Pere Ubu

 “Avant-garage” Rock with a Rust Belt Sheen

William Sundwick

Cleveland has produced more than the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. Emerging in the 1970s, beneath the radar of its pop music mainstream, was an avant-garde, experimental music scene, epitomized by David Thomas and Pere Ubu.

Starting as a music critic, Thomas decided to try his hand at producing the music he wrote about when he formed the band Rocket from the Tombs in 1974. It didn’t last long, but its members liked the project. Both Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner decided to join up with four other Cleveland area friends to start a new project in 1975. It’s not clear why they chose the name “Pere Ubu” for the new band – after the main character in the avant garde play by Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi. Jarry’s 1896 play is pre-dada, and was received by a skeptical audience who considered it to be childish, like a nursery rhyme trying to pass itself off as meaningful. Indeed, some reviewers have made similar comments about the music of Pere Ubu!

I disagree. The band has coined the term “avant-garage” to describe its style. Thomas says it is a joke, intended to fool journalists who are looking for a sound bite, a “genre” in which to place Pere Ubu. They began with a style clearly in the garage rock mold – but, over time, evolved into a much more openly experimental, or avant-garde, sound. They are still performing, with many personnel changes, 44 years later. They’re still in Cleveland, an archetypal midwestern Rust Belt city. It shows in their music. David Thomas is there, as always (except for a hiatus in the ‘80s, when he went solo, and the band disappeared for a while).

Thomas’ distinctive vocal style, a screechy, anxious, dreamily disconnected-from-reality muttering, is nothing, if not avant-garde. In addition, the varied instrumental back-ups have included EML synthesizer and theremin through the years, especially since the ‘90s. This is experimental rock, not mainstream – critics have called it both “art punk” and “post punk.” Pere Ubu’s style was influenced by French musique concrete of the ‘40s and ‘50s, where pre-recorded non-musical sounds are incorporated into a larger musical tapestry. Pere Ubu uses this technique with synthesizer and theremin to create backdrops like science fiction B-film soundtracks from the 1950s.

The evolution of Pere Ubu’s style can be illustrated with seven examples. Their first singles sound much like “Final Solution” – strictly garage rock. Its lyrics relate adolescent anxiety about social mal-adroitness and raging hormones. “D-d-don’t need a cure” … “need a final solution!” But the EML synthesizer, played in those early days by Allen Ravenstine, is clearly there.

The band’s first studio album was released in 1978, The Modern Dance. It greatly expands the themes of the first singles. David Thomas practices his distinctive vocals. “Nonalignment Pact” is lighter than some tracks on the album, and still sounds like garage rock of the post-punk years. “At night I can see the stars on fire/I can see the world in flames/And it’s all because of you/Or your thousand other names” followed by a long list of women’s names, then the chorus, “It’s all because of you/It’s all because of you girl!” “Sign my nonalignment pact/Nonalignment pact/It’s my Nonalignment pact.” All played to bouncy dance music. “Street Waves” develops Thomas’ screechy voice, with lyrics that evoke a kind of “dance anxiety” – the obvious thrill from the electronic music (synthesizer in full gear), tempered by insecurity about the nature of any liaisons made in a supercharged urban environment.

Still on that first album, “Humor Me” strikes a different tone. It may be a precursor of things to come. It’s a vocal protest of the garage rock origins of the band, while carrying over many of the backup band signatures – synthesizer, drums, guitar chords. But the lyrics tell a story of social alienation and sexual frustration in a very different way. The chorus is a plaintive reggae chant, “It’s a joke, mon!” – as if the real anxiety felt by the singer is merely a joke to the rest of the world. Perhaps a truer insight into Pere Ubu’s soul than their earlier work?

By the mid-90s, Pere Ubu had been through a dissolution, deaths of several early band members, David Thomas launching a solo career, then re-uniting the band with different personnel. In 1995, they released Ray Gun Suitcase, which explores new musical themes with a noticeable swing to experimental sound –  tracks with theremin, played by Robert Wheeler, recalling those old B-films. “Folly of Youth” captures the spirit well, especially with its YouTube video. It wants to be a “suitcase” and “hang around inside your Greyhound terminal.” Alienation comes up again in “My Friend Is a Stooge,” with a shout out to T.S. Eliot and “Hollow Men.” It also touches the role of mass media in society, “My friend is a stooge for the media priests. He does the weather map for Channel 3.” He may even be a dog, since he “Stares at the rug if I leave him alone. Lays around the house in misery. He toes the line for the company.”

The album closes with a track which is downright depressing. “Down by the River II” uses some new devices, like electric cello, to create a melancholy sound – is everything hopeless? “The house on fire. The treaty broken. I call for the law. The law’s a token.” Then, “Trip is the worst. I don’t mean maybe. I call for the captain. She cries like a baby. As bad as it gets, it’s gotten worse. I want to run. I had to learn to crawl first.”

But it’s not the end. Pere Ubu goes on. The final verse in “Down by the River II” leaves us suspended in time, “Bye-bye. Bye-bye, baby, my friend. It’s time to leave and I don’t know when.”

Great opinion piece from Slate -- follow-up to "2020 Campaign Notes" -- Joe Biden, the counter-intuitive candidate?

All Dem presidential candidates sorted by three strategies? a) unity (Biden's bi-partisan "epiphany"; b) revolution (Bernie's political mass movement); c) change the system (Warren's anti-corruption measures, seriously almost more left than Bernie!)

