Will Pere Ubu ever play the U.S. again?
We have by no means dumped the US. Our best market is the US. The US is big. We are small. Pere Ubu is not now and nor has it ever been a viable commercial venture. We won’t sleep on floors, we won’t tour endlessly and we’re embarrassed by self-promotion. Add to that a laissez-faire attitude to the mechanics of career advancement and a demanding artistic agenda and you’ve got a recipe for real failure. That has been our one significant success to this date: we are the longest lasting, most disastrous commercial outfit to ever appear in rock n roll. No one can come close to matching our loss to longevity ratio. And if that wasn’t enough, consider this. Not only are we too art for the pop world, we are too pop for the art world! So we can’t even pick up those big state-subsidized, art-welfare checks. And – wait we’re not done! – students don’t like us and – frankly – we don’t like them. So we can’t make out on the fat college circuit either. Who, then, makes business with us? Record comp
