R.I.P. David Thomas, aka Crocus Behemoth (Pere Ubu, Rocket from the Tombs, more...)
Where to start with this latest reminder of mortality...
David Thomas was the first ostensibly rock'n'roll voice I heard that really convinced me you can sound however the fuck you want to sound.
In 1986, I'd found Pere Ubu's debut LP, The Modern Dance (on the original Blank label, no less) sealed in a sale bin at the mall record store for 99 cents! (Also nabbed a sealed first Saints LP too. That was a good day. Also proof that our suburb had no taste. Apparently the store was clearing out a back room.)
Anyway, I'd already heard a bit of Pere Ubu, growing up in their hometown of Cleveland and all (albeit I was a tot during their birth). But hearing that whole album made me think about the bends R'n'R could take as much as seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey alone in a theater at age 12 made me rethink movies.
Ultimately discovering the pre-Pere Ubu, protopunk lynchpin, Rocket from the Tombs (that's David in the middle of the five up there) cemented not only Thomas' place in my musical heart, but the importance of Cleveland as punk ground zero. I've talked about that a lot in this blog, so you know.
Though it's worth adding that Thomas' sartorial sense was a thing to behold in found mag pix in Cleveland when I was a teen -- he seemed to go from Sun Ra acolyte to door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, from Beatnik poet to shlubby psych professor.
I first saw Thomas in Pere Ubu when they did the "Avant Garage" reunion tour in 1987, down at Peabody's in Cleveland's Flats even, not a 1/4 mile from where RFTT once practiced. Was a great show, as was a David Thomas & Two Pale Boys set I saw there a couple years later, wherein Thomas often seemed like a stand-up comedian on visit from Pluto -- his sense of humor was always something I thought got short shrift. Even his surliest retorts in interviews or onstage were laced with subsumed smirks.
Never saw him again until the incredible first RFTT U.S. reunion show in Columbus, OH, at Little Brothers in 2003, and in Cleveland a couple weeks later. Columbus was everything I'd hoped it could be -- older but energized and hearing songs from 4 of the original 5 members I never thought I'd hear. Oddly, the Cleveland show wasn't quite as great though more interesting in its way, as the band seemed a wee nervous with so much family and old friends in the crowd -- especially Thomas. For a man who has a legendary rep as a curmudgeon, it was almost sweet to see him smiling and tipping his hat here and there. Still and all, a great show.
Looking back, those shows in ways bookended my time as an Ohioan, as I moved to NYC in 2004. I guess I saw and heard all I'd needed to, via two Rocket from the Tombs shows that seemed sent form the punk gods as a boot to my behind. Hell, even David Thomas eventually left Cleveland. That's like one of the old Flats factories getting up and taking a plane to London.
I saw a later iteration of Pere Ubu in Brooklyn circa early 2010s. It was solid and I'm glad I went. David was starting to seem sickly-ish around then, if still mewly menacing.
Until the very end, Thomas' presence was the startling focal point of any stage he trod upon. In the early punk days, lead singers were usually scrawny early 20-somethings jumping around in ripped jeans and a tee. Thomas though appeared as a preternaturally stern, 40-something principal, his searing eyes looking like he was about to banish you to the detention hall -- then eyelids pinching down closed fourfold, a facial expression of "The horror, the horror...." It all flew (or stewed) in the face of any seeming "punk template" that might've still been being developed into the 1980s, so that even by the time I finally saw him live, he seemed light years into the future of what the hell a "lead singer" might evolve into 40 years hence.
An event I remember pretty well was a really cool, free talk between David and rock historian Greil Marcus at a New School classroom on some random Wednesday night in 2009. The small crowd sat in desks while David and Marcus sat at the teacher's table and pontificated over hidden history, Ubu projects, Cleveland, the end of Industrial Age America, and even a few laughs.
I only met and tried to talk to David Thomas a few times over the years, and he was cordial enough and strange, as desired. He always struck me as the kind of person who assumes most people are, shall we say, intellectually lazy; and when he is sidled up next to one who isn't, like Marcus, he loosens up. That was a great night, pre-cellphone for me, no pix, just mind images...
I recall Thomas announced in some interview around the early 1990s, I believe, that there are too many bands, people should stop forming bands. Once Pere Ubu really ratcheted up again in the 2000s, sprouting around in different years and different iterations until his death, the whole thing turned into a project, constantly posting live shows, reissuing records, recording new ones, new RFTT albums even. So while technically he wasn't forming new bands, he sure was Dr. Frankensteining the hell out of 'em.
Of course now I'm bummed I skipped the last time Pere Ubu came to NYC, about a year ago. Though I heard from a friend who saw them a few times as far back as 1978 that it wasn't that good, as Thomas basically sat and complained the whole time -- which in and of itself might have been another intriguing experience from the man who started his career as a dive bar bouncer while writing for Scene Magazine in Cleveland, under the name of Crocus Behemoth. That I started my meager attempts at art-spew at Scene Magazine I uneasily take as some kind of connection.
What I soaked up from David Thomas' artistic endeavors was admittedly mostly from his era of living and working in Cleveland and NYC. Though I love the 1989 Pere Ubu album, Cloudland, as much as any, by that time, David was an ex-pat, and understandably so. America was never going to give a guy like that the barrel of back slaps he deserved. Not that he cared.
That knowing slant and dank noise was David Thomas' legacy for so many fans around the world, possibly most absorbed by his Northeast Ohio fans -- summed up perfectly for me by this interview quote from a Guardian article:
"Everything from Cleveland was doomed. Rocket from the Tombs is totally inconsequential and irrelevant. That is the power of Cleveland. Embrace, my brothers, the utter futility of ambition and desire.”
R.I.P. David Thomas, and thanks.
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Pere Ubu (Official) Facebook obit
Cleveland.com obit
Check out this good interview from 2006, on the Bored Out blog.
From early Pere Ubu days; not sure of the photographer; if you know, please let me know so I can credit.
