Look, look at the machine revolving,

Look, look at the brain flying,

Look, look at the Rentiers trembling!

Hurrah, arse-homs, long live Pere Ubu! —Alfred Jarry> "The Song of the Disembraining"

HEART OF DARKNESS

In CB lingo, Cleveland is the Dirty City, where sulfur dioxide permeates human pores. But for years, as a challenge to the city's concrete slab, Cleveland's underground music scene has been riding the street waves in tempo with the rhythms of industry. From this real world of toil and sweat, Pere Ubu has emerged, embodying the sounds and textures of Cleveland just as the Beach Boys did California and the Velvet Underground, New York City.

Pere Ubu believes in Cleveland as an inner sanctum. In fact, the band believes in its fair city so much that, when I spent a Sunday (4/22/79) with the Ubu gang at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., leader David Thomas (formerly Crocus Behemoth) talked as much about other local bands as he did his own. Certainly there's a sense of hometown pride in that, but there's also a great deal of humility, as if one can truly aspire only by humbly acknowledging all debts.

Unfortunately, after two albums (Dub Housing and The Modern Dance, now deleted) and a compilation of early singles (Datapanik In The Year Zero), Pere Ubu, possibly America's greatest living rock band, is practically ignored by record consumers and unpromoted by its own label (obtaining this. interview was no cinch). Since this band is capable of combining the Clash's intensity with the Ramones' gawkish gaiety, such negligence is especially aggravating. (E.g., Tony Maimone, the band's bassist, used to tell people he worked with cement rather than have to explain that he was employed by something called Pere Ubu.)

Pere Ubu surges against a society that asserts there is more sustenance in Fritosthan in art; yet at the same time, they dare anyone to label their music as art, playing rock 'n ' roll, extending it, not through free-form experimentation but through uncompromising rebellion (perhaps in remembrance of their namesake's author, who scorned conventions so completely that he died asking for a toothpick).

Ubu music does not explore the contrivances of the dreadful progressive rock (Ubu's motto: "Don't expect art"). Even on their first single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo/Heart of Darkness" (along with the Styrene Jazz Band's "Drano In Your Veins," Ohio's earliest "new wave" venture), Pere Ubu fractured the linear mind "like an updated Shadows of Knight covering a Black Sabbath song" (Back Door Man, #6).

"The windows reverberate! The walls have ears! A thousand saxophone voices call!"—these words issue forth from Dub Housing, Ubu's most recent work, in a pure uncluttered string of exclamations. Half of Dub sounds like an Electronic U-Roy Freak-Out on Three Mile Island, creating hypnotic waves of bliss.

Foreseeably, this band could disorient itself into oblivion. During Ubu's D.C. visitation, I heard cassettes of two new songs that are even more futuristic, and shattered, than Dub—"New Picnic Time" (like imprisonment within a huge aviary) and "The Book Is On The Table" (like an instructional record in French playing jn the silent aftermath of nuclear holocaust).

To solve the riddle of this apparently limitless band, one Sunday afternoon I descended with Ubu intp the dank dungeon of Georgetown U., a Jesuit school of unwed gimps. David "Crocus" Thomas assured me that the interview would be "a rare treat," since four of the band's five members would be present. Indeed, with the exception of synthesizer maestro Allen Ravenstine, the following were in attendance, answering all questions with prompt enthusiasm— vocalist David Thomas, guitarist Tom Herman, bassist Tony Maimone, and drummer Scott Krauss.

UBU COMMUNEX

CREEM: I realize you've probably told it hundreds of times, but please begin with a brief history of the band.

David Thomas: Like what? In the beginning . . . CREEM: . . . was the Word. Nah, like around Rocket from the Tombs.

DT: That's not relevant. The band first got together in September '75, and as it is, three of us in this room are the only survivors. We went to Tokyo in September and then we started playing out. Tony came in July '76. Once the band had broken up, but Max's was going to pay for another recording so we did "Modem Dance," what's known as "Untitled" on Datapanik. Then it turned out that Max's didn't want it. Peter Laughner and Dave Taylor left the band, and it has been essentially the same since.

CREEM: Does Pere Ubu directly influence other Cleveland bands, like the Wild Giraffes or Human Switchboard?

DT: There's better Cleveland bands than those. CREEM: Like uiho?

DT: Styrene Money, Ex-Blank-Ex. 15-60-75, or the Number's Band, is a real intense band from Kent with an intense lead singer. He's the only singer that's really affected me.

Scott Krauss: They're the best band in the whole area; they're trying to get a recording contract, get to Europe, where there's much more open attitude about music.

