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.