2020 Campaign Notes

Warp & Woof Has Opinions

William Sundwick

Twenty-two candidates and counting*. That’s where we stand with Democratic presidential contenders for 2020. The first Democratic debate will occur late next month, and the bar for inclusion on the debate floor is low: either a 1% showing in three different authorized polls or 65,000 unique donors spread over 20 or more states. As of May 9, 18 of the 22 declared candidates had met one or the other of these easy requirements. There will be two nights, with each candidate assigned randomly to one. That means the leading candidates may not even be on the stage together in Miami.

So, what are we voters to make of this field? Do we know enough to distinguish platitudes from real policy proposals? Does it even matter? Perhaps the best way to choose in the primary is that “gut feeling” about the candidate that policy wonks despise.

It seems clear that not all 22 of the contenders really think they could become the 46^th President of the United States. Reasonable guesses about their motivations for running include advancement of their respective political (or financial) careers, or possibly a cabinet post in the administration of whichever one of them wins. We will see maneuvering as the campaign season progresses, with lower-ranking aspirants dropping out and throwing their support to one of the leaders, hoping for whatever rewards this may provide. It might be fun here to speculate on where the candidates fit on the political spectrum.

As it looks now, trying to accommodate both their backgrounds and publicly announced policy positions, a rough sorting of leading candidates – from left to right – might look something like this:

Sanders à Warren à Booker/Williamson à Harris à Buttigieg/Castro à O’Rourke/Gabbard à Inslee à Gillibrand à Klobuchar à Bennet/Hickenlooper à Biden/Delaney

Only 16 names appear in the schema above. Among the others:

•           Andrew Yang has made a splash with a fervent defense of UBI (Universal Basic Income, a set amount of money payed out to every citizen, no work requirement, via monthly check),
•          Mike Gravel (88-year-old former Senator) has a campaign run by two teenagers based on dismantling U.S. imperialism,
•          Tim Ryan and Seth Moulton (two Congressmen who opposed Nancy Pelosi for Speaker),   

•       E ric Swalwell (another Congressman who is trying to capitalize on his cozy relationship with MSNBC hosts, and focus on gun control),
•           Wayne Messam (mayor of Miramar, Florida – a bigger city than South Bend – and he’s African-American).

All of these are probably best seen as quirky opportunists, devoid of a solid place in the left-right spectrum.

Without going into nitpicking about how I came up with my idealized spectrum, it’s worth noting that none of the major candidates, except perhaps the two front runners, Sanders and Biden, see any advantage in clearly articulating where they see themselves on this spectrum. Bernie is happy to be the darling of the Left. Biden is happy to anchor his support among older “moderates.” They both believe that victory in November 2020 will belong to whomever can capture that respective territory. The rest aren’t so sure, so they appear to shift ground from speech to speech, interview to interview. That makes it difficult to place them on a spectrum.

Nobody knows the most “electable” posture for a candidate – it may not even be related to any policy positions. It may come down to who they are, not what they propose. It seems supporters of one candidate or another will be totally convinced that THEIR candidate is MOST electable. Polls show a range of results for one-on-one matchups against Trump, but they tend to defy easy analysis. Most major candidates can probably beat Trump. If there is a bias toward beauty vs. age, that certainly doesn’t explain Sanders and Biden sitting on top of those polls. Youngsters Buttigieg and O’Rourke do relatively well, but they’re not at the top. Gabbard has gone nowhere.

A presidential landslide would be good. That is what’s needed to retake the Senate. More Republican incumbents this time will be facing re-election contests (22), fewer Democrats (12). Unfortunately, most of those Republican Senators have well-established constituencies, difficult to break unless an extremely strong top-of-ticket Democrat is nominated in Milwaukee. Mitch McConnell is up for re-election in 2020, and could be defeated even if the Senate doesn’t flip.

Should impeachment be on the table before the election? Speaker Pelosi, as of now, is reluctant to embrace it. Yet, some presidential candidates are endorsing it (Warren, Castro, Harris, Moulton). Of course, the presidential candidates saying they support impeachment means it’s not an issue if they win! Perhaps that’s why it’s easy for them to support it, but hard for the current Speaker of the House.

Warp & Woof has opinions on the election campaign. Rule number one: don’t worry about labels. Republicans will call any and all Democratic policy proposals “socialist” – Bernie’s embrace of the “Democratic Socialist” label means nothing to voters, unless they plan on voting Republican anyway. And, his supporters need only point to real leftist commentators who dispute that he even is a true-blue Democratic Socialist (more a social democrat, in the European mold). But, if your middle class, or upper middle class, sensibilities cause you to feel funny about a socialist label, there is always Elizabeth Warren, who has virtually indistinguishable policy proposals from Bernie (even more radical, in some cases), but claims, like FDR, to be “saving capitalism.”

Moving rightward along the idealized political spectrum above gets you nothing except hedging your bets on what focus you want. It’s more a matter of style than substance. Jay Inslee, for instance, is the “climate” candidate, but his detailed climate plan* differs little from Beto’s, introduced a few days earlier. Booker is the “cities” candidate, but we all know that the American economy relies on more than urban production -- if there’s more money concentrated in cities it’s because that’s where the capitalists are. Gillibrand wants to be the “women’s” candidate, but half of us are men. Pete is very slick – but who is his base? (If well-educated LGBTQ folks, fine, but how many of them are there?)

Warp & Woof thinks it’s obvious that going all the way to the right, for Uncle Joe, would be tantamount to an abject surrender to Republicans – even if he wins. He didn’t represent the best of the Obama years, but was likely a “balance” V.P. candidate.

*latest news, since drafting this post, Montana governor Steve Bullock and New York mayor Bill De Blasio have announced (#23 and #24, respectively). Neither of them has earned a place in my spectrum yet. And, Jay Inslee has revealed a second climate plan, more comprehensive than the first, falling just shy of where the Ocasio-Cortez/Markey Green New Deal landed in February.