Home and Garden

There was obviously a pocket of rarefied air around Cleveland in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It first lifted up Rocket from the Tombs whose enthusiasm for the New York and Detroit punk scenes burned bright. The Rocket’s fuselage cracked in two, re-entering the atmosphere as Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys. The former had recorded four classic albums between 1978 to ’82 when core members Scott Krauss and Tony Maimone broke away to form Home and Garden. History and Geography was recorded in 1982 with the help of guitarist Jim Jones (who’d join a later Pere Ubu incarnation) and singer/lyricist Jeff Morrison. Home and Garden fit well in the field of bands working in the afterglow of punk’s explosion. Like Television, Talking Heads, Public Image Ltd. (and Ubu too), they were too musically talented to rely on snot and blood alone. This version of the album is remixed, cleaned up and expanded, highlighting the inventive cohesion of the Krauss/Maimone rhythm section as they stretched to include then cutting edge synths and electronic percussion. Jeff Morrison started as a Pere Ubu fan, but his vocal style bridges gaps between David Byrne, John Lydon and Jim Carroll’s speak-singing as on his connective suite of "Marco Polo” songs. They were a band for a brief moment, lasting only two to three live shows, but now this odd document freezes that moment in time.