Pere Ubu has been below the pop culture radar since their beginning in 1975. They are a rock band but they include elements of the expressionist movement, experimental music and blues. I got to talk to the only constant member in Pere Ubus over 30 year history, band co-founder/vocalist/producer David Thomas about the new album Why I Hate Women.
Check out the official website for Pere Ubu
Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the inspiration for the album itself?
David Thomas: I wanted to do a noir-ish album because the noir tradition has been with Pere Ubu since the very beginning. The first Pere Ubu song, Heart of Darkness, is quoted liberally from Raymond Chandler. Its a theme that has thread through our work for a number of decades. I wanted to do a Jim Thompson noir-ish story and thats what came out.
DRE: It seemed like Jim Thompson definitely had problems with women.
DT: I wouldnt presume. He was a writer and I separate the work of art from the author. He wrote certain kinds of stories that had certain kinds of truth in them.
DRE: Why was Jim Thompson on your mind lately?
DT: I cant tell you how I got to Jim Thompson specifically as opposed to Raymond Chandler. I probably felt guilty about mining Raymond Chandler so many times that I looked around for another victim. Id just been reading James Cain a lot and rereading it, and clearly one thing flowed from the other because I havent read Jim Thompson in maybe 20 years or at least 15 and it just occurred to me. I wanted more of a 50s angle than Cain, which was definitely 40s.
DRE: Do you feel that there is a story linking all the songs together?
DT: No, the way I work is that I come up with what you might call a back story and from that back story I choose a particular psychological moment that interests me. This is the same for any Pere Ubu record. The songs on the album are all about trying to describe one particular moment from the back story. Youre not meant to assemble a cohesive narrative from it because thats not really what I do and its not really of much interest to me.
DRE: Is the back story something that you actually write or is it in the back of your mind?
DT: I dont write it down. Theres no point to that because then you get into a writer mode and youre sitting there wasting your time as if its valid as a piece of writing. Right now Im beginning to assemble the story that Im interested in pursuing for the next album. So its in my head and I make notes along the way with details of something that I want to weave into the story.
DRE: Since Why I Hate Women is a story with characters, do you feel that it separates you from people accusing you of hating women?
DT: I dont think that deviously. One of the reasons that I decided to go with the title was that it occurred to me and I was somewhat skeptical of using it because I knew people pay more attention to the title than anything else. But one of the things that ended up convincing me is that I really dislike the mythology of music where the singer is some tortured soul pouring the depths of his being out in lyrics and songs. Thats just baloney. This stuff is fiction you make it up. You have an objective and you have some, as I pointed out, some psychological moment that you want to communicate. You make up a story to achieve that or you make up a story about yourself but this whole idea that this is all tortured soul confessions is extremely irritating to me. I thought, Ok, Ill go with it because the question will come up and I can make my point about tortured souls confessions.
DRE: The press notes said that this is Pere Ubus 15 studio album.
DT: Yeah something like that.
DRE: Does that mean something thats actually created in a studio or does that mean working with a label?
DT: Thats the thing I cant keep track of.
DRE: How did you find the label Smog Veil?
DT: [Smog Veil owner] Frank Mauceri is a good guy. Hes very dedicated and very enthusiastic. Also theyre Clevelanders and I like to stick with Clevelanders.
DRE: Where did you record this?
DT: We recorded almost everything weve done at a place called Suma which used to be Cleveland Recording in Cleveland. But I do the vocals at home just because its easier to do them when you feel like it as opposed to being clocked into some studio and youre sitting there and dont really want to do it. But I record almost anywhere. I recorded one of the vocals in the room at the Red Roof Inn and recorded another one out on the back porch of the place I am now. The good thing about modern digital technology is that I can do anything anywhere, when I feel like it.
DRE: You guys have been around for such a long time. What kind of people show up at the shows now?
DT: It depends. It really is very weird, I hate to use the phrase young people, but in some cities there are only young people. In certain cities for some bizarre reason theres nobody under the age of 35 or something. I dont understand any of it but most of the time its a pretty broad mix.
DRE: Have you always produced Pere Ubu albums by yourself?
DT: I have since about 1995. In the late 80s and early 90s we did three albums with producers. Before that we self produced it or the engineer had a lot to do with it. Oftentimes it is very confusing and frustrating.
DRE: With the kind of music it is, it seems like the producing could be almost as intimate as the songwriting.
DT: Yeah, thats one of the reasons that I took on the production. If theres going to be mistakes in production, which there always are, Id rather they be my mistakes than anybody elses. Also the sound has always been very important to the meaning. I wanted to be a bit more involved in it because Im involved in the meaning of the songs.
DRE: [guitarist] Keith Molin has been with you about a year and a half, how did you find him?
DT: Hes a member of my group called David Thomas and the two pale boys which is an improvisational group with Andy Diagram on trumpet and Keith on guitar.
DRE: So it was a pretty natural fit.
DT: Yeah, over the course of time I began to realize that he, like most English progressive musicians, has an urge to rock but is afraid to express himself that way. So over the years Ive weaned him into being a very good rocker. I didnt do anything other than to say, You know you can do this. You are a good rock player. Hed go, No, I dont do rock music. There were a few years of that before Tom [Herman] retired and I said, Youre the man now. Youre the guy, so lets do it.
