Album: Rocket From The Tombs, The Day The Earth Met The... (Fire)

Rocket From The Tombs were a Cleveland proto-punk legend that remained unrecorded in its brief existence, but would go on to provide the seed-corn from which Pere Ubu would grow.

Frontman David Thomas, then known as Crocus Behemoth, is the dominant presence on glowering rockers like "So Cold" and future Ubu avant-rock classics "Final Solution" and "30 Seconds Over Tokyo", here captured with commendable fidelity in rehearsal and at two of the Rockets' rare live shows from 1975. The album offers a tantalising glimpse of what would surely have been a punk milestone, had the band ever been afforded a decent studio recording. It's also valuable in putting a little flesh on the legend of the late Peter Laughner, the group's guitarist and, in songs such as "Life Stinks" and "Ain't It Fun", an influential poet of the existential disgust from which punk developed. 

Download this: Life Stinks; Final Solution; 30 Seconds Over Tokyo; Sonic Reducer