Not much is ever made about Mayo Thompson’s
influence on David Thomas. The classic that would spring to any mind versed in
the work of either and/or Pere Ubu is the song ‘Loop’ on Art of Walking, for which the two sing a duet with singularly obtuse
lyrics asking, amongst other things, ‘what’s a swarm of gnats to do with a pile
of rocks?’ Not the question on everyone’s lips hitherto or ever after, but
nonetheless related to a very enticing loping heavy reggae bassline and
splashes of crazy guitar. (I note also that there is a line in ‘Big Dreams’ –
‘don’t look under the rock’ – which is, bizarrely, presented in the lyrics on
the original album in inverted commas; I doubt this is a direct reference to
‘Loop’, however, and would point also to ‘Crush this Horn, Pt. 2’ which is two
tracks later on the record and which explain that ‘it’ (the horn, presumably)
‘crawled out from under a rock, you see.’
As mentioned, this first David Thomas solo
album comes between the last two Pere Ubu albums of the band’s original
iteration (after which, by some measures, the Pere Ubu aesthetic and ideal
carries through Thomas’ solo recordings and is made whole again with the
restitution of the band name in 1987). Thompson was a member of Pere Ubu for
both Art of Walking and Song of the Bailing Man; it might be
argued also that both these albums were crafted by their newest member, so that
Art of Walking is Thompson’s Pere
Ubu, and Song of the Bailing Man is
Anton Fier’s. Perhaps - ? This just occurred to me. Certainly, the former is
extremely dense and a tough nut to crack, and the latter is as much of a pop
album as the group had ever made. The ridiculous decision to leave Thompson’s
song ‘The Use of a Dog’ – possibly the best track on the album, or perhaps I’m
biased – off the box set of the first five Pere Ubu albums suggests that
somewhere along the line someone definitely felt that whosever album Song of the Bailing Man was, it wasn’t
Mayo Thompson’s.
Sound
of the Sand falls between the two, in so many ways:
as an experimental work, as a container of pop songs, as a showcase for Thomas’
lyrical and singing talents. Mayo Thompson plays on the last track on Sound of the Sand, but his involvement
is scant even there. More important is the intrusion of his sharp intellect
onto Thomas’ spongey field of ideas. ‘Big Dreams’ is an example of this.
Lyrically, it has all the elements of a great Red Crayola non-sequiteur: the
jamming together of concepts, including some clichés hijacked for new settings
(‘Harry burst the bubble yesterday’) and an endpoint punchline which grabs the
reader and forces her/him to recast everything s/he has just heard on a second
listen. Spoiler: the punchline is that the dreams are ‘too big, they’re not
real’. Further analysis might lead one to discussing the track in terms of its
reference to ‘reality’, but also to ambition – the music industry? The individual
in the material world? The seeker of religious solace?
The mention of ‘Harry’ is an early
example of Thomas’ move into namechecking (presumably) fictitious characters
from song to song; Harry is the ‘bailing man’, too, as mentioned on the song of
the same name (but not the album;
‘The Song of the Bailing Man’ is a track on More
Places Forever: ‘Harry
had a notion to bail out the ocean/ so under the clouds he did stand with his
bucket in his hand.’ Harry also bursts the bubble in this
song, too).
The track is a musical roller coaster,
naturally, which almost prefigures that popular frenetic-to-almost-non-existently-slow
pattern which would be made ubiquitous by thrash bands of the following decade,
but which probably owes its existence to the useful practice, in the early 80s,
of treating the complete history of popular music as a melting pot from which
half-melted ideas could be stuck together with impunity and free of accusations
of appropriation (except appropriation for the good). I hear some aspects of
free jazz, trad jazz, Chicago funk, and calypso. I’d have to say that, all
things considered, the sum is not quite better than the potential of such a
mix, and the end result arguably ends up feeling a little pat. This is
particularly true because of the clinical, rote feel of the arrangement (not
the tune, so much, as its stop-start-stop rapid fire).
Phillip Moxham and David Thomas are the two
musicians credited with writing the track, and it’s one of the few examples to
my knowledge of Phllip Moxham writing a song (I’m assuming he is completely
responsible for the music here). Moxham was, as is well known, a member of the
Young Marble Giants – I think he might have a co-write on their one album from
the year before this one; he also, I glean from Wikipedia, went on to play bass
in the Communards and Everything But the Girl. Once again, one can only speculate
but it’s my assumption that – just as the Red Crayola album Kangaroo? is something of a ‘supergroup’
based around the Rough Trade label’s stable of artists, so too was the decision
to assemble the Pedestrians an ad-hoc collection of interesting people; perhaps
just people who were hanging around the label, or were available that week, or
needed some session fees (assuming RT paid them). It may have been more crafted
than this; it’s notable that, while Thomas went on to retain Fier and (Richard)
Thompson for the second Pedestrians album, Moxham and Thornton – two players
who make this such an intriguing and multifaceted work – were absent, as was
Ravenstine who would however return for subsequent releases.
Ultimately, then, a fine 2:20 beginning to
side 2 of the album, a little scattershot and bizarre, but by this stage that
is what one has come to expect. Certainly, a good setup for track 2.
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