The Importance of Geography

Two things are important to Pere Ubu, intellectually.

 The cliche; and geography.

 These ideas decide everything else.

Relocating the Argument

It is no good where we are.  Not at all.   The argument needs relocating.  Just a few blades of grass survive, if that.  Sticking out of the cracks between the broken paving. 

The Cliche

In ’Little Sister’, on 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest Thomas manages to say, or to sing, the word “Yeah” for by my count something approaching 40 times in a row; we hear it - it is repeated, it’s said once and again, where this is done without losing the feel of variation and continuity that music needs - it works as a kind of balancing act - and since it comes off - he nails it perfectly as one of the instruments of the rock canon: the cliche in the affirmative.  Yes, yes, yes; it is realised as a music and it is hilarious.  Of course what he really means is “No”.  But.  But what does “No” mean?

Homelessness (2)

Pere Ubu’s song textures, sounds, mike distortions, studio involutions - aesthetic foibles - guitar bumbles - tape loops - drum beatings advance the idea that we are homeless.  Everything says that we are not at home in the world.  Nothing else is presented.  We are homeless, we have no place to live, there is nowhere to live, nowhere that identifies the human.  Nothing else has meaning.  The opening track of 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest for example.  Or ‘Love Song’ from Why I Hate Women.  Or take any song at all.

They find a way of being at home in their homelessness.