Event

Pere Ubu

The Coed Jail! tour will draw on material from the two recent Pere Ubu box set releases, Architecture Of Language, 1979-1982 and Elitism For The People, 1975-1978 (Fire Records). Tracks from the debut album Modern Dance through to their the scariest album ever recorded, New Picnic Time, will be played in a fast-moving hour and a half long set.

The Pere Ubu project was supposed to be an end, not a beginning. Assembled in August 1975 to be the Crosby Stills Nash & Young of the Cleveland music underground, the plan was to record one, maybe two singles and exist no more. Within months, however, those first self-produced records were being snapped up in London, Paris, Manchester, New York and Minneapolis. Pere Ubu was changing the face of rock music. Over the next 37 years they defined the art of cult; refined the voice of the outsider; and inspired countless others.

Pere Ubu make a music that is a disorienting mix of midwestern groove rock, "found" sound, analog synthesizers, falling-apart song structures and careening vocals. It is a mix that has mesmerized critics, musicians and fans for decades.

Singer David Thomas named the band after the protagonist of Ubu Roi, a play by Frenchman Alfred Jarry.