Pynchon Music: Pere Ubu
Keep Cool but Care
Pere Ubu (1975–1982; 1987–present)
Perhaps one of the most unfairly neglected bands of all time might be the massively creative group led by David Thomas and named after an overbearing character in Ubu Roi, a play by Frenchman Alfred Jarry. We are talking, of course, about Pere Ubu. From passionate anthem-like works such as “Non-Alignment pact” and “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” to warbling ditties like the Pynchon-influenced “Navvy,” the creative energies of Pere Ubu seem to know no bounds.
Pere Ubu’s music is a disorienting mix of midwestern groove rock, “found” sound, analog synthesizers, falling-apart song structures and careening vocals. The single, “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” b/w “Heart of Darkness”, released in 1975, was the first of four independent releases on Hearpen Records and, along with Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel,” signaled the beginning of the New Wave. In the early to mid-70’s, Pere Ubu was part of a fertile rock scene that also produced 15-60-75, Mirrors, The Electric Eels, Rocket From The Tombs, Tin Huey, Styrene Money, and Devo.
The group’s first album, The Modern Dance, sold only 15,000 copies initially but it was a startling work that influenced an entire generation of bands, e.g. R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Joy Division, etc. Its follow-up, Dub Housing, was the masterpiece, “an incomparable work of American genius.” Pere Ubu toured Europe extensively in 1978. Late in 1979, Tom Herman left and was replaced by Mayo Thompson, the guitarist from 60’s Texas psychedelic-rock legends The Red Crayola. The Art of Walking followed, a challenging stew of inside-out song structures. The band stopped playing together in early 1982 just as the progressive-sounding Song of the Bailing Man was released.
In 1981, Thomas recorded the first of two albums with British folk-rock guitarist Richard Thompson. Three more solo albums kept the nucleus of Ubu alive and working together. The last of these, 1987’s Ubu-like Blame The Messenger, led to the reanimation of the Pere Ubu project. The clattering work called The Tenement Year, recorded for a British label (Fontana) headed by Ubu fanatic Dave Bates, introduced the two drummers lineup of Krauss and English prog-rocker (and long-time fan) Chris Cutler (Henry Cow, Art Bears, Cassiber).
Teamed with another Ubu fan, producer Stephen Hague (Pet Shop Boys, New Order), Ubu shifted gears for 1989’s Cloudland. Tired of touring and the grind of it all Ravenstine retired to take up a career as an airline pilot for Northwest. He was replaced by Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Snakefinger) who appeared on Stereo Review’s Record of The Year for 1992, Worlds In Collision, produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies). Cutler, unable to juggle all the demands of his many musical projects, had to leave. Feldman followed, joining Frank Black’s projects. The last Fontana album, Story of My Life, produced by Al Clay, marked the end of the period of experimentation with “outside” producers. (The intended title was “Johnny Rivers Live at The Whiskey A Go Go.”)
In 1993 Garo Yellin, playing an electrified cello, and veteran of The Ordinaires and several of Thomas’ solo projects, was recruited to fill the “synthesizer” slot. During rehearsals for the Story of My Life tour, Tony Maimone left to work in the They Might Be Giants band. He was replaced by Michele Temple who had previously replaced him in the Jones/Krauss 80’s side project, Home & Garden.
In January 1994, again without a major label, the band recorded demos for a projected album, Songs from the Lost LP, intended to be a tribute to Smile. Krauss left. Yellin, busy with his quartet in NYC, was replaced by Robert Wheeler, organic farmer, Ravenstine protege, and president of the Edison Birthplace Foundation. Thomas announced that he was now ready to become the producer for Pere Ubu and that was what he was going to do. Raygun Suitcase, awarded CD Review’s Editors’ Choice Award for 1995, was recorded to a click track in the hope that Krauss would change his mind. Scott Benedict, the drummer in Temple’s group, The Vivians, came in over a weekend and recorded all the parts. The next week he retired to take up landscape gardening. Steve Mehlman, Benedict’s replacement in The Vivians, replaced him in Ubu.
