Rocket From The Tombs 2/23/03

By Colin Tappe

"Today is February 23rd, 2003, and tonight I am
going to see Rocket From The Tombs." I kept
repeatedly telling myself that, trying to make sense
of the whole situation. The phrase echoed in my head
all day, over and over again while driving up to L.A.
with Chris, a friend and long time Pere Ubu fan, over
and over again while flipping through the dollar bins
of the best record stores L.A. has to offer (an
activity itself worthy of an article twice the length
o' this one), over and over again while taking my
seat, fourth row back, slightly to the left in the
Freud Playhouse located on the lovely UCLA campus. Asmuch as I told myself what I was in store for, it
didn't really make sense 'til 8:00pm, when Rocket From The Tombs took the stage and struck the first note.perhaps some background information is in order for
those uninformed and uninitiated with the glorious and
cryptic splendor (no, they're not the ones who
released the "Money Talks" LP on Metal Blade) that is
Rocket From The Tombs: RFTT started around '74 in
Cleveland Ohio, and for the most part consisted of
Dave Thomas, AKA Crocus Behemoth, Peter Laughner,
Craig Bell, John Madansky, AKA Johnny Blitz, and Gene
O'Connor, AKA Cheetah Chrome. They gigged around
Cleveland for about a year, playing shows with the
likes of Electric Eels, Styrenes, and outta towners
Television, and would play a few radio shows promoting
not only their group, but the "do it yourself"
attitude in general. Rocket From The Tombs would
split up around late '75, without any album or single
left behind, and only a handful of recordings of live
gigs and rehearsals in the hands of the band members
and the few and the proud who were actually There.
Johnny and Gene would go on to form the Dead Boys, and
Peter and David would go on to form Pere Ubu. A
majority of Rocket From The Tombs' tunes would become
the bulk of those two groups' early repertoires, and
in time these songs would become legendary relics from
the late 70s punk era. We're talking stuff like '30
Seconds Over Tokyo', 'Final Solution', 'Life Stinks'
(all nabbed by Pere Ubu), 'Sonic Reducer', 'Ain't It
Fun', 'What Love Is' (nabbed by Dead Boys) and tons
more. However there were a few great classics
abandoned by Rocket From The Tombs ('So Cold',
'Muckracker', 'Read It & Weep', etc.) which would be
lost forever.That is, if it weren't for a select
handful of rock & roll recluses who've bravely taken
up the daunting task of keeping Rocket From The Tombs
legacy alive via bootlegs and tape trading.
See, a majority of groups get forgotten. They break
up, and no one cares, and even if they do leave some
sort of mass produced evidence of existence behind,
it's ignored, and becomes the fodder those
aforementioned dollar bins are made of. Some groups
(The Velvet Underground, for instance), acquire a sort
of hush and murmur whenever their name is mentioned,
and their albums get reissued and eventually cared
about by a relatively large (and even then, pretty
small, in the grand scheme of things) amount of
people. Other groups become total obscure footnotes,
hunted and sought after only by a handful of nerdy
severely socially retarded collector types (any Rapt
fans in the audience? Akutt Innleggelse, anyone?).
In this, the great posthumous age, where retro-chic
justifies and demands the reissued archival
collections of every nameless garage group who ever
stumbled into a studio (*ahem* JOHN'S CHILDREN WERE
NOT THAT FUCKING GOOD!!!!), a lot of bands are finding
themselves nicely nestled between the two sects, their
namesake finally snatched from the sarlac pit of "Who?
Never heard of 'em?" and elevated to the near godlike
and once ever elusive "Oh yeah, I've seen that name
around, what did those guys sound like?" state. Ain't
it great that Electric Eels, Liliput, and Zachary
Thaks are finally getting their day in the sun?
So where does Rocket From The Tombs fit into all of
this? Well, since RFTT never recorded anything
intended to be released proper, the fact that they're
even mentioned, let alone cared about by even that
ever-luvin' small handful of sexless recluses defies
all laws of posthumous rock & roll nature. See,
there's this very, very minute, tiny, practically
non-existent percentage of broken up bands who REFUSE
to be ignored, and truth be known can't even help it.
Hell, the members obviously didn't care enough when
the group was around to document and release the music
they made, but sometimes, and I can't stress enough
the rarity of this occurrence, the music's importance
transcends the group itself, the members being mere
pawns in the cosmic channeling of THE RAW POWER.
Perhaps like a mother who dies giving birth, the
creation becomes too much for the creator to take, and
they simply don't know what to do with what they have?
