Pere Ubu - Dub Housing

I “rescued” Pere Ubu’s Dub Housing from a radio station, where it stayed locked up and forgotten until my efforts came into play.

And for years, I never really understood why I kept it. It’s a difficult album, and I rarely played it. Even though I initially didn’t “get” what the band-or specifically this album-was all about, at least I had the common sense of keeping it. I thought that if I gave it some more time, I would someday discover what it was about this band that had so many glowing reviews.

When I heard “Non-Alignment Pact” and “Final Solution,” two early singles from this weird band from Cleveland, I began to warm up. And thanks to the accessibility of Cloudland, I was beginning to piece together the complex stitch work of Pere Ubu, and before long, I was ready to tackle Dub Housing again.

I still didn’t get it.

Dub Housing is the band’s second full-length, and it’s a hard thing to understand how they could get an album like this on a major label. Yes, they were on the Chrysalis records roster-right next to Nick Gilder and Jethro Tull-during a time when you could get away with something like that.

And I still can’t believe how this, an album that took me so many years to figure out, found it’s way onto the label during the year 1978.

It sold horribly, or so I’ve read, and those promotional copies sent to radio stations probably all ended up in a dumpster instead of hidden away in a back shelf like my copy.

I can’t tell what exactly turned me around. Maybe it was those years of listening to Captain Beefheart records, secretly prepping me for things that didn’t always make sense. But when it finally took hold, I discovered that Pere Ubu was indeed a national treasure and Dub Housing their most vital release.

Don’t let me scare you off: there are actual songs here, and you can get a taste of both the bizarre and the traditional song structure that mixes together with opener “Navvy,” a bouncy, angular guitar pattern made positively normal when Allen Ravenstine comes in with his bag of beeps, blips, and scratchy noises.

If Ravenstine never played keyboards on any other album besides Dub Housing, he’d still deserve a place as one of the all time greatest keyboardists. There is very little in his playing that constitutes traditional structure, yet the minimalist technique and endless barrage of strange sounds is positively groundbreaking. He has a fondness for both the typical garage rock organ tones of the 60’s and a healthy quest to create the most bizarre sounds known to man, in other words, a perfect addition for a band that’s already very adapt at making left hand turns.

Dub Housing features some of vocalist David Thomas’ most manic and memorable offerings. From crazed voices of repeated phrases (“Walked around/Took a bus/Walked around/Took a bus”) to just a bunch of noises made with his mouth, Thomas does not let his limitations deter his skewed sense of art.

He is one of the reasons why I never gave up on this record. And even though it took me several years to get there, I finally relented an began singing the chorus of “Navvy” with much conviction, joining Pere Ubu with their declaration “Boy, that sounds swell!”

Pere Ubu - Cloudland

If the idea that Pere Ubu was able to receive a major label contract from Chrysalis records in the late 70’s sounds crazy, then equally as crazy is the fact that the same band attempted to release a relatively mainstream record after they signed with another major label-Polydor/Mercury-in the late 80’s.

Cocaine is a helluva drug!

For those of you who are familiar with Ohio’s Pere Ubu, then the idea of a commercially acceptable Pere Ubu album is in itself akin to saying you have the cure for cancer in your pocket. For those of you not familiar with Pere Ubu, a brief overview is in order.

The band released an album called Dub Housing in 1978 (on Chrysalis) that sounds like it was recorded in an alternate universe circa 2063. The band is comprised of weirdo musicians who look at notes like they’re hierogliphics and they’re fronted by a large vocalist who sometimes appears to be mentally unstable. One of my favorite songs by Pere Ubu finds this frontman, David Thomas, uttering in a sweetly bizarre falsetto voice “The birdies are singing! The birdies are singing what I want to sing!”

Fast forward to 1988-or rewind as the case may be-and there’s the impossible notion that Pere Ubu released Cloudland on that major label with the hopes that someone beyond their core audience of a few thousand brave souls will find an appeal enough to catapult the band into a second wind of cult status.

Cloudland doesn’t sound like it was recorded in 2063. It, like much of that decade, sounds like it was recorded in the mid-80’s, but there’s enough random bizarreness that the record transcends the typical hermetical seal of the 80’s and sounds properly off in its own polished sheen.

The lead-off single was “Waiting For Mary,” an incredible catchy college radio track that begins with ambient crowd noise and a ticking clock before some properly rehearsed guitars encroach on a veri. “Welcome to Mars! It’s open all hours!” declares Thomas as he delivers what is Pere Ubu’s only potential radio smash. And I’ll admit, it should have been a contender.

Even in this incredibly docile state, there’s nothing that can prevent Pere Ubu from sounding a bit off. Listen to “Waiting For Mary” a little closer, and you’ll discover that those soundscapes that kicked off the track are prevelant and get weirder as the song progresses. Behind everything up front, you’ll hear seagulls and layers of blips and beeps that serve no other purpose than because Pere Ubu has a band member that’s in charge of blips and beeps.

Or take their cover of “Sloop John B,” the Beach Boys classic that gets retitled as “Nevada!” here. It starts off familiar enough in a quick tempoed  before changing into a musing of bygone eras, just like you see Neil Sedaka shelling on late night tv. Thomas talks about the “first mate” and his attempt to soothe her with “Don’t cry baby, don’t fly in a rage/I’ll tell you a story ‘bout the golden age/thirty cents a gallon, the super highway/You could fly like the wind through the hollow of day.” By the end, the John B sails all the way to Reno, where Thomas admits “Them good days are gone.”

But they’re not all gone here, even with this compelling attempt at narrowing Pere Ubu’s focus and corralling their attentions like some mid-career Adderall. Cloudland points out that while it does sound like the band has been tethered to the ground somewhat, they’re still floating out there, ready to snap the string and flutter above us.