CREEM: Do you feel there's some link between Cleveland and Europe?

Tom Herman: No, there's some link between us and Europe.

CREEM: What's that?

DT: They like us over there. (laughter)

CREEM: What makes you think nobody likes you over here?

DT: I know we have fans in America; it's just that America is rotten.

CREEM: Cleveland's in America.

DT: In Cleveland, we can't even draw more than two hundred people!

SK: Clevelanders think we're some kind of threat to the concept of good music.

DT: Definitely the media thinks so because they totally ignore us.

TH: Plus it's the hometown jinx—yeah, I went to high school with that asshole, he can't be any good.

DT: Even the Raspberries were never accepted in Cleveland, ever. Except maybe towards the end when they were already down the tubes. CREEM: Were any bands, like the Outsiders, ever accepted in Cleveland that were from there? DT: The Outsiders didn't even do that well locally. I talk to Tom King every so often.

SK: One reason that Cleveland doesn't support its local bands is that it's such a small city everybody knows everybody else.

CREEM: I'm still confused by why you don't feel that you are appreciated in your own country? DT: I know we're appreciated, but in Europe we know that we're appreciated. We are now living on the money we make in Europe, not on the money we make in America.

CREEM: Over here you probably feel you're a cult band.

DT: Well, I suppose we're a cult band over there, too.

SK: In America, you have a hit record. In Europe, a thousand-zillion bands tour up and down the country.

DT: And the media is into new things. In America though, it's Fleetwood Mac every week on the cover of everything. Europeans don't have a lot of money to blow, so spending it on music is a more precious thing. Scott and I know, having worked in record stores.

SK: Here, it's all an illusion, a delusion.

TH: In Europe, people are more conditioned to participate. So when they like you, everybody is on their feet. But when they like you in this country, it's gee-we'll-watch-you-on-TV.

SK: Take the Sex Pistols and the Clash. What bands do we have like that here? The closest thing was Patti Smith and Television, as far as being actually vanguard and moving ahead. CREEM: Are those the type of bands that you identify with?

In unison: No, no!

CREEM: Ok, what?

Tony Maimone: How about the sun, the moon, and the stars?

CREEMSorry, wrong word. I mean, what do you listen to?

TH: Everything, not too much of anything.

DT: That's not a glib answer. It's really impossible to say. Whatever somebody has felt is my only criteria.

TM: John Cage, Gershwin. They're all in there somewhere.

SK: The kitchen sink . . . drip, drip, drip.

TH: We're more influenced by each other and the people we know and what happens to us. DT: We am what we seem.

CREEM: Do all of you live in the same neighborhood?

TH: We can get to each other's houses in twenty minutes.

TM: Allen, Scott, and I live in the same building downtown. [NOTE: The front cover of Dub Housing is a photo of the side of this building, 3206 Prospect Ave. The back cover is a view from the roof looking towards the lake.] CREEM: Do you have families?

DT: I'm getting married.

TURN TO PAGE 62

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 23

CREEM: When's the happy event?

SK: Are you going to invite Robot to the reception? (Much laughter and puking noises.) DT: No, private affair. Fortunately ! don't have any firiends.

CREEjM: What do you guys watch on TV?

TM: The Dating Game.

DT: Mark & Mindy and Lavernq & Shirley.

TH: WKRP In Cincinnati is cool sometimes.

DT: 1 don't consider myself a TV addict, but I guess that's the same as any junkie would say. TV is only good to keep track of what they're trying to sell and to see how far society has degenerated. CREEM: What are your opinions of other Ohio bands?

DT: I like Styrene Money. Boy, that's about it. TM: There're a few decent Jamaican bands in town.

ST: Most underground bands have either broken up or moved to New York.

CREEM: Are you going to groan if I mention the Akron coalition?

DT: What about them? Chi Pig's Ok. We all know them and like them.

TH: 1 like Devo the best. And Rachel Sweet. SK: It's dangerous for us to comment too much. Then all the bands will take swipes at Pere Ubu. If the media would just support anybody . . . like Christgau came down and wrote a big article about the area for the Voice. It's amazing nothing gets going.

DT: If you're talking about the Ohio bands . . . Pere Ubu, Devo, 15-60-75 are all equally superb at what they do.

(A brief discussion follows re the excellence of the Number's Band, which has recorded a privatelypressed LP, Jimmy Bell's Still In Town. Crocus: "I like to describe them as the Velvet Underground if they'd been a blues band instead of a folk band.")

CREEM: If Cleveland's so crummy, what do you like about it?

DT: There's an underground where everything travels by word of mouth.

TH: Daily living has energy in it.