In August 1995 Jones retired from the road for health reasons. Tom Herman rejoined the group for the Raygun Suitcase tours, and together with Jim Jones recorded 1998’s Pennsylvania, a highly acclaimed album nominated by America’s preeminent rock critic, Greil Marcus, as the best of 1998. In 1999 for the Fall of The Magnetic Empire Festival at NYC’s Knitting Factory, Wayne Kramer joined the group as alternate guitarist.
From the turn of the century to the present day, Pere Ubu has been an active outfit, breaking apart and reforming at will, hosting various astonishing musicians, and spawning numerous side projects and albums. Their current progress is best followed on their venerable Web site, Ubu Projex.
Pere Ubu and Thomas Pynchon
The Pere Ubu song which clearly shows their Pynchon influence is based upon ideas about “flip and flop” propounded by the character McClintic Sphere in V., and also on two characters named Flip and Flop met by Pig Bodine and Benny Profane in Chapter 15 of V. as they listen to the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto (p. 394. All page references to the Bantam edition of V.).
McClintic is described as playing music very much like that of Charlie Parker at the bar called the “V-Note,” but that idea is downplayed by Pynchon when somebody says “He plays all the notes Bird missed” and is derided by Fu and threatened with the image of a broken bottle (p. 49). A more convincing case can be made for linking McClintic and Ornette Coleman’s jazz club called “The Five Spot.” David Wild’s piece, “The Thomas Pynchon Connection” (David Wild © 1997), lists the allusions which link McClintic to the club scene:
Pynchon’s first novel V. includes a minor character named McClintic Sphere. Pynchon introduces him in a remarkable section (pg. 47) with a whole series of links, allusions, echoes, and satirical reflections of the late 1950’s and Ornette Coleman’s legendary Five Spot appearance in Greenwich Village. The section starts with several of the New York cast arriving at a Greenwich Village nightclub called the V-Note:
1. V for the title of the novel and an elusive woman, object of a novel-long search by one of the characters.
2. V as in the Roman Numeral for Five = Five Spot. This famous club featured Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane (1957) in a legendary engagement; it was the nightclub where Ornette Coleman first opened in November 1959 (and where he played a number of times over the following years)
3. V-Note. The Note = Half Note. Another Greenwich Village club, and another venue at which Coleman played during the period
McClintic Sphere is playing onstage when the group enters. Sphere is Thelonious Monk’s middle name (Monk was a frequent performer in the village at the time and as noted is closely associated with the Five Spot). McClintic may be an echo of Coleman’s unusual first name. (The only jazz musician with a somewhat similar first name would be Kenny Dorham, whose given first name was McKinley. He performed regularly in New York during that period and may be associated with groups that played the Five Spot).
Pg. 48 “He blew a hand-carved ivory alto saxophone” Obvious reference to the plastic alto saxophone which Ornette used in the late fifties, evidently because it was cheaper than a metal sax and because it gave him a more flexible sound. “…with a 4 1/2 reed” Also a reference to the 4 1/2 strength reed which Ornette used in Los Angeles (described by Don Cherry in a famous passage in an interview with Joe Goldberg).
The next paragraphs include some nice descriptions of the reactions in the audience, from those who simply left, to those from other groups who were unwilling to reject it, to those few who liked it. This directly echoes the reports in Downbeat about Coleman’s first appearances at the Five Spot in 1959.
