Album Review: Black Record by Rocket from the Tombs

In early 2012, David Thomas posted a short essay on the Rocket from the Tombs website titled "A Band Is an Idea," in which he declared, "The idea of a band can endure all changes if it's a really good idea. " Thomas' thoughts seemed to indirectly address the departure of guitarists Cheetah Chrome and Richard Lloyd from the reunited RFTT lineup; their dueling guitar firepower was one of the best things about RFTT's initial reunion shows in 2004 (and the live-in-the-studio document of their concert set, Rocket Redux). RFTT's 2011 album Barfly (their first proper album of new material) featured Chrome and Lloyd, but it was a curiously subdued set that seemed to keep the guitarists on a short leash, and it was hard not to wonder if Thomas really wanted to collaborate with the guitarists after years as the benevolent dictator of Pere Ubu.

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Cleveland proto-punks Rocket From The Tombs were initially active for barely a year. They gigged sporadically and expired without releasing any records, yet they still cast an influential shadow over rock’n’roll. Splitting in August 1975, RFTT bequeathed personnel to future art-rock giants Pere Ubu and nihilistic punks The Dead Boys. A little later, both would raid RFTT’s astonishing songbook with Pere Ubu’s version of Final Solution and The Dead Boys’ reading of Sonic Reducer hailed as alternative classics.

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The Cleveland proto-punkers come back from the dead. Formed in June 1974, Cleveland’s Rocket From The Tombs existed for just over a year before splintering into Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys. After those bands imploded after causing their own brands of commotion, RFTT started being hailed as trailblazers in the kind of enraged cacophony that had been diluted into punk.

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