Pere Ubu Singer Useless at 71

David Thomas, the howling lead singer of long-running Cleveland-bred post-punk rockers Pere Ubu has died at 71. The band introduced the information on its Fb web page on Wednesday (April 23), revealing that the chief of the group — in addition to their equally noisesome precursor, Rocket From the Tombs — had died after an unspecified “lengthy sickness.”

The tribute added, “On Wednesday, April 23 2025, he died in his house city of Brighton & Hove [in the U.K.], along with his spouse and youngest step-daughter by his facet. MC5 have been taking part in on the radio. He’ll finally be returned to his house, the farm in Pennsylvania, the place he insisted he was to be ‘thrown within the barn.’”

The group famous that Thomas had been engaged on a brand new album along with his band, conscious that it could be his final. “We are going to endeavour to proceed with mixing and finalising the brand new album in order that his final music is out there to all. Except for that, he left instruction that the work ought to proceed to catalog all of the tapes from reside reveals through the official bandcamp web page,” they stated, including that the singer’s autobiography was “practically accomplished” and that they may end it for him. They ended with a quote from Thomas, which they stated, “sums up who he was higher than we will”: “My identify is David F–king Thomas… and I’m the lead singer of the most effective f–king rock n roll band on the planet.”

David Lynn Thomas was born in Miami on June 14, 1953 and commenced his profession in rock because the lead singer of the short-lived proto-punk Cleveland band Rocket From the Tombs after a stint writing for the Cleveland Scene different weekly newspaper beneath a wide range of aliases, together with Crocus Behemoth. Although they reveled in obscurity throughout their authentic one-year run from 1974-1975, and by no means launched an album, the band’s distorted, frenzied sound — impressed by Detroit punk godfathers the MC5 and The Stooges — was a precursor to the worldwide punk revolution that exploded within the U.S. and U.Okay. within the mid-Seventies.

After the band’s break up, two members, guitarist Gene “Cheetah Chrome” O’Connor and drummer Johnny “Johnny Biltz” Madansky, went on to kind legendarily shambolic Cleveland punk band the Useless Boys. Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner teamed as much as launch the artier, spikier Pere Ubu, whose identify wast a riff on the outré nineteenth century French play Ubu Roi.

The avant garde group impressed by the sound collage methods of musique concrète launched its debut single, “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” in late 1975 on Thomas’ indie label, Hearthan Data. After a handful of follow-up singles, their debut album, The Fashionable Dance, dropped in 1978, signaling a purposeful deep-dive into the noise pool from leap on album-opener “Non-Alignment Pact,” which begins with 20 seconds of ear-piercing tones. Throughout a interval when such tender rock air bubbles as Terry Jacks’ “Seasons within the Solar” and America’s “Tin Man” have been topping the charts, Thomas’ unhinged howl and saxophone/keyboard participant Allen Ravenstine’s free jazz strangulated stabs and otherworldly synth tones have been an astringent antidote to mainstream AM radio fluff.

With a three-guitar assault mixed with Thomas’ yelping vocals and his very un-punk like insistence on carrying go well with jackets and a tie on stage, the band cranked out a collection of influential, although little-heard-at-the-time albums over the subsequent 4 years. The LPs included 1978’s basic, Dub Housing and 1979’s New Picnic Time, experimental, chalkboard-scratching noise bombs that helped encourage future acolytes from Sonic Youth to the Pixies and Gang of 4. With a consistently rotating group of gamers surrounding Thomas — co-founder Laugher left after the band’s first few singles and died in 1977 of pancreatic most cancers — the band launched three extra albums, 1979’s New Picnic Time, 1980’s The Artwork of Strolling and 1982’s Tune of a Bailing Man earlier than breaking apart.

Thomas continued his experimental journey on a collection of solo albums along with his bands the Pedestrians and and Picket Birds within the Nineteen Eighties, earlier than reforming Pere Ubu in 1987 for the recording of The Tenement Yr, which leaned in a distinctly extra pop route (at the least in comparison with the band’s earlier work), adopted by 1989s’s Cloudland. Pere Ubu continued into the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s, releasing a string of albums together with 1995’s Ray Gun Suitcase, 2002 St. Arkansas and their nineteenth, and remaining, studio effort, 2023’s Bother on Huge Beat Avenue.

In between Pere Ubu initiatives, Smith stayed busy with solo albums, Rocket From the Tombs reunions and experimental theater initiatives.

Take a look at a few of Smith’s joyful noise beneath.