Think groups like Screamers, or Siege, and it could
even be said the pre-'74 Modern Lovers (though the
demos which make up '76's "Modern Lovers" make a
convincing enough debut LP, if you ignore the
circumstances and intent surrounding their recording),
groups who, for whatever reason, didn't feel it was
meant to be for them to make a record in their time,
but whose creative power, thankfully enough, was
caught by the few who, again, were There, and whose
legacy has been preserved over time only by oral
tradition, and tape-hiss riddled bootlegs, scant
remnants of a creativity that was PURE.
See, that kind of success you can't fake. That's the
kind of success you don't get by being kitschy,
"pretty good", or even by putting forth legitimate
effort (In rock & roll? Imagine that!). That's the
kind of success which pursues you, rather than the
other way around. That's the kind of success that
comes after you like a rabid beast, tearing at your
sinews as you run off to pursue some lame ass "solo
project" or "new direction" in some sort of vain
attempt at shelter yourself from the terror you
created, that which is referred to only in whispered
reverent tones in back alleys and off the map tiny
niches in sub-sub-cultures as "THE REAL". Few can
truly claim that success, and of that reluctant elite,
in the upper echelons stands, or should I say slouches
defiantly, ROCKET FROM THE MOTHERFUCKING TOMBS!!!
And there I was, a little after 8pm, cutting open an
avocado to dip my corn chips in, trying to prepare
myself for the first public appearance of this group
in 28 goddamn years (!), and some limey comes out,
"Blah, blah, blah, this is the 3rd day of
Disasterdome, blah, blah, thanks for coming out, blah,
blah, so exciting this, so exciting that." Listen, if
there's and English accent, 'less it's comin' out my
rekkid player, alls I hear is that muffled trumpet
voice, like the adults on the Peanuts cartoons ".wah,
wohn, wah-wah-wah-whohnt, ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS!", and
BOOM, it finally makes sense: Today is February 23rd,
2003, and I am seeing Rocket From The Tombs! Like,
"Oh, okay, THAT'S Cheetah Chrome, and there's Dave
Thomas, Craig Bell, check, and where's Peter? Oh
yeah, FUCKING RICHARD LLOYD FROM TELEVISION IS TAKING
HIS PLACE TONIGHT!!!
I mean, I'm not one to get my panties in a bunch over
"rock stars", and I've never felt that sense of awe
from being in the "presence" of a celebrity, (and
that's not some punk rock/hippy "hey, we're all
equals, MAAAN", kinda thing, I'm just sayin' I'm not
the type to go for that sort of thing) but fuck, when
you're confronted with that RAW POWER, you have to
RECOGNIZE, and only a goddamn fool could sit no
more'n 50 ft. from the amp the skull capped Mr. Chrome himself is annihilating and not feel just a SLIGHT
ethereal presence. I mean, what can I say? The guy's
been at it long enough, he damn well BETTER know how
to commit some of de ol' murder by guitar!
And Dave Thomas? Well, time has gone on, but that
little pseudonym he adopted in that strange time of
the mid-70s to write rock & roll articles (not-unlike
the one you're wasting your precious homework time
reading now), Crocus Behemoth holds as true now as it
did then. Dave Thomas is a lumbering figure,
dominating the stage with his cynical charm and
theatric stage presence. He would walk back and forth
from the mic stand, sitting down at the foot of the
drum set whenever he didn't have to sing during a part
or a song. How many singers in high-energy rock do
you know that are cocky enough to just go and sit down
when they don't have to sing?

 

In the end it's a much
more bold statement than the extroverted contorting
and cock-strutting of some 3rd rate Jagger/Iggy
impersonator. The odd thing is, though, when Dave's
just sitting down sipping some mystery liquid out of
the metal flask he keeps in one of his pockets, his
presence is just as powerful as any of the musicians
he's sharing the stage with, even in the middle of
their Big Solo. Craig Bell and Richard Lloyd's presence could
definitely be felt. Richard was of course in the
seminal NY group Television, and you could pick out
some of his cascading scales if you could dig a little
deep into the wall-of-sound-cum-barrage-of-noise
amplification tactics of Cheetah Chrome. Richard was
filling the shoes of the long since departed
anti-legend Peter Laughner. Now, some of you
Laughnerites might have some qualms about a show like
this even taking place, and might interpret this
group's playing today as an insult to the memory of
Peter. You might be right, but my biggest concern was
that Peter's absence just gave Cheetah Chrome more
opportunities to sing, which holy jesus, if you've
heard what the past quarter-century has done to that
poor boy's voice, you'd be thinking more along the
lines of "How/when the hell is somebody gonna just let
that guy know he sounds more like a salty sea dog than
a rock singer?" rather than what singing a song like
'Ain't It Fun' means in respect to the dead author.
