In the summer of 1975 David Thomas decided to record an artifact. This artifact, he hoped, would gain him entry into the Brotherhood of the Unknown that was gathering in used record bins everywhere. He thought Pere Ubu was a good name after the protagonist of Ubu Roi, a play by Frenchman Alfred Jarry.
The group's first album, The Modern Dance, sold only 15,000 copies initially but it was a startling work that influenced an entire generation of bands, e.g. REM, Husker Du, Joy Division, etc. Its follow-up, Dub Housing, was the masterpiece, an incomparable work of American genius. Pere Ubu toured Europe extensively in 1978. The Art Of Walking followed, a challenging stew of inside-out song structures.