Pere Ubu, 390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo (side A)

390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo, which was released in 1981, collects Pere Ubu live recordings, plus one practice tape, dating between 1976 and 1979.  The album focuses on concerts from 1978 supporting the Modern Dance, when Ubu were an incredibly powerful live band.  The performances sometimes lack the tightness of the studio recordings, but the noise/freak-out sections often feel particularly expansive and liberated.  The core band tends to play the sections with structure close to their recorded versions, while Ravenstine's sythesizers often sound very different than the recorded versions that feel so familiar.  Three songs date from an early 1976 line-up with a bit less chaos and abandon—they reflect the transition from Rocket from the Tombs.  The 1977 practice tape of "Humor Me" is a radically different song than the one that was finally released.  The recording quality is inconsistent and often primitive—the mastering, which emphasizes high-mid frequencies, exaggerates the lo-fi quality of the original tapes, as do the blurry black and white cover image and design.