TM: Cleveland's streets are relatively wild, a really charged atmosphere. There aren't too many police around so you have to be on your toes. If you see a cop in Cleveland, it's just good to see him around.

TH: If you want to take the responsibility for your own life, it's a great place. But the government doesn't worry about people.

CREEM: I've seen Mayor Dennis Kucinich several times on Tom Snyder.

DT: Did you hear that the Head of the Education Board got arrested for mooning?

TH: They've all got their hands in each others' pockets scratching their little pinheads. But Cleveland is quite scenic, especially the industrial area, where you can disappear and regenerate. CREEM: I always hear that in your music, like I'm being transported into downtown Cleveland. TM: There are these private roads in the Flats which is this valley where all the steel industry is, and we know our way around them. We drive around and take pictures and make tapes and drink and . . .

SK: Lay on the railroad tracks.

DT: All the neat stuff, like the parks, was built when the city was rich. But it's decaying now and falling apart. Euclid Avenue used to be called Millionaire's Row, with incredible mansions. CREEM: On a song like ''Sentimental Journey," you seem to create the sensation of inertia or lethargy.

DT: That's like getting into deep, poetic, artistic stuff. I don't feel lethargic. I'm fairly active; I just don't go out.

CREEM: Ubu's music is often compared to psychedelic rock, circa-'67 underground music, say, by the Grateful Dead, in which there was an attempt to expand consciousness. Is Pere Ubu rooted in this genre, and do you think you're a contemporary psych-out band?

DT: Maybe if you considered the Velvet Underground psychedelic . . .

TH: 1 liked "White Rabbit."

DT: Thanks, you just cut our throats. (Lotsa laughter.)

TM: Let's see, now in '671 was fifteen . . . no, the whole psychedelic movement was happening out there.

DT: It never happened in the Midwest.

TM: In Cleveland, everything was scarce. You couldn't get acid. We were mostly just into drinking in those days. And driving cars.

TH: I was from Jesus Country in Pennsylvania. Folks there didn't even want to play the Beatles because their haircuts were too weird.

DT: I was a serious scientist-minded student. That's a long time ago, though . . . '67. CREEM: So how old are you now?

DT: We're no spring chickens. I'm 25, Tony's 26, Scott's 27, and Tom's 30.

TH: We expand the boundaries of music, not anybody's consciousness.

DT: Obviously it's quite evident from our music that we try to do more than what's normal. It's the expression of brain-to-brain communication, cutting out as much of the in-between stuff as you can manage. As far as being psychedelic, that's such a lousy word. That was so long ago . . . CREEM: Then Jarry, surrealism, and dadaism were high school fascinations?

DT: Most kids in high school get into that, and that's probably where it should remain. I went through my artsy-fartsy stage; I'm not ashamed to admit it. But I'm not sure what dada has to do with the band.

SK: About as much as psychedelia.

CREEM: Well, what does have to do with the band?

DT: Weam whatweseem. I told you that before. CREEM: Right, it's like you're constantly experimenting within the confines of rock, stretching all limitations.

DT: We try. It's the only way we can stay together, because each member is so different and the whole mixture is so volatile.

CREEM: So what new material is in the works? TH: The next album will be as similar to Dub Housing as that was to Modern Dance as that was to "30 Seconds." It's all Pere Ubu but we're not repeating ourselves.

DT: Hopefully it will be another progression. CREEM: It's a shame you guys feel you don't get enough American press.

SK: Well, how many articles have we had in CREEM?

DT: We had Datapanik reviewed, and we had Modem Dance reviewed by some clown who called it "peephead music." Whatever that means.

SK: He was talking about a parallel between the hallucinogenic qualities of PCP and our music, which he must have thought was like SHOOOWEEOOOH.

TM: Oh, PCP ... a purpie . . . with a pulsing headache.

CREEM: That's like linking your music with acid. DT: Nah, it's like sniffing glue.

SK: I think PCP causes your head to degenerate instead of bringing it enlightenment.

TH: Cleveland's a city for toluene.

TM: Kids band together and break into a place; later, they're found twenty yards away, passed out in their cars with gallon cans of toluene and rags around their noses.

DT: Did you hear about the two kids who killed their father because he, quote, wouldn't let them do what they wanted to do, unquote? So they paid some kid sixty bucks to have him killed.

SK: The kid shot the father in the head and left the body in the house for nine days!

TH: Then his kids took his credit cards and went on a shopping spree.

DT: Because he wouldn't let them do what they wanted to do. It made Newsweek.

SK: Then there's the kids who threw this girl off the top of a building, twice, because she didn't die the first time.

