Pere Ubu review

Well, David Thomas in all his incarnations never disappoints even when he is his usual brusque self with band, support, self, voice, etc...

Support at Nottingham Rescue Rooms were Kaito: good shouty girl on vocals and guitar (pretty cute too), loads of feedback, noise making and weird sounds, slighty full-of-himself guy on guitar, but with able support from girl bassist and bloke on drums. (In defence of the guitar man, he was bloody good - you just felt he knew it and even the lead girl was laughing kinda at his antics as he rampaged the stage in pursuit of his noise)

This from NotLame Recording Company:
We saw this band at SXSW in Texas in March and they were the highlight of the festival and blew everyone away who saw them. My mouth, in particular, just dropped. Not really power pop, certainly, but they were a combination of Elastica, That Petrol Emotion, classic Wire, Mission of Burma, all wrapped up in a melodic package where the all the beautiful noise going on had some strong, strong hooks that were impossible to miss. A truly promising debut of a band who will be going places in the indie rock world, listen up!

But to the main man...

Pere Ubu set list include Folly of Youth, Modern Dance, selected tracks from St. Arkansas, and new material (Texas Overture): in other words a great mix of old and new from the 30 years of Ubu land. Oh yeah, and a happy rant about making money from the Beastie Boys because they nicked a Rocket from the Tombs riff

There's a review in the Indie today of the Islington gig.

What else did we get? Well, DT talked about writing songs for the niche market of 40 and 50-something males who were punks now facing mid-life crises: "it's a small niche, but a niche none the less..."; he berated the band at various points for daring to make "clicking noises" when he was speaking; he praised his sound guy for resolving everything possible; he moaned about the legal substances that enable but also ultimately destroy the high ranges of his vocal chords; he complained that "Fly's Eye" from Pennsylvania was written for Kylie Minogue but she didn't "sing the butt out of it" as he had intended; and when they re-emerged for the encore he said the drummer was keeping up the tradition of all Pere Ubu drummers by having to leap back on stage from going to pee (and he looked ill-ready as well!). The drummer also got it in the neck for forgetting which song came next:
"check the set-list"
"is that a trick question?"
"what does it say?"
"we have tech"
"So...? which track is that?"

Oh dear, it must be a killer being in Pere Ubu!

And to top it all, as ever, the fatman himself comes to the front and flogs his own cds to the waiting hoards. Despite his sometimes abrupt manner, he is really sweet. And the sight of lots of middle-aged men clasping his hand to shake it and breathlessly proclaiming "it is so brilliant to meet you - can I have my picture taken with you?"... well, that was enough to warm any punk's heart!