I can’t hear Pere Ubu’s “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo”—a title the band filched from Cap. Ted W. Lawson’s book about the daring 1942 Doolittle bombing raid of Japan’s capital—without being projected back in time to 6th grade, when our evil English teacher assigned each student to enact a scene from their favorite book.
Being a sick little mother, I chose the leg amputation scene from 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, and spent my entire time in front of the class seated in a chair, screaming in horrendous pain. I thought it was a nice evocation of the scene, if not a wonderful example of Alfred Jarry—from whose notorious play Pere Ubu took its name—and his theater of the absurd. My English teacher, on the other hand, considered sending me for psychiatric counsel.
That said, I think Pere Ubu singer David Thomas would have liked it, because he is weird, weird, weird. Pere Ubu, with its angular riffs, musique concrete, and industrial noise, made the East Coat punk scene seem tame, and their charms are on very raw display on The Shape of Things, the copy of a “bootleg” cassette recorded on April 7, 1976 at the Mistake in Cleveland—Pere Ubu’s hometown—before talented guitarist, rock journo, and Lester Bangs’ acolyte Peter Laughner managed the almost impossible feat of dying from acute pancreatitis at age 24.
The first and most important thing that needs to be said about The Shape of Things is that the sound quality is abysmal. But what the album loses in sound quality it gains in that “I was there” feeling. This is live rock, warts and all, and what makes it most interesting is Pere Ubu’s mixing of their own songs with other people’s gems. The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard,” “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” and “Heroin” all get their turns, and some of the band’s own songs are so young they haven’t even gotten their final titles yet. There’s also a lot of chatter between tunes, which can get annoying. Nothing against the rock fans of Cleveland, but they’re not very good chatterers.
Opener “Heart of Darkness” takes its good old time starting, but once it does you’ll be drawn in by the great melody, Thomas’ unique (to say the least) vocals, and the great guitars, which were manned alternately by Laughner, Tom Herman, and Tim Wright, all of whom switched instruments and also played bass at one time or another. Thomas sounds like he has a lot on his mind, and wants you to know it, while the guitar thrash and gnarl is both intimidating and of a very high quality. The song descends into near chaos, with multiple voices shouting and ranting, and then come the big power chords, the ones that make these guys the Who of Cleveland. “Cloud 149” also takes a while to start, too long in fact, and while somebody in the audience speaks French the band breaks into a syncopated lightweight sing-song tune dominated by Dave Taylor’s Ace Tone organ. Soon enough the guitars come in, while Thomas moans and ululates, and the melody, which I didn’t like at first, finally catches up with you.
“Gone Gone Gone”—later to become “Street Waves”—follows, a savage guitar riff over which Thomas sings, well, almost normally. Then some two-guitar mayhem ensues, and the band jams the noise up your you know what. This is some truly cool guitar work, stellar stuff, with the bass providing a nice bottom and Taylor’s synthesizer lurking way in the background. Meanwhile Thomas goes, “Na na na na na na na,” and the applause that follows is well deserved. “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” offers up more extended mayhem, that is after the fellow who recorded the show, Jim Jones, has finished chanting, “Tedeum/Tedium” over and over. The guitars play a staccato riff followed by that timeless riff, over which Thomas mumbles. Then the guitars take over, chaotic as a swarm of bees, and the feedback is ear-splitting. What follows then is an exploration of noxious sound, the guitars finding their way in an orgy of screeching mayhem. This is noise rock at its best, ugly and provocative, a horror movie soundtrack anchored only by the tick-tock of one guitarist’s riff. Then the song resumes just long enough to reach a crescendo, over which Thomas wails the song’s title repeatedly.
Laughner’s greatest contribution to modern culture, the nihilistic “Life Stinks,” is a howl of disgust over a simple guitar riff, and “Life stinks/I need a drink” just about says it all. Taylor’s synthesizer is followed by chaos, and this one is a great lost punk anthem for sure, perhaps the greatest of them all. Laughner, bless his doomed soul, made Richard Hell look like a punk, and by that I don’t mean a punk rocker. “Final Solution” is another punk classic, opening with a throbbing beat and industrial-sized noise before the latter stops and Thomas goes into an extended rant about the horrors of adolescence that ends with the provocative “Don’t need a cure/Don’t need a cure/Don’t need a cure/Need a final solution.” Meanwhile that synthesizer whooshes and after Thomas’ final chorus the guitarists break free while Thomas bellows, “Solution!”
“Pushin’ Too Hard” features a Thomas gone berserk, backed by a great organ and an even better guitar solo. In short it’s a killer cover of the tune, and it’s too bad the song is followed by a seemingly interminable interlude of crowd chatter. Especially when the tune that follows is “The Way She Looks,” an early version of “Over My Head.” The guitar solo is exquisite, Thomas is playing it straight, and the synthesizer sounds like a boat taking on water. A slow and cool tune, this one. “Doris Day Sings Sentimental Journey” (later shortened to just “Sentimental Journey”) takes its good old time getting started, but then the guitars toss off some feedback and Thomas sings slowly, slowly. And just as slowly the song takes on some character thanks to the feedback and a simple guitar riff, and Thomas gets excitable, and what you’ve got is a pneumatic and fully fleshed pummeling.
As for “Can’t Believe It,” it’s a fast-paced number that has Thomas repeating the title while the guitars get all fancy, sort of reminding me (horror of horrors) of the Grateful Dead. Finally Thomas goes over the top, the guitars play for a few brief seconds, and that’s it. Pere Ubu’s take on “I Wanna Be Your Dog” is pure chaos, with the guitars spitting out that famous riff while Thomas shouts the lyrics. Then the guitarists build and build, growing more feral by the moment before somebody plays an ecstatic solo. It may not be as good as the Stooges’ version but it’s still great, and it’s a pity (to me, anyway) how it stops on a dime. The band closes the show with a take of The Velvet Underground’s “Heroin,” and while it too isn’t as good as the original, it has the same great build and fantastic guitar riffs. The drummer does a great Maureen Tucker imitation, and the fast sections are lovely, driving, a spike into the mainline of carefully controlled self-destruction. Finally the song explodes into mayhem, with Thomas shouting over the band gone berserk, only to slow again for Thomas to sing, “Her-o-in/Will be the death of me.” And from there it’s all drum bash and guitar feedback, squealing and screaming, the sound of pure nihilism moving at the speed of sound. Powerful stuff indeed.
Pere Ubu would go in a strange direction from here, towards noise and musique concrete and the theremin of Allen Ravenstine and the industrial sounds of the Rust Belt. I know it’s heresy, but I think I prefer their early rock years, before they settled into a weirdness that would, if nothing else, separate them from the punk rock pack and prefigure post-punk. But that’s just me. The Shape of Things, shitty sound quality and all, captures a band that would likely have gone in a very different direction had Peter Laughner not died so tragically young, and had the band not made so many line-up changes. Listening to The Shape of Things, it’s hard to believe it was recorded in the year of Frampton Comes Alive. Pere Ubu were so far ahead of their time it’s absurd. So check out The Shape of Things, but not if you’re a studio perfectionist. This is raw rock’n’roll at its rawest, and I can only recommend it to completists, noise aficionados, and people who want to feel like they were right there, in the front row, when it all went down.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