“The group on the stand had no piano: it was bass, drums, McClintic and a boy he had found in the Ozarks who blew a natural horn in F”. This is an echo of the Ornette Coleman Quartet, and the natural horn may be a reference to the unusual pocket trumpet which Don Cherry favored at the time. (Cherry was of course from Los Angeles). “The bass was small and evil-looking and his eyes were yellow with pinpoints in the center.” I have no idea which of Ornette’s bassists this refers to-possibly David Izenzon? The bassist at the time of course was Charles Haden, by no means small and evil looking. The next paragraph is a biting description of some of those in the audience, “mostly those who wrote for Downbeat magazine or the liners of LP records…”.(Reader Clay Thurmond also points out that Sphere’s playing is described here as “something else”—which is the title of Coleman’s first LP on Contemporary Records recorded in 1958).
On the next page (p.49): “Since the soul of Charlie Parker had dissolved away into a hostile March wind nearly a year before…”. This is too early for Ornette, but only by three years. Parker died in March 1955 which would make this early 1956. In 1956 Ornette was still an unemployed, unknown musician in Los Angeles. He did not arrive in New York city until the fall of 1959, and the controversy, the club names and the rest of the allusions belong to that specific period. On the same page: “He plays all the notes Bird missed”, somebody whispered.”Another allusion to the impact of Ornette, who received a lot of attention as the next alto saxophonist after Parker to move the music forward…
Incidentally, several other Pynchon works contain references to jazz and its practitioners. There are a number of sections dealing with Charlie Parker in Gravity’s Rainbow and the short story “Entropy” (first published in the Kenyon Review) should amuse those enamored of the original Gerry Mulligan Quartet.
James Stanley, of Dunedin, New Zealand, adds: “Ornette Coleman, along with Don Cherry, spent time at the Lenox school of Jazz in 1959 (his first year in NYC), and of course Sphere spends time in Lenox during the course of the novel as well.”
Back to Pere Ubu’s album Dub Housing (which also contains the song “Blow Daddy-O,” a likely reference to Kerouac’s unrestrained writing about jazz), we have the song “Navvy,” which echoes McClintic’s use of the terms “flip” and “flop.”
Lyrics
“Navvy”
flip flop
I’ve got these arms & legs that flipflop
flip flop
I’ve got these arms & legs that flipflop
flip-flip-flip, I have desire
“Freedom!”
I have desire
“Somewhere to go!”
(Boy! that sounds swell)
In my ears I heard a hurricane blow
In my ears I heard a hurricane grow
In my ears I heard a hurricane glow
I have desire
“Freedom!”
I have desire
“Somewhere to go!”
(Boy! that sounds swell)
I’ve got these arms & legs that flipflop
flip flop
I’ve got these arms & legs that flipflop
flip flop
I’ve got these arms & legs that flipflop
flip-flip-flop, I have desire
“Freedom!”
I have desire
“Somewhere to go!”
(Boy! that sounds swell)
Ecclesiastically:
Flop, flip, once I was hip,
Flip, flop, now you’re on top,
Set-REset, why are we BEset
With crazy and cool in the same molecule… (p. 273)
McClintic believed that during World War II everything “flipped,” while within Harlem’s jazz scene everyone “flopped.” He envisions a way to end the oscillation between being either “cool” or “crazy”: “the only way clear of this cool/crazy flipflop was obviously slow, frustrating and hard work. Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicizing it” (p. 342) and comes up with his resoundingly famous statement “keep cool, but care” (pp. 342-343).
Other significant Pere Ubu connections to Pynchon have been suggested by Welsh visitor David Hoare:
Additional Information
2. On the Surface (2:35)
3. Dub Housing (3:39)
4. Caligari’s Mirror (3:49)
5. Thriller! (4:36)
6. I, Will Wait (1:45)
7. Drinking Wine Spodyody (2:44)
8. (Pa) Ubu Dance Party (4:46)
9. Blow Daddy-O (3:38)
10. Codex (4:55)
David Thomas—vocals, organ.
Tom Herman—guitar, bass, organ.
Tony Maimone—bass, guitar, piano.
Allen Ravenstine—EML synthesizers, saxophone.
Scott Krauss—drums.
Pynchon on Record
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Last Modified: 10 November 2021
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