way people inhabit their own personal ghost towns. How the job of the singer is to manipulate sound and space. The band\u2019s God\u2019s-eye perspective. And how \u201cStand Still\u201d just might just be the ultimate answer to everything.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what he had to say.\u00a0 Check it out.\u00a0 And then go out and buy a ticket to one of this weekend\u2019s shows.<\/p>\n

To hear this interview, click here<\/span><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Please give it a little time to download, it’s a large file full of large thoughts from a formerly large man.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I encountered David Thomas was at a club called Rahar\u2019s in Northhampton, Mass. in 1978.\u00a0 When he… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1479],"tags":[935836,938742,936009,938909,936218,936527,936780,937179,937310,937584,937852,938117,935664,938460],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-out-of-bounds","tag-pere-ubu","tag-the-fete-lounge","tag-rocket-from-the-tombs","tag-brighton-music-hall","tag-mirrors","tag-electric-eels","tag-dave-e-and-the-cool-marriage-counselors","tag-mission-of-burma","tag-miracle-legion","tag-the-modern-dance","tag-new-picnic-time","tag-dub-housing","tag-david-thomas","tag-lady-from-shanghai"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2013\/09\/ubu_ica4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":693,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/daviddesmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}