Formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975, after the breakup of Rocket From the Tombs, (Other members of RFTT went on to become The Dead Boys) Pere Ubu was at the forefront of the punk rock / new wave movement. Taking their name from a character in a French play, (Roi Ubu by Alfred Jarry), Pere Ubu created an eclectic, revolutionary sound they called "Avant-Garage". Lead singer David Thomas says the term was "a joke invented to have something to give journalists when they yelp for a neat soundbite or pidgeonhole."
Of their second single, "Final Solution" (backed with "Cloud 149"), one scribe wrote that Ubu's "call for a 'final solution' was the cry of teen angst run down in the decaying rust belt of America, and unlike the British punks who were looking around England the same year, seeing no future, and hating what they saw, Ubu reveled in it." (They would rarely perform this song after some listeners misinterpreted it as being associated with the Nazi final solution.)
Pere Ubu: Final Solution
Good stuff; I never have known much about Pere Ubu. What yeat was that?
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