Now, let's derail and talk a bit about 'Ain't It Fun'
while we're on the subject: Notorious figures to sing
on a recorded version of 'Ain't It Fun' are as
follows; Peter Laughner, of course, Stiv Bators, and
Axl Rose.Dead, dead, and "oh gawd!". Not exactly
people whose careers anyone would wanna imitate,
right? And there, in front of 2003, and a captive
audience, Cheetah Chrome's beltin' out 'Ain't It Fun'
(granted, with a little wordplay on the chorus; "Ain't
it fun when you're too old to die young?").How
"tempting the fates" is that? I mean, let's face it;
the millennium has not been kind to aging "school-of-
'77" punk rockers. Call me superstitious, but if I
were of Cheetah's ilk, I wouldn't touch a tune like
'Ain't It Fun' with a 10 Foot Pole! But then if I had
a voice as gravelly and aged as Cheetah's you wouldn't
catch me singing even alone in the shower.
The real joy, though, was current Ubu drummer Steve
Mehlman. This guy's one of the best rock drummers
I've ever seen live! Steve plays with his whole arms,
not just his wrists. Watch Jeff Nelson on an old
Minor Threat video, and you'll get a good sense of
what it was like to watch this guy. Other than
playing with Pere Ubu (which I think is limiting for
the guy, 'cause like I said, he works best within a
more straight forward rock style. More chances to
pull of those machine gun fills he's so good at.)
Steve's played with Clevelanders The Vivians and in
live performances of Hedwig & The Angry Inch. He's
also about 10 years younger than any of the members of
either of the groups he shared the stage with that
night, a true testament to the power of youth. Like
Of course you wanna see the original lineup, and it
would have been interesting to see what Johnny Blitz
would have done in the drummer throne, but I doubt
anyone could survive 20 years in Canada (where Mr.
Madansky's been residing since the disolvement of the
Dead Boys) without goin' soft. I couldn't tell 'ya
why Johnny wasn't asked, or didn't want to play with
Rocket From The Tombs that night, maybe there's bad
blood or something. I'll tell 'ya, though, Steve got
EVERY fill ('cept he repeatedly botched the double
bass riddled chorus of 'Amphetamine', but since
Cheetah Chrome already made the song sound like a
Springstien number with his wretched singing, I
imagine Steve just figured "What's the point?"), and
hit every beat right on the nose. Furthermore, what he
wasn't able to duplicate he improved, such as the
addition of blastbeats to the already ballistic
free-jazz assault in the middle of '30 Seconds Over
Tokyo', elevating the song to a new level of frenzy,
so, unfashionable as it may be to praise a fill-in
replacement member, with a skin basher like Steve
Mehlman, who the hell needs Johnny Blitz anyways?
The chemistry on stage was interesting to watch.
Dave Thomas was cracking jokes about how often the
group broke up that week during rehearsals, and was
taking obvious jabs at Cheetah Chrome, repeatedly
feigning confusion over his pseudonym; "Gene
O'Connor, ladies and gentleman.Oh, I'm sorry I mean
Cheetah Chrome!" that sorta' thing. Gene didn't seem
very amused, especially when said quips were coupled
with his amp cutting out, which happened periodically
throughout the performance, generally the only
technical flaw in the evening's performance. I
definitely got the sense that the advertised "one-time
reunion" will stay just that. In other words, don't
expect the RFTT world domination reunion tour.
The night, like the band's existence, was a moment in
time, with no particular concern put into "where's
this all gonna lead?" It's unlikely we'll see even an
official live documentation of the event made
available to the public. The musicians didn't seem to
be doing it for fun, and I doubt there was enough
money to be made from that single performance that
evening to make finance the motivation. The question
remains, why DID Rocket From The Tombs go through all
the trouble to play just that one gig? Did they just
wanna get rid of their copies of the recently released
RFTT archival collection, and thought a live show was
the best/quickest way to hawk their wares? Was it all
just an easier way for Dave Thomas to satiate the
rapacious hunger Pere Ubu fans have for their early
material without having to incorporate "those tired
old songs" into Ubu's set? Was everyone just feeling
particularly nostalgic, and wanted one last shot to
relive the glory-days-that-never-were before
geriatrics really set in? All these may be true, but
maybe there's a little part inside of me that still
believes in Rock & Roll, capitol R's and everything.
Maybe there's a little part of me that wants to
believe that just maybe Rocket From The Tombs wanted
to give to a new handful the privilege and feeling of
what it was like to be There, 'cause man, reclining in
the movie theater like folding chairs, eating my chips
and avocado, I was nowhere else in the world but right
then, right There, February 23rd, 2003, watching
Rocket From The Tombs, and yeah, it all made perfect
sense.