Dreams Don't Look Out Of Reach

There still might be several inches of snow on the ground here, and of course, misery abounds, but Cleveland's got one thing nobody else has: the home of Pere Ubu. And last night at the Beachland Ballroom, the iconic band delivered a hometown treat, playing their first album, 1978's The Modern Dance, in its entirety. Who'd want to live anywhere else?

I'm not sure if front man David Thomas's heart was completely in it (he said the band was only doing this for the Beachland's tenth anniversary and "for a lotta money," and as for all the banging and scraping of weird things he did on the original recording, "I don't do that stuff anymore"), but a three-quarter Crocus heart is still pretty amazing. Thomas, sporting a buttoned-up dark raincoat the entire night, which made you leery he might flash the audience at any time, looked great, as he's more slimmed down than I've ever seen him. Crocus Big-boned, not Behemoth, maybe. Instead of looking like a neurotic/possibly psychotic Jackie Gleason prowling the stage, Thomas, now almost svelte, and grayer and balder, seemed to amble the stage with a world-weary perplexity, a strange amalgam of Lenin, Brimley, Nofziger, Ives, Huston, Davignon, and Hackman. And while some sound issues certainly disturbed him, muddying up his vocals at times, he seemed to be in a good and fittingly nostalgic mood, offering interesting "tidbits": the lyrics to "Laughing" were ripped off from the movie Badlands; "Chinese Radiation" was inspired by the "fact" that Cleveland in the late 60s contained more Maoists than anywhere outside of China; Sting once told him, in a squeaky voice: "I really dig your band"; "and he really sounds like that," Thomas added.

Despite the fact that the only other old-time member of the band playing last night was guitarist Tom Herman, it was almost like being transported back to 1978. After opening with the always seismic "Final Solution," the band played the entire Modern Dance album, then came out for encores of "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," "Heart of Darkness," My Dark Ages," and "Heaven," a song Thomas said could have made Ubu UB40 if they'd only repeated it eighteen times. Delivered with a little less mania and power than back in 1978, maybe, the songs still make you scratch your head and wonder why nobody seems to be making music this challenging, informed, smart, and yes, even artful, that still rocks so deliriously, anymore.

A great night to be in Cleveland. Thanks, David. And Josh and Emily too.

Pere Ubu-Heaven