This was not unforeseen, as anyone who had seen David Thomas in the last dozen or so years could attest to his declining health. Yet is still bad news that packs a harsh sting. The person who steered the ship of the mighty Pere Ubu for nearly 50 years has died yesterday. Possibly curtailing the Avant Garage legacy of that most peerless and exciting band. As much as we enjoy bands taking the choosing the difficult path of non-compromise over taking the easy ways out, which beckon constantly like sirens on the rocks, few groups embodied this tenet more strongly than Pere Ubu.

Mr. Thomas has not had kidneys for some years and had to rely on dialysis three times per week to remain alive. Even so, his two other scrapes with death found him dead and resuscitated twice in recent years. Making the title of the last Ubu studio album, “The Long Goodbye,” a knowing sardonic joke. But as with all things Pere Ubu, a joke with the bitter tang of truth in its delivery. Having escaped death twice already, he was already on the right side of a bad thing. Until yesterday.

Thomas was making Proto-Punk music with his first band, Rocket From The Tombs, at roughly the same time as Ramones began venturing outward from their respective basements in Queens. But this happened with Thomas in the unique pressure cooker of mid-70s Rust Belt Cleveland. A truly unique locale that positioned it as the opposite pole on the punk spectrum that saw New York City as its opposite. Both cities had economic hardships, but NYC still had even faded glamour. The same can’t be said for Cleveland at that time.

Having been a step or two ahead of Punk, it only made sense that by 1978, Thomas was already making Post-Punk well in advance of the UK acts to definitively follow. The astonishing Ubu debut album, The Modern Dance, arrived three months prior to Magazine’s “Real Life” and nine months ahead of PiL’s “First Issue.” Two albums that were said to spark the Post-Punk wave.

Pere Ubu managed a five album run from 1978 to 1982 before fissuring into Dave Thomas solo projects. Of these albums, I only ever owned “The Modern Dance,” but that didn’t mean that I didn’t also buy “New Picnic Time” and deem it impenetrable; exiling it to the discard pile. Still, I would give any Pere Ubu album a shot at my ears. My policy for decades is to buy every one I see. As I’ve found so much reward on all of the other volumes in the Record Cell.

By 1987, Thomas had a “solo” band comprised of Pere Ubu mainstays so it made sense to reactivate the brand. They had a advocate in the great A+R agent David Bates who signed them to his resurrected Fontana label for an admirable four album run where the clay of Pere Ubu was shaped into its most commercially beguiling form possible. The music was still suffused with a left fireld sensibility but this was balanced by elements of classic Pop existing within that framework cheek by jowl. For a fantastic rush of the familiar and the obscure.

Of course, any band would stand apart from the mainstream simply by virtue of the singing of David Thomas. He’s got a unique high-pitched yelping style that belied his once 300 pound form. It’s a voice that belongs on acetates recorded by Alan Lomax in the nineteen twenties; not on spiky Art Rock. And it speaks volumes that a magazine like Psychology Today would feature an interview with David Thomas! [hint: it’s not about music]

Following their Fontana Years. Pere Ubu went off grid for a career that’s lasted up until right now; recording albums for various labels while David Thomas would still pursue his own projects concurrently during periods of Ubu inactivity. The way that various members of the Ubu and solo activity managed to combine and re-combine in new ways over the years also brings to mind the “fractalization” period of King Crimson. It spoke to a desire for freedom from convention and expectation common to both bands.

I was lucky enough to have seen Pere Ubu on two occasions. Their 2002 US tour coincided with a date in Chapel Hill on my 39th birthday so we made the journey. When I met my loved one, she was trying out new bands in the Record Cell and thank goodness I had bought the CD-5 of “Waiting For Mary” from “Cloudland” at a record show in the 80s. For years it was my only Pere Ubu CD as I liked it but its evidence was inconclusive. She started buying the full Fontana albums and I was alerted to the notion that this was a band I needed to get behind more fully, thanks to her. That’s not the only time that’s happened in my life! [see also: Nits, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jonathan Richman]

We had a great time seeing Pere Ubu and were big fans of the sardonic comedy that Thomas dispensed with in between the songs. That same sparkling intelligence and dark with also touched the music. Investing it with a multiplicity of vibes that combined in rewarding ways. We wouldn’t see Pere Ubu again until eleven years later; this time on my 50th birthday.

They were one of the acts playing at the Hopscotch Festival that year in Raleigh. With John Cale also appearing there we had to go! We had seen a simply breathtaking Cale performance in Asheville in 2006. But I ignored every other act on the schedule since I was primarily seeing friends who had come to Raleigh for my 50th. It’s a great thing that Pere Ubu were playing astonishingly great music from their superb “The Lady From Shanghai” album of that year, because the bass on John Cale’s PA was so harrowing, we walked out on the performance. Without Pere Ubu we would have spent $250 on tickets for nothing. Pere Ubu gave us our money’s worth.

The difference in Thomas’ apparent vitality from 2002 to 2013 was readily apparent. Though he had lost much weight, he was performing sitting down in the latter show. I’m not sure when he lost his kidneys but he was obviously reserving his strength. He lost none of his steely intelligence, though. My story with the band ended there. “The Lady From Shanghai” was the latest Pere Ubu album I’ve managed to buy. Though each subsequent album is on my want list. As most of what I buy is physically in front of me, I’m at the mercy of the market forces that conspire to leave me stranded in a music desert. Still, new albums have issued until 2023’s “Trouble On Big Beat Street.”

Thomas himself helmed the jaw-droppingly deep Ubu Projex website that once can truly get lost in. Pete Ubu was always seeking to deconstruct the barriers of notoriety between them and their audience. Thomas put energies into podcasts, video channels, and a wealth of archival releases that can stun greenhorns like me with only a dozen or so discs in their Record Cell. Their Bandcamp page is packed with archival recordings from the full breadth of their career.

Last year they lost their amazing synthesizer and Theremin player, Gagarin, to cancer. But his contributions were nonetheless earmarked for inclusion, to whatever degree possible, for the next Pere Ubu album; due this fall. With David Thomas gone, it remains to be seen who can helm the band’s legacy to the point of completing their last album. But I assume that Thomas had deputized someone to carry out his wishes should he expire unexpectedly. At least I fervently hope so! I need to fill in the gaps of my Pere Ubu collection and look forward to one more bracing tonic that only Pere Ubu could deliver. Condolences are in order for his family, friends, and bandmates during this time of huge loss.

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