Thomas’ April 23 loss of life at age 71 brings to a detailed one of the crucial important avant-garde experiments ever performed throughout the confines of pop music. Rock critic Ken Tucker displays on his legacy.
TERRY GROSS, HOST:
That is FRESH AIR. David Thomas, lead singer and principal songwriter for the band Pere Ubu, died on April 23 at age 71. Thomas and Pere Ubu emerged from the Cleveland punk rock scene within the late Seventies and had been instantly acknowledged as distinctive artists. Our rock critic, Ken Tucker, reviewed the band’s 1978 debut album, “The Trendy Dance,” for Rolling Stone, describing the music again then as harsh, ugly, vivid, and exhilarating. This is Ken’s appreciation of David Thomas’ work.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “NON-ALIGNMENT PACT”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) I need to make a take care of you, woman, and get it signed by the heads of state. I need to make a take care of you, woman, and be acknowledged all over the world. Oh, it is my non-alignment pact, non-alignment pact. You higher signal it. Non-alignment pact, non-alignment pact.
KEN TUCKER, BYLINE: In 1978, that was most individuals’s introduction to David Thomas’ voice, the central sound of Pere Ubu, on the opening track of their debut album, “The Trendy Dance.” All the things Thomas would do for the following 47 years was already in place – the high-pitched growl and prickly phrasing, his stop-start means of blurting out the lyrics, the surrealist method to imagery. The band’s personnel would change often over the many years. The one Pere Ubu fixed was David Thomas – his singing, his songwriting and his immense bodily presence on stage. Not for nothing was one in all his pre-Ubu stage names Crocus Behemoth.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “LOVELY DAY”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) It is a beautiful day by the ocean. Mr. Potato Head is strumming a guitar. The beggar on the bench is performing lewd and crude. Weekend father’s received his child out for a stroll. Wind turbine off-shore’s shredding the seagulls as soon as extra. In order that’s good. And it’s appropriately on a beautiful day by the ocean.
TUCKER: Thomas’ loss of life at age 71 brings to a detailed one of the crucial important avant-garde experiments ever performed throughout the confines of pop music. Rising from Cleveland, the band was as impressed by the clanking sounds of town’s industrial factories because it was by the blues that David Thomas beloved. As he mentioned greater than as soon as, we do not promote chaos. We protect it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WHAT I HEARD ON THE POP RADIO”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) Save the emotional rubbish for somebody who’s going to fake significantly better than I do. Intestine up. Shut up. Take it like a person. A baby-voice gangster dreamboat. A bearded toff who sings like a lady. They received one thing they’ll need to promote you. Intestine up. Shut up. Take it like a person. You bought delusions. You could have intentions. You assume that that is actual. Intestine up. Shut up. Take it like a person.
TUCKER: Over time, sure themes recurred in Thomas’ songwriting. He wrote lyrics that exposed a deep information of Twentieth-century hard-boiled fiction. Novelists like Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson and James Crumley would have coated their ears at Pere Ubu’s noise, however they’d acknowledge a kindred spirit within the man who wrote repeatedly about determined getaways within the ink-black evening, about cynical males and difficult girls making an attempt to make emotional connections.
Within the extraordinary track referred to as “Irene” from 2014’s “Carnival Of Souls” album, Thomas steals a phrase from ’50s rocker Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to inform Irene he thinks their love might be doomed. For just a few moments, the tough clatter of Pere Ubu music subsides. His croon solely underlines his despair.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “IRENE”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) I put a spell on you ‘trigger you are mine. I put a spell on you, Irene. You’ll say you’re keen on me. And I’ll say it is all going to go incorrect. It isn’t going to prove very nicely in any respect.
TUCKER: Thomas’ go-to facial features was the scowl. He preferred to return off crotchety and didn’t undergo fools gladly. In his later years, he’d sing whereas seated in a chair on stage, like a king surveying his topics, like, the truth is, the mad king Ubu in Alfred Jarry’s nineteenth century absurdist play that impressed the band’s title. This Pere Ubu enunciated like a person caught mumbling in a dream to convey the sound of distraction, confusion or pure bliss. Within the track “Mandy” from the 2013 album “Girl From Shanghai,” Thomas sings the road, I might sleep for a thousand years.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MANDY”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) One other loopy jukebox is enjoying on the backside of a gap within the holy. That is not good, my soul and my soul’s out. I might sleep for a thousand years. I might sleep for a thousand years. Would you come out to play with me, Mandy? Would you come out to play?
TUCKER: The folks overseeing Pere Ubu’s Fb web page included this assertion in saying his loss of life. David Thomas and his band have been recording a brand new album. He knew it was to be his final. We are going to endeavor to proceed with mixing and finalizing the brand new album in order that his final music is accessible to all. I cannot wait to listen to it.
GROSS: Ken Tucker is FRESH AIR’s rock critic. David Thomas died April 23. He was 71. Tomorrow, our visitor can be Emmy winner and Oscar nominee Michelle Williams. Within the new restricted TV sequence, “Dying For Intercourse,” she performs a lady who finds out she’s dying of most cancers and decides to go away her sad marriage and her life behind to hunt pleasure and sexual satisfaction. She’ll inform us about portraying characters experiencing grief, loss and resilience. I hope you will be a part of us.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WORRIED MAN BLUES”)
PERE UBU: (Singing) Takes a fearful man to sing a fearful track.
GROSS: To maintain up with what’s on the present and get highlights of our interviews, observe us on Instagram at @nprfreshair. FRESH AIR’s government producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Briger. Our interviews and critiques are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Bodonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the present. Our cohost is Tonya Mosley. I am Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “WORRIES MAN BLUES”)
PERE UBU: The evening is a river that hides the additional shore and a backside deep. After I woke, shackles certain my coronary heart. Twenty-nine hyperlinks of chain.
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