DRE: Are you surprised that youve kept the band going as long as you have because I read that you didnt plan it that way?
DT: We didnt plan, we just did it. That it was one of the first questions we were ever asked back in 1976 or something like that. They said, How long are you going to be together? When are you going to break up? I was like, Why are you asking us when or how long were going to be? Well break up tomorrow or well be here in 40 years. Thats still the answer. I dont think well all live that long but it wouldnt have surprised me if we had broken up the next day either. We dont have a pop career curve. Were really much more of a folk band. Rock music is American folk music and you cant understand rock music unless you know that and apply those parameters to it. So folk musicians just endlessly do what they do because its part of their understanding of their life and their culture. Also part of it is that we progress; we dont do the same thing endlessly. We create new problems to solve. We evolve and all of that is interesting to us. If we were just doing modern dance endlessly I dont know that wed still be together.
DRE: I read that you just did a live performance while The Man With X-Ray Eyes was playing.
DT: Yeah we did an underscore to X out at UCLA. Its something weve done a number of times. We did a tour in England three years ago with a 3-D version of It Came From Outer Space. We did about a week and a half of concert halls and art centers.
DRE: Was that your guys idea or did someone want you to do it?
DT: The original idea of It Came From Outer Space was the idea of a film producer in London. He did that first tour with us and then X was always a film that I liked. It has a cool story and I wanted to do a tip of the hat to Roger Corman.
DRE: Was it improvised?
DT: Yes we sit there and score out what key were going to be in and what kind of a rhythm and what kind of a feel. Sometimes we have ideas that we take from our own songs and say, Well in this scene were going to play kind of this riff but were going to slow it down. So we plot out where were going to go with it and whats going to happen along the way and then it is improvised from that point onward.
DRE: Would you ever record it and put it out?
DT: I wouldnt even know how to because youd have to start dealing with film companies and lawyers and an incredible amount of mind numbing hassles which isnt worth it to us. It is not going to make the film company any money. Universal Records is not going to care about a few thousand sales of a Pere Ubu record. So I wouldnt even attempt it. Maybe someday well do it as a bootleg below Universals horizon.
DRE: When are you guys going back on tour?
DT: We have about four or five gigs at the end of the month. We just finished about three to four weeks in Europe and did this UCLA thing in San Francisco. Weve got some other things were doing. Were going to take a break at the end of November and start up in Europe again in March or something like that.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official website for Pere Ubu
Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the inspiration for the album itself?
David Thomas: I wanted to do a noir-ish album because the noir tradition has been with Pere Ubu since the very beginning. The first Pere Ubu song, Heart of Darkness, is quoted liberally from Raymond Chandler. Its a theme that has thread through our work for a number of decades. I wanted to do a Jim Thompson noir-ish story and thats what came out.
DRE: It seemed like Jim Thompson definitely had problems with women.
DT: I wouldnt presume. He was a writer and I separate the work of art from the author. He wrote certain kinds of stories that had certain kinds of truth in them.
DRE: Why was Jim Thompson on your mind lately?
DT: I cant tell you how I got to Jim Thompson specifically as opposed to Raymond Chandler. I probably felt guilty about mining Raymond Chandler so many times that I looked around for another victim. Id just been reading James Cain a lot and rereading it, and clearly one thing flowed from the other because I havent read Jim Thompson in maybe 20 years or at least 15 and it just occurred to me. I wanted more of a 50s angle than Cain, which was definitely 40s.
DRE: Do you feel that there is a story linking all the songs together?
DT: No, the way I work is that I come up with what you might call a back story and from that back story I choose a particular psychological moment that interests me. This is the same for any Pere Ubu record. The songs on the album are all about trying to describe one particular moment from the back story. Youre not meant to assemble a cohesive narrative from it because thats not really what I do and its not really of much interest to me.
DRE: Is the back story something that you actually write or is it in the back of your mind?
DT: I dont write it down. Theres no point to that because then you get into a writer mode and youre sitting there wasting your time as if its valid as a piece of writing. Right now Im beginning to assemble the story that Im interested in pursuing for the next album. So its in my head and I make notes along the way with details of something that I want to weave into the story.
DRE: Since Why I Hate Women is a story with characters, do you feel that it separates you from people accusing you of hating women?
DT: I dont think that deviously. One of the reasons that I decided to go with the title was that it occurred to me and I was somewhat skeptical of using it because I knew people pay more attention to the title than anything else. But one of the things that ended up convincing me is that I really dislike the mythology of music where the singer is some tortured soul pouring the depths of his being out in lyrics and songs. Thats just baloney. This stuff is fiction you make it up. You have an objective and you have some, as I pointed out, some psychological moment that you want to communicate. You make up a story to achieve that or you make up a story about yourself but this whole idea that this is all tortured soul confessions is extremely irritating to me. I thought, Ok, Ill go with it because the question will come up and I can make my point about tortured souls confessions.
DRE: The press notes said that this is Pere Ubus 15 studio album.
