New Picnic Time

Editorial Reviews
Album Details
Remastered Reissue of 1979 Release with Original Artwork.

Tracks:

The Fabulous Sequel
49 Guitars & One Girl
A Small Dark Cloud
Small Was Fast
All The Dogs Are Barking
One Less Worry
Make Hay
Goodbye
The Voice Of The Sand
Kingdom Come

Customer Reviews:

there's no one at the controls.......2006-07-16

The "New Picnic time" is an album that I greatly enjoy. Some may say that it is too experimental and becomes too fast... or whatever reason. The truth is that this is an album that can grow on you very fast. When I first got it, I was lost and impatient. Back then, a song over two and a half minutes would boar me, which is a side effect of being part of the generation with the attention span of a goldfish hopped up on coffee and PSP abuse, which is what most people are now. But as I listened to it more I found that this record has very strange energy to it. The only track I could do without is the opening track "the fabulous sequel", which is like a version of "not happy" without as much thought put into it. But tracks like "A Small Dark Cloud" and "All the Dogs Are Barking" really make this album. Other tracks, like "Make Hay", "Small Was Fast", and "One Less Worry" give another spin on the quality of this record. These songs are musically interesting and give some room for thought. In "Art of Walking", which isn't nessecerely their best, has one song "Go" that would have fit in this part of the album very nicely. Actually, that song sums up the theme through out "New Picnic Time".
The record concludes with the song Kingdom Come, which ends things well. It is echo-y and has a keyboard that sounds like a custom car horn.
So my point is that this pere ubu stuff can be seen as very good, it depends on how you look at what they were trying to do.

It's Me Again!.......2003-11-13

During the late '70's, a new Pere Ubu record was a huge event in my life. When New Picnic Time was released, I eagerly snapped it up and rushed home to listen. "IT'S ME AGAIN" blared through the speakers at ear-splitting volume. The grin on my face stretched from ear to ear. The Fabulous Sequel indeed! In the wake of Dub Housing, this is certainly a fabulous effort.

Pere Ubu is truly a love/hate band. I've cleared parties faster than a half dozen cops could've by spinning a Pere Ubu disc. But the few who stick around to listen are saying "Wow, this is really cool, who's this band?"

New Picnic Time is classic Pere Ubu. Buy it or better yet buy the Datapanik in the Year Zero CD box set.

Astonishingly Rhythmic.......2001-12-20

Yes he sings some lyrics about Jehovah's Kingdom on here (to the discomfort of other band members) ... yes they were on the verge of pretentious excess, caused by the singer's domination of the band ... yes some of the tracks here are so-so moody meanderings ...

But the better part of this record is fantastic! I mean, good grief! Really unbelievable!

I'm almost speechless as to how beautiful parts of this record are. I came here to say something, so I'll say that on tracks like the first two each member of Ubu is contributing to a strong, slightly bizarre rhythm that moves and grooves. I'll also say that Tom Hermann (who left after recording this) was a genuinely astonishing player and that he left the evidence all over this record. Highlights are the first two tracks and "One Less Worry"; those tracks make nearly all of the history of recorded music seem like a mere build-up to this.

Jehovah's Kingdom Comes: Ubu's Lost Masterpiece.......2000-08-22

Like The Byrds' NOTORIOUS BYRD BROTHERS before it and Six Finger Satellite's LAW OF RUINS after, Pere Ubu's NEW PICNIC TIME is the literal soundtrack of a band falling apart...brilliantly. Coming as it does in the band's history between the extreme avante garde noise rock on DUB HOUSING (1978) and the outright art attack of THE ART OF WALKING (1980), NEW PICNIC TIME, Ubu's third album and guitarist Tom Herman's last (for almost 20 years), has remained much misunderstood throughout the band's history, perhaps owing to it's "deformed blues ethic" (to quote Trouser Press) and the twisted and bleak tunes (many of which hinter on falling apart at any instant) that make up it's sequence. It's not quite as accessable as some of their other albums, but it remains perhaps their finest achievement.

The album opens with a near-pop crash ("The Fabulous Sequel") and takes the listener through dada blues, rock, musical breakdowns ("One Less Worry"), and waxing sonic frustrations ("Make Hay"), all of which David Thomas sings, screams, bleats, howls, moans, whines, and laughs his way through until ultimately finding peace at the very end with "Jehovah's Kingdom Comes!" (revisionistically re-titled over the years since as "Kingdom Come" and "Hand A Face A Feeling"), quite possibly the most beautiful Jehovah's Witness hymn ever written. Over Herman's and Tony Maimone's calming dual guitars (no bass is used), Scott Krauss' simple drums, and Allen Ravenstine's trumpet-like EML playing, Thomas coos that "you and I need never die" and the song ends in an abrubt fadeout.

Maybe it was a hope for the future, for himself and/or for the band, but following their summer '79 tour, Herman left (eventually co-founding Tripod Jimmie), was eventually replaced by Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson, and the band took a direct dive in absolute art, never quite looking back to the absolute honesty and brilliance they achieved on NEW PICNIC TIME.

Buy this, study it, play it endlessly, LISTEN to it, and let it seep into your system. NEW PICNIC TIME will get to you, if you let it.

All Downhill From Here - Blame Thomas and Thompson.......2000-02-24