When Pere Ubu released “Story of My Life” in 1993,
frontman David Thomas was quoted about his band’s seemingly
reckless approach to music, and why, after nearly 25 years, he
still kept doing it.
“It’s kind of like people who became communists in
the ’30s,” Thomas said according to online magazine
Perfect Sound Forever. “Even when you find out that the
theory is wrong, that the victory will never come, you don’t
give up on it. It’s changed you. You’re stuck. You
really have nothing left to do with your life.”
Regardless of his influence on the American underground scene as
frontman for acts like Pere Ubu and the now-mythical Rocket from
the Tombs, it’s hard to peg Thomas as the
quintessential-anything. Setting base in the suburban wasteland of
Cleveland in the mid-’70s and taking cues from the Velvet
Underground and MC5 to create his own breed of surrealist punk,
Thomas latched onto the ever-changing landscape of rock
‘n’ roll, but his watch has always been set to his own
time. He is bringing a legion of musical cohorts to UCLA for a
three-day extravaganza called Disastodrome! this weekend, but
Thomas would tell you that even though this is the program’s
U.S. debut, it’s still just business as usual.
“I haven’t learned anything new,” he said from
his home in Briton, England, where he’s lived for four years.
“Everything I knew (when I started making music) is the same
stuff I know now. Except you just try and do it better, and rise up
in the sonic ladder of craft.”
But Disastodrome! is indeed a different beast that U.S.
audiences aren’t used to seeing, even from Thomas who has
held Disastodrome! in the United Kingdom since 1998. With guests
like Frank Black and Van Dyke Parks, the mini-festival will include
solo performances by Thomas’ own improvisational musical
“Mirror Man,” a performance by Pere Ubu and a reunion
of the legendary act Rocket From the Tombs in their first
appearance in 27 years.
“The way I’ve put things together follows from the
belief that my ideas just aren’t good enough,” Thomas
explained. “By putting myself in with extremely talented and
headstrong people, out of that soup of conflict comes something
that’s greater than the sum of its parts. It’s how
I’ve always worked.”
Thomas’ approach is most evident in his production
“Mirror Man,” created specifically for the festival.
Built on the improvisational foundations of jazz, Thomas came up
with the music and the lyrics, but he encourages the performers to
use the words and musical structure as a jumping board for their
own creative impulses.
“(My supporting band) the pale boys and I create a series
of modalities to work from,” Thomas said. “We work with
the singers to get the right keys, the right feel, the right
rhythm. Then we don’t go too far with it, so that the
performance is always very fresh and dangerous in ways, always on
the edge of something … It’s very intoxicating to achieve
freshness, to achieve reality and exist in the moment of the
performance.”
That’s also the impetus behind the Disastodrome! festival
in and of itself. Thomas is quick to point out that the goal is to
not promote disorder, but preserve disorder. The whole festival is
designed to remove the burden of anticipation that weighs audiences
down.
“That’s one of the problems in art. There’s
not enough conflict within it because too many people get their own
way. I’m not into getting my own way, I’m into getting
something that has the resonance of reality, the feel and the
touch, and the pain and the joy of reality,” Thomas said.
It’s fitting that the festival will end on Sunday with
Rocket From the Tombs, a volatile proto-punk band that lasted for
less than a year, but still managed to hit a chord and develop a
cult following.
“We got together for a rehearsal and it sounded quite
wonderful,” Thomas said. “Within five minutes we were
fighting just as intensely as we’d ever fought before. I
thought, “˜Well this is good. It’s just like old
times.’ It didn’t take more than five minutes,
it’s really quite astonishing that nothing had changed after
25 years.”
Well, maybe there’s a way you can label Thomas. If
anything he’s the quintessential art-punk, perpetually
heading toward glorious disaster. The only thing he makes sure of
is that he’s never alone on his journey.
“The point is none of us had mellowed,” he added.
“We were back in there, tooth and claw right away.”
Tickets for Disastodrome! are $30, $15 for students. Contact the
Central Ticket Office at 310-825-2101 for more information.