Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance

My version of this is the very first CD issue of the album, which would have been, I think, late 1987 or early 1988 (around the time the band re-formed). And my copy is number 129 in a limited edition of a thousand.

It still sounds incredibly fresh and urgent. It's not until half way through what I still think of as Side Two that there's a track that doesn't grab me. I especially love the random-sounding stabs and squawks of analogue synth noise that disrupt the structure of the songs.

I went to see Pere Ubu just two weeks ago at London's horrible Mean Fiddler. They played the first two tracks from The Modern Dance — Non-Alignment Pact and the title track — but, for me, the gig never quite caught fire. David Thomas likes to disrupt things and create a sense of unease by complaining about the mic stand, but the audience has grown old with him and knows that he never doesn't complain about the mic stand.

MusicBrainz entry for this album