Praise Behemoth!

Pere Ubu - Prison of the Senses

I'm back after my Oops I Posted It Before I Knew WTF I Was Doing mess from the other day with yet another, completely different visionary artiste of our epoch. This time I may not even alter it six times after I put it up!

Today we have the birthday of a truly singular figure -- no, not that fascist, self-worshiping, illiterate asswipe -- who sadly passed a little bit ago and whose 72nd birthday would have been today.

This guy, though. Of all the music to have come from Northeast Ohio in the 1970s, is there anything as viscerally weird and unique as Pere Ubu? I almost hope not.

The whole Cleveland scene back then was of Biblical proportions... and Rocket from the Tombs did beget Pere Ubu, and The Numbers Band did declare "We're all DEVO!". And all rejoiced Tin Huey-ly.

When Ubu first Ubu'd in the second half of the 1970s, there was nothing on the planet like them. If they were to approach a record company today, they would likely be escorted out by security, if they were lucky.

Lucky for us, back then it was almost the stranger the better, so true and unalloyed visionaries such as David Thomas -- born this day in 1953 -- were able to break through and drop their tonnage of truth upon us all.

When he was in Rocket from the Tombs he was called Crocus Behemoth, but when he started Pere Ubu he reverted to his real name, which made it seem all the more different and unusual in a way.

As charismatic and uncompromising as any figure ever produced by Rock music, there is no way to describe what he was up to, other than to say his mind was like an antenna that picked up the post-industrial realities of America, and he spent many decades in full-on broadcast mode.

Like some sort of unleashed and obese shaman of Urban Angst, he pattered and preached his grand gospel of the glorious American Dystopia across decades of seminal, galvanizing performances both in and out of Ubu.

He must have appeared possessed by demons to the Ubu-uninitiated, but to people who love Art and Music he was like a Power Spot on legs, oozing a completely individual presence all his own.

Like I said, if he tried to get over these days he'd likely be escorted out and you'd catch him performing in one of those YouTube bodycam footage clips -- face down on the concrete somewhere -- but thankfully for us, he came up at a time where almost anything went artistically. So he wasn't even that uncommercial in the context of 1978 or whatever.

He participated in and even helmed a gazillion other projects since back then, but he always maintained at least one foot in Pere Ubu his entire performing career, which lasted until the very end of his life.

The vast majority of Ubootlegs are legitimately issued and are gathered here on their Bandcamp page. Their performances for National Public Radio have never been issued as far as I know, so I have dressed these up in nice clothing for your 390 degree dose of stimulated stereo today, to honor DT's life and passing.

Taken together, these offer as great an introduction into the oeuvre of this one-of-a-kind band as any concert I can think of.

Pere Ubu

Mountain Stage

Culture Center Theater

Charleston, West Virginia USA

10.6.1991 & 12.21.2017

01 introduction

02 Street Waves

03 Goodnight Irene

04 Caligari's Mirror

05 Nevada

06 Over the Moon

07 Life of Riley

08 Busman's Honeymoon

09 Oh Catherine

10 Cry, Cry, Cry

11 introduction

12 Slow Walkin' Daddy

13 Breathe

14 Monkey Bizness

15 Carnival

16 Howl

17 Prison of the Senses

Total time: 1:00:16

Tracks 01-10: 10.6.1991

David Thomas - vocals

Jim Jones - guitar

Eric Drew Feldman - keyboards

Tony Maimone - bass

Scott Krauss - drums

Tracks 11-17: 12.21.2017

David Thomas - vocals

Robert Wheeler - synthesizers & theremin

Kristof Han - lap steel guitar

Michele Temple - bass & vocals

Gary Siperko - guitar

Steve Mehlman - drums & vocals

the MC for both segments is Larry Croce

320/48k audio streamed from the NPR website @ npr.org

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, denoised, tracked & slightly remastered by EN, June 2025
366 MB FLAC/link is below with other show

Pere Ubu

Anthem

National Public Radio studios

Washington, DC USA

March 1999

originally aired 3.13.1999

01 Anthem introduction

02 David Thomas introduction

03 SAD.TXT

04 talk 1

05 Highwaterville

06 talk 2

07 Urban Landscape

08 explanation of "Ubu Roi" & talk 3

09 Mirror Man excerpt

10 talk 4 incl. Mr. Wheeler excerpt

11 Worlds In Collision

12 talk 5

13 Fly's Eye

14 talk 6

15 Wasteland

Total time: 47:43

David Thomas - vocals

Tom Herman - guitar & vocals

Steve Mehlman - drums

Robert Wheeler - theremin, keyboards & vocals

Michele Temple - bass & vocals

combination of 2 low gen (possibly master) off-air FM captures -- likely to cassette -- of the original 1999 NPR broadcast

retracked, edited and very slightly remastered by EN, June 2025

283 MB FLAC/direct link to both shows

I shall return next weekend with some sustenance to start off the Endless Summer in the proper tropical perspective -- this, in honor of a recently departed summertime icon -- so you'll want to get your 'boards all waxed and ready for that, because I saw the forecast and Surf's Up.

All in good time. For now we'll let the good times roll through like the clock atop Cleveland's Terminal Tower, giving due thanks and praises to David Thomas and his pet project Pere Ubu for 50 years of telling it -- and speaksinging, screeching, babbling, and often wordlessly vocalizing it in ways that might terrify your grandmother -- like it was and is for us all.--J.

6.14.1953 - 4.23.2025

that's the prison of the senses