DT: Yeah something like that.
DRE: Does that mean something thats actually created in a studio or does that mean working with a label?
DT: Thats the thing I cant keep track of.
DRE: How did you find the label Smog Veil?
DT: [Smog Veil owner] Frank Mauceri is a good guy. Hes very dedicated and very enthusiastic. Also theyre Clevelanders and I like to stick with Clevelanders.
DRE: Where did you record this?
DT: We recorded almost everything weve done at a place called Suma which used to be Cleveland Recording in Cleveland. But I do the vocals at home just because its easier to do them when you feel like it as opposed to being clocked into some studio and youre sitting there and dont really want to do it. But I record almost anywhere. I recorded one of the vocals in the room at the Red Roof Inn and recorded another one out on the back porch of the place I am now. The good thing about modern digital technology is that I can do anything anywhere, when I feel like it.
DRE: You guys have been around for such a long time. What kind of people show up at the shows now?
DT: It depends. It really is very weird, I hate to use the phrase young people, but in some cities there are only young people. In certain cities for some bizarre reason theres nobody under the age of 35 or something. I dont understand any of it but most of the time its a pretty broad mix.
DRE: Have you always produced Pere Ubu albums by yourself?
DT: I have since about 1995. In the late 80s and early 90s we did three albums with producers. Before that we self produced it or the engineer had a lot to do with it. Oftentimes it is very confusing and frustrating.
DRE: With the kind of music it is, it seems like the producing could be almost as intimate as the songwriting.
DT: Yeah, thats one of the reasons that I took on the production. If theres going to be mistakes in production, which there always are, Id rather they be my mistakes than anybody elses. Also the sound has always been very important to the meaning. I wanted to be a bit more involved in it because Im involved in the meaning of the songs.
DRE: [guitarist] Keith Molin has been with you about a year and a half, how did you find him?
DT: Hes a member of my group called David Thomas and the two pale boys which is an improvisational group with Andy Diagram on trumpet and Keith on guitar.
DRE: So it was a pretty natural fit.
DT: Yeah, over the course of time I began to realize that he, like most English progressive musicians, has an urge to rock but is afraid to express himself that way. So over the years Ive weaned him into being a very good rocker. I didnt do anything other than to say, You know you can do this. You are a good rock player. Hed go, No, I dont do rock music. There were a few years of that before Tom [Herman] retired and I said, Youre the man now. Youre the guy, so lets do it.
DRE: Are you surprised that youve kept the band going as long as you have because I read that you didnt plan it that way?
DT: We didnt plan, we just did it. That it was one of the first questions we were ever asked back in 1976 or something like that. They said, How long are you going to be together? When are you going to break up? I was like, Why are you asking us when or how long were going to be? Well break up tomorrow or well be here in 40 years. Thats still the answer. I dont think well all live that long but it wouldnt have surprised me if we had broken up the next day either. We dont have a pop career curve. Were really much more of a folk band. Rock music is American folk music and you cant understand rock music unless you know that and apply those parameters to it. So folk musicians just endlessly do what they do because its part of their understanding of their life and their culture. Also part of it is that we progress; we dont do the same thing endlessly. We create new problems to solve. We evolve and all of that is interesting to us. If we were just doing modern dance endlessly I dont know that wed still be together.
DRE: I read that you just did a live performance while The Man With X-Ray Eyes was playing.
DT: Yeah we did an underscore to X out at UCLA. Its something weve done a number of times. We did a tour in England three years ago with a 3-D version of It Came From Outer Space. We did about a week and a half of concert halls and art centers.
DRE: Was that your guys idea or did someone want you to do it?
DT: The original idea of It Came From Outer Space was the idea of a film producer in London. He did that first tour with us and then X was always a film that I liked. It has a cool story and I wanted to do a tip of the hat to Roger Corman.
DRE: Was it improvised?
DT: Yes we sit there and score out what key were going to be in and what kind of a rhythm and what kind of a feel. Sometimes we have ideas that we take from our own songs and say, Well in this scene were going to play kind of this riff but were going to slow it down. So we plot out where were going to go with it and whats going to happen along the way and then it is improvised from that point onward.
DRE: Would you ever record it and put it out?
DT: I wouldnt even know how to because youd have to start dealing with film companies and lawyers and an incredible amount of mind numbing hassles which isnt worth it to us. It is not going to make the film company any money. Universal Records is not going to care about a few thousand sales of a Pere Ubu record. So I wouldnt even attempt it. Maybe someday well do it as a bootleg below Universals horizon.
DRE: When are you guys going back on tour?
DT: We have about four or five gigs at the end of the month. We just finished about three to four weeks in Europe and did this UCLA thing in San Francisco. Weve got some other things were doing. Were going to take a break at the end of November and start up in Europe again in March or something like that.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
sockpuppet:
I saw them doing the scoring for It Came From Outer Space, and I saw DT touring his piece Mirror Man. Quite wonderful, especially MM.
gofuserectus:
these guys are the greatest! i have seen them live several times and the Rocket from the Tombs reunion was amazing!! great band, great musicians!! gotta buy everything and see them live as often as possible!! love them!!