Ep. 100 WELCOME TO OUR TOWN w/ Matt (Patreon)

Topics: Pere Ubu's The Tenement Year (1988) + Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1973)Guest: Matt (@afieldoflight)Think of all the houses... Gaze across the roofs of the tenement year....BISTRO CALIFORNIUM celebrates its 100th episode with this odyssey of a conversation about two technicolour masterpieces of nostalgia, romance and universal human sympathy, Pere Ubu's The Tenement Year, and Federico Fellini's Amarcord. Joined by fellow searcher and poetic soul, Matt, we examine album and movie as kindred snapshots of the human community in motionThe tracklist of The Tenement Year is as follows (taken from the 2007 Mercury reissue):1. Something's Gotta Give2. George Had a Hat3. Talk to Me4. Busman's Honeymoon5. Say Goodbye6. Universal Vibration7. Miss You8. Dream the Moon9. Rhythm King10. Thunder in the Mix11. The Hollow Earth12. We Have the Technology13. Postman Drove a Caddy14. The B-Side15. Miss You (Live)16. We Have the Technology (Live)17. The Hollow Earth (alt. mix)"You gotta feel sorryFor the guyOh no reason- just brother feelin'""Welcome to our townPeople swept alongPeople swept along and how""Bears are bestBears are bestBears at best at the zooPenguin will walk around like penguins will always do""I dropped down a wholeInto a Hollow EarthAnd woke up in a Land of ExtremesTo find the worst that could be:That everything would be just what it seems""As if a mountainside had learned to play Mendelssohn... Even when they make no literal sense, Ubu have the alluring and deceptive plasticity of a foreign language"- Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 1988"Pere Ubu are one of rock's and most vital cases. Well educated, from middle and upper middle class backgrounds, they arose from Cleveland, an area noted for the terminal desolation of its now abandoned industrial landscape. They coined labels for themselves such as 'industrial folk' and 'avant garage,' which neatly encapsulated their paradoxes. Pere Ubu were at rock's intellectual vanguard, harbouring ambitious and definite ideas about what they could be and do. Yet, as is often the case with rock's avant garde, there was a primitivism about their sound, as if they were returning rock to its first garage principles, as if they were imagining themselves to be the first musicians ever to take up rock's cudgels..."- David Stubbs, liner notes to 2007 releaseRead David Stubbs' liner notes here