Click to return to Dave’s Music Database home page.

Released: January 1978

Rating: 4.524 (average of 7 ratings)

Genre: punk rock

Quotable: “the signature sound of the avant-garage: art rock, punk rock, and garage rock mixing together joyously and fearlessly” – John Dougan, All Music Guide

Album Tracks:

  1. Non-Alignment Pact
  2. The Modern Dance
  3. Laughing
  4. Street Waves
  5. Chinese Radiation
  6. Life Stinks
  7. Real World
  8. Over My Head
  9. Sentimental Journey
  10. Humor Me

Sales (in millions):

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated --

Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart --
peak on U.K. album chart --

Singles/Hit Songs:

  • Street Waves (11/76) --
  • The Modern Dance (8/78) --

Notes: --

Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more. Spin Magazine’s 100 Greatest Albums

The Modern Dance
Pere Ubu
Review:
“The Modern Dance remains the essential Ubu purchase…For sure, Mercury had no idea what they had on their hands when they released this as part of their punk rock offshoot label Blank, but it remains a classic slice of art-punk. It announces itself quite boldly: the first sound you hear is a painfully high-pitched whine of feedback, but then Tom Herman’s postmodern Chuck Berry riffing kicks off the brilliant Non-Alignment Pact, and you soon realize that this is punk rock unlike any you’ve ever heard. David Thomas’ caterwauling is funny and moving, Scott Krauss (drums) and Tony Maimone (bass) are one of the great unheralded rhythm sections in all of rock, and the ‘difficult’ tracks like Street Waves, Chinese Radiation, and the terrifying Humor Me are revelatory, and way ahead of their time. The Modern Dance is the signature sound of the avant-garage: art rock, punk rock, and garage rock mixing together joyously and fearlessly.” JD

Review Source(s):

Last updated March 23, 2010.