6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Is THE Essential Pere Ubu Collection, November 13, 2001
This review is from: Datapanik in the Year Zero (Audio CD)
Forget buying all those early (1975-1982) Pere Ubu albums on CD individually. You'll save money and come out way ahead by investing in this box set. It has all the original studio albums right up to their first break up. That's 6 albums, here presented as 3 "twofers" - 2 albums per CD. It also has a live disc of previously unreleased recordings, and disc 5 is devoted entirely to side projects of all the band members, which I for one found to be very interesting. Most of these side bands are pretty obscure, and the quality of the music on this fifth disc is pretty spotty, but there are some gems to be found here and I doubt you'd have much luck finding most of these recordings anywhere else. If you think you're enough of a Pere Ubu fan that you'd want to have, say, 3 or 4 of their early albums on CD, then take my advise and get this box set. It won't cost you much more than those single discs would have, but you'll get a heck of a lot more for you're money.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is a story of Cleveland..., November 19, 2005
This review is from: Datapanik in the Year Zero (Audio CD)
This is a story of Cleveland, and how more than a few of its residents were driven insane by the economic depression and the bleakness of the post-industrial wasteland that was the "rust-belt" of the late 60's and early-mid 70's. Having nothing better to do, they just made music, with most likely nary a clue as to how influential their experimental tinkerings would become to a whole generation of musical revolutionaries.
I had always heard the name "Pere Ubu" mentioned by many modern musical artists (and many of my personal favorites) as being a big influence, but I never actually heard any of their songs until I got satellite radio a few years ago. I was immediately intrigued by songs like "Final Solution", "Nonalignment Pact", and "Ubu Dance Party", and then I found this box set available that contained all of their early work, so I figured, what the heck? At first, I was overwhelmed by radically diverse song structures and bizarre sounds, not to mention Dave Thomas' crazed (to quote Steven Grant of the Trouser Press) "plebian warble", and I worried that I had made a big mistake. However, after a few listens, things started to gel a bit and I was able to finally get my head around the sheer brilliance and inventiveness of this groundbreaking work. Now, here's my breakdown of the 5 discs in this box set:
Disc A contains the original Datapanik EP and The Modern Dance LP. This is easily the most accessible of their work and is definitely the place you should start if you have no familiarity with this band. The song structures are pretty straight-forward in the garage-punk sense, but there is still plenty of the idiosyncrasies (both vocal and instrumental) that would virtually take over in their later work. Everything here is uniformly great, except for maybe "Sentimental Journey" and "The Book is on the Table", which aren't actual songs as much as just experiments in sound and mood (all their albums have these "soundscape" pieces - they're not really filler, but they're not music in the traditional sense either).
Disc B contains the Dub Housing and New Picnic Time LP's, and this has become my favorite of the 5 discs over time. The key here is "OVER TIME", as the music on this disc was, at first, incomprehensibly bizarre to me, and it appeared to be the nonsensical ravings of lunatics trapped in an insane asylum with musical instruments and recording equipment. I gave it a chance, though, and ended up being greatly rewarded for my perseverance. Once you "get it", the amalgamation of blues, jazz, rock, pop, and downright performance art fleshed out with reckless abandon is just amazing. The humor and the horror, along with a myriad of other emotional nuances, always leaves something new to be discovered each time I listen. Once again, everything is great, with "Thriller!" and "A Small Dark Cloud" serving as the quasi-ambient soundscape interludes. My favorite song is probably "Small Was Fast" - that one just kills me. The first two discs of this set have actually become two of my favorite CDs of ALL TIME!
For me, things wane a little bit on disc C, which includes the material from Art of Walking and Song of the Bailing Man. I like about half the songs here, with most of those coming from Art of Walking. The music from Song of the Bailing Man seems a little staid and forced when compared to their earlier stuff. This is probably my least favorite disc of the 5, but some of you may find this almost as accessible as the material on disc A, especially if you end up getting more into Pere Ubu's smoother, jazzier side.
Disc D contains selections from two live recordings, one in 1978 and the other in 1981. The sound is bootleg quality, and this is not meant to be a "best of" live recordings (as Dave Thomas explains in the vocal liner notes: "that's life, that's art"), but the performances are actually quite good and offer sometimes radically different takes on the studio versions of the songs.
Disc E is quite interesting as it is made up entirely of side projects and other Cleveland bands belonging to the Pere Ubu extended family. I didn't have any expectations for this one, but I actually ended up liking about two thirds of the songs here. I'm especially fond of the raw, garage-rock of the songs by Friction, Tripod Jimmie, Rocket from the Tombs, and the Mirrors. You can really hear how this lot were influenced by earlier pioneers such as the Velvet Underground and Television.
So, in conclusion, for those of you who are interested in exploring the roots of where a lot of today's better music comes from, or if you just want a unique musical experience, you should consider this Pere Ubu box set. Be warned, though, this is some pretty challenging stuff, and you'll have to uphold your end of the bargain by doing some work yourself - this is not ear candy that's going to reveal itself for what it is on the first (or even second) listen. However, if you give it a chance, I think you'll be deeply rewarded. Why not 5 stars? Well, I think it's almost impossible for these large box sets to ever warrant 5 stars because there's always going to be stuff that you don't like or just aren't into, but I don't think that's their purpose anyway. To me, these types of compilations are meant to be like smorgasbords, where you pick out what you like from a vast selection of delicacies, some of which you can't find anywhere else. Have I made you hungry? Well, then, dig in!
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