TM: We always end up telling Cleveland horror stories. In England one night, we came back from a gig all wired and started talking about Cleveland. We gave our sound crew nightmares. CREEM: Do you think we're headed towards the nightmare of annihilation?

DT: Cleveland's totally out of control, way ahead of the rest of America.

TH: It's as if someone had written an absurd script like for the movie Wackiest Ship In The Army. SK: We live downtown a block from the war zone. Our street hasn't had any lights for a year. It's the main hooker street. Gun fights on the street. Right next door is a plasma donor center. TM: People from the projects come there to lie around and drink wine, to give blood, and to throw their bottles in our driveway.

CREEM: Is there any local back stabbing like between artists and punks in New York?

SK: Everybody's already been stabbed too many times.

DT: There's no point. There's nowhere left to stab. There are intrigues and scandals, and gossip gets around . . .

SK: Like Crocus is getting married.

DT: It's like being married. You don't have any choice. You're going to live together so you may as well do it on the best terms.

CREEM: Where do you guys hang out?

TM: I like classical music. There are always orchestra performances, recitals, films, museums. That's where I prefer to go.

DT: None of us go to bars. I used to be a bouncer at a bar. Even if we wanted to, there's absolutely no place now to hang out.

CREEM: David, I've seen pictures of you with a beard, and you looked more imposing, scarier. DT: Yeah, that was back in the scary days. I even used to wear green shoes then.

CREEM: Why did you change your name from Crocus Behemoth?

DT: I didn't change it. It was a pen name. Oh, I don't know.

SK: But why did you change it?

DT: Because we were going to make our first album, and I didn't want to get stuck with that name for the rest of my life! So it was either get out or forever hold my peace.

CREEM: That was a smart move.

DT: Well, Robot Hull is not bad. I think that's a pretty good name.

☆ ☆ ☆

(PA) UBU DANCE PARTY Pere Ubu's performance befell just after sunset at a small gathering of the faithful assembled inside a gorgeous religious sanctuary on Georgetown U.'s campus. Thundering over the bureaucratic pettiness that is D.C., the music no longer sounded like the industrial noise of factory insects but more like the discordant hubbub of human beings wrestling with survival.

Bebw the Christian symbol IHS, David Thomas, his hands clasped like a choirboy's, dominated the stage, an altar for worship. "Look at these arms! And learn to flip! Flop! Flip! Flop!" whooped the Behemoth, tossing his head uncontrollably as if bees were buzzing through his skull. Occasionally he would stop in mid-chant, curse, and put an invisible hex on the audience. Next, he'd struggle with specters, point to the ceiling painted with angels, and mutter— "There's a dark cloud overhead." Then saluting, the jumbo creature suddenly would become a grinning Pagliacci, saying "What, me worry?" and singing "Caligari's Mirror," a forgotten sailor's chanty.

If at times David Thomas.intentionally came across like the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull, the band managed to complement his comic moves by maneuvering musically around his manure. Although pages could be written in praise of Herman's Seeds-like riffs and smooth slide work, Ravenstfne's deranged synthesized effects, Maimone's reserved piano and bass, and Krauss's random punctuation, it is Pere Ubu's ability to walk the fine line between solemnity and mock-seriousness that makes them unique. To claim that Alfred Jarry, dodo extraordinaire, is their mentor would be superficial, but certainly they share Jarry's maxim that the absurd exercises the mind. When Thomas unloaded a case full of hammers and began striking hammeron-metal in time with the Ubu spell, I chuckled; but when he started "playing" a hammer solo, I was guffawing in the aisles.

Before the concert, L had asked Tony Maimone if he thought Ubu could create a transcendental aura over the nation's capital that evening since the band was performing in a holy setting. Because he knew I was only kidding, Tony just shook his head and snorted.

But after the concert ("Out! In the! Real! World!"), I soon realized there had been an edge of cynicism behind Tony's snort. Outside^in the darkness and the spring air, the band members were talking about getting some sleep when a car stuffed with dorkish students ("Daddy pays the rent") pulled up to the Curb. One of its creepy inhabitants shouted at the chatting Ubus— "Whatsa pair o' ooboo? Is that anything like the Grateful Dead?!" To which one member of Pere Ubu resignedly replied—"We're grateful, but we're not dead."

In George A. Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, humanity must confront an apocalyptic world of disembowelment and dismemberment. In John Irving's novel, The World According to Garp, we are all terminal cases, maimed and mutilated throughout our lives.

But in the world according to Pere Ubu, we survive through disembraining, cutting out all the inbetween stuff and concerning ourselves, not with factories, but with the human flesh.

BLOWDADDY-O! ^