Do not miss Rocket From The Tombs

Submitted by Norm Roulet on Sun, 07/09/2006 - 00:55.
07/26/2006 - 20:00
07/26/2006 - 23:30
Etc/GMT-4

While looking for song of the day Lyrics from Cleveland's greatest, Pere Ubu, I stumbled across the following amazing news on Ubu Projex - the cyber avant garage of Pere Ubu...

RFTT Returns!
After a successful writing session in Cleveland at the end of April Rocket From the Tombs will be playing shows in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, Hoboken, Boston, New Haven and Northampton MA at the end of July, and then Nashville & Atlanta at the beginning of Sept. The band is as before: David Thomas, Richard Lloyd, Cheetah Chrome, Craig Bell and Steve Mehlman.

I saw the 2003 first post-modern tour of TFTT and it was the best. I won't bother gushing on my own about this one - trust me or read more below and at the links and then get tickets to this show at the Beachland Ballroom ASAP as it will sell out... and I'll cover this one.

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RFTT 2003: Richard Lloyd, Craig Bell, David Thomas, Steve Mehlman and Cheetah Chrome.

Rocket From The Tombs existed for less than a year, played fewer than a dozen shows and was probably never seen by more than a few hundred people but it has over the decades since 1975, due to a frenetic trafficking in bootlegs, acquired an international status out of all proportion to its popularity.

When the band split in the summer of 1975, David Thomas and Peter Laughner went on to form Pere Ubu, taking along rock classics such as "Final Solution," "Life Stinks," and "30 Seconds Over Tokyo." Cheetah Chrome and John Madansky formed the Dead Boys, taking "Sonic Reducer," "Ain't It Fun," "Down In Flames," and several others.

In February 2003, for the first time in 27 years, the band played together at the Disastodrome Festival at UCLA, Los Angeles CA. Richard Lloyd from Television stepped in to complete the original two guitar attack. "An explosive, revelatory set," reported the Los Angeles Times.

In June 2003 Rocket toured 6 cities to huge acclaim.

David Fricke, editor of Rolling Stone, wrote, "No on else in American rock, underground or over, in 1974 and '75, was writing and playing songs this hard and graphic about being f**ked over and fighting mad. No one else is doing it now."

Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune wrote, "Rocket From the Tombs is not just the great lost proto-punk band of the '70s. It's one of the best bands of the 21st Century too."

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A cd of original source demo tapes and live material, The Day The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs (Smog Veil Records) was released in 2002.

The Wire said, "Blazing amazing trails, they deserve to be celebrated, not consigned to a historical footnote."

"Les Inrockuptibles said, "A record of great historical importance, envisaging the Punk-Rock revolution..... Furious songs full of tension and of a surprising modernity that deserve being regarded alongside the best songs of the MC5, Patti Smith, The Stooges or VU on the list of the seminal non-mainstream rock bands."

Billboard said, "It's flabbergasting stuff"

The Village Voice said, "The darkest, most desperately unforgiving sound."

In the wake of such effusive press a second US tour, Rocket Redux 2, was organized for November-December 2003 and an album of live in the studio versions of the set called Rocket Redux was released on Smog Veil Records on Feb 24 2004, in the USA, and on Glitterhouse in Europe and on Bomba, Jan 25 2004, in Japan. David Thomas explains:

"After the success of the June tour we decided to finish off the country with a western swing. After every show of the first tour we were asked for cds of the current band doing the songs. We decided to record the current set of material with the new band for sales as a concert merchandise only item. Richard Lloyd engineered, produced and mixed the new recordings at his studio over a couple lost weekends. Along the way we got excited about the outcome and decided to release it commercially."

Always a volatile union of incompatible individuals RFTT finished the Redux 2 Tour determined to never play together again. Already committed to a headline appearance at the Punk Kongress in Germany Sep 25 2004, though, it got together one more time and re-discovered its enthusiasm for each other. Other projects intervened but in 2006 they got together in Cleveland for a writing session - which went surprisingly well.

Ballroom
Wednesday
July 26th