Rocket Redux

Very Good service from Dodax for a fantastic CD!! Great rock music from David Thomas and the ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS!!!If you love Pere Ubu you will love this!

I'm not really sure what the point of this record was. Yes, I've given 4 stars and had this album existed without any attachment to past myths and legends I would have liked it as a raw rock record. This is a recording of songs they played back in the mid 70s, they were never properly recorded or even saw a studio so decades later the band get together to record them 'properly'. Now these songs exist on the album 'The Day The Earth Met .....' from rehearsal tapes and demos and they happen to be far superior. These songs lack the bite and utter rawness that make 'The Day The Earth Met ...' recordings so wonderful. They needn't have bothered, why try and better perfection? Also there are 2 glaring omissions from the band line up, okay, Peter Laughner is dead and maybe Richard Lloyd is an appropriate replacement but to reform without drummer Johnny Blitz is unforgiveable!Certain recordings become ever more essential as time passes and hindsight allows 20/20 vision. 'The Day The Earth Met ...' was one such example and the recording of Rocket Redux is utterly pointless. Not a single track benefits from rerecording, I really can not work out what the idea behind this album was. Do yourself a favour and grab a copy of 'The Day The Earth Met ....' and leave this one for the completists.

Its not the full cranial overload, though, that was The Day The Earth Met... Still, these are not men in the first flush of youth anymore. And nor really am I. I expect if this was the first I had heard of RFTT I would not have liked it that much.But we have the document of The Day The Earth Met... which is infinitely better. If you only buy one RFTT record buy that one. Every version of every song is better on TDTEM.It would have been nice if all the songs had not been heard in different versions before. I am a bit of a Cle-punk nut - surely they could have belted out something like Jaguar Ride or She Smiles Wild for a bit of added value.I am delighted to have this though - it is yet another Cleveland punk record that I now have in place of a life.