Live Review

Long Live Pere Ubu! – Classic Grand, Glasgow

• 22nd Feb 2010

Given the critical rehabilitation of such previously scoffed-at genres as metal and prog in recent years, the rock opera currently stands as one of credible rock’s last taboos. Associated primarily with the bloated pomposity of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and The Who’s Tommy, it might seem an unlikely structure for Pere Ubu to work within; this, after all, is a band known for their combination of hard-edged three-chord simplicity with an unashamedly intellectualised and subversive approach to rock convention. In fact, tonight’s show – a variant on a project premiered in London in 2008 – demonstrates that it is precisely those qualities which enable the band to reveal some of the unexplored aesthetic and conceptual possibilities of the much-maligned theatrical rock format.

Showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival (presumably justified by the incorporation of animations by The Brothers Quay, although these feel somewhat incidental to the action), the show is an interpretation of Alfred Jarry’s legendary 1896 play Ubu Roi, from which the band take their name. Front man David Thomas plays (among other characters) the eponymous Pere Ubu, King of Poland, a greedy, infantile and deluded leader, with the band playing various minions. This tale of hubristic folly and corruption, which prompted a riot at its Paris premiere, still bears resonances in contemporary politics; thus in terms of content the performance has a satirical weight rare within rock music. It also illustrates Thomas’ dismissal of ‘rockism’, the uncritical acceptance of rock’s clichés and cult of celebrity, which he has argued in interviews to be behind the near-complete demise of mainstream rock’s subversive potential since the early seventies.

What makes tonight’s show most enjoyable, though, is not the narrative but the performative approach. While a project like The Wall signals the neutralisation of rock’s libratory potential in its rigid approach to structure and performance, Pere Ubu understand the value of spontaneity and improvisation. The show is in many ways shambolic, but knowingly so: lines are repeatedly forgotten or delivered in the wrong voice, ‘characters’ suddenly become ‘band members’ again and berate each other for mistakes, and Thomas occasionally lurches to the edge of the stage to apologise for the chaotic nature of the piece. Yet it is this sense of witnessing a process or exploration, rather than a static artefact, which suggests that the potential for rock to be genuinely thrilling can be brought out by this kind of approach. In challenging the boundaries between rock and theatre, or between spontaneous and scripted performance, tonight offers a new twist on the philosophy that has underpinned a thirty-five year career: that cultural taboos are there to be challenged.

The event is part of a ‘Music and Film’ strand within the Glasgow Film Festival: other upcoming events area listed at [link].