RIP David Thomas
Some thoughts I had to get out about the Pere Ubu frontman and a rock hero.
Yesterday David Thomas died. He was the frontman and driving force behind the greatest punk band you've never heard, Pere Ubu.
Pere Ubu were post-punk before punk existed. A garage rock band with weird funky bass lines or a random clarinet, all slathered in drones or effects that make it sound like a warning klaxon after the bombs fell. And then there's Thomas, standing in the aftermath, somehow larger than life. Singing in his weird high-pitch voice or shouting into the void. I'm not sure he cared if you heard him. He just needed to be there.
Thomas was what you'd get if Captain Beefheart wanted to actually write songs instead of being a cult leader. Or if the MC5 were into jazz. He heard melody and harmony in weird sounds, and felt a drum beat in background noise.
He came from Ohio, at a time when people in Ohio imagined there being a wider world and decided to make it themselves. Thomas is at the beginning of a long line of Ohio weirdos that made the world better, like Devo or GbV or Brainiac. Pere Ubu's absurdity and unconventional approach to whatever rock was becoming ended up influencing all the 80s underground bands that are so heralded now, like The Pixies, Sonic Youth, and more.
When I first heard them in 2005, a friend told me "Pere Ubu is your favorite band's favorite band." Then he sent me the mp3 for "Final Solution," which is probably their most classic song. Everyone talks about it, and it's a great song. The kind of teen angst song you wish you had in high school when no one understands but you understand, dammit.
The song got more popular in the 80s when a solo Peter Murphy covered if for a club hit. How did the Bauhaus frontman hear Pere Ubu? I’d love to know.
Me, I'm a sucker for first tracks. So my favorite Ubu track is "Nonalignment Pact," the first track from The Modern Dance. it's so weird and it grooves and I fell into a hole when I first heard it, thinking, "Let's see how far this hole goes.”
Turns out it goes really deep. And into passageways that are hard to imagine before you see them, but so fundamentally alter you afterwards that you can’t believe you didn’t see them before. Thomas and the band were prolific before a hiatus in ‘82, then went even farther after coming back together a few years later.
Archive.org (which we need to protect at all costs) has a copy of Datapanik in the Year Zero, a collection of just some of the band’s output up to ‘82 — and a killer name for any album. It’s five discs. It’s not all consistent, but it shows just how much of a force Thomas was.
Even late stage Ubu had a ton of output. And live, is fascinating to watch. Thomas is grizzled and grumpy, dressed like a farmer who doesn’t give a fuck. Surrounded by musicians who bring their personalities into these songs. Sometimes he’s sitting, sometimes standing, but the fire still pours out of that weird, wobbily voice.
There are a couple of years of my life that this band is the soundtrack to, even though I never told anyone, and didn't have anyone to share with. When a band is old but sounds brand new, that's magical. That was Pere Ubu to me.
I'm not sad. Thomas was 71, and supposedly recording an album with the people swirling around him. Reportedly he was working on an autobiography, which tracks for a guy who was so clearly inventing his own universe every day. Like all the best rock icons do.
I came home last night and put The Modern Dance on again while Nicole was picking Ellie up from school. And I thought about what it must be like to be so committed to your vision of something that it becomes your entire life, no matter what anyone says. And I raised a toast to David Thomas, and outsider and a believer and a rock 'n roll hero.