Tripod Jimmie - Long Walk off a Short Pier (1982) [24bit FLAC]

Lenny Bove - bass, vocals, effects
Tom Herman - guitar, vocals
Roger Prehoda - drums
Glenn Reynolds - drums

Tripod Jimmie, a band that existed between 1981 and 1986, featured guitarist Tom Herman, a founding member of Pere Ubu. The music is a mixture of avant-punk, noise, and eclectic influences.

In 1980 or 1981 Tom Herman started Tripod Jimmie with bassist Lenny Bove and drummer Roger Prehoda. The band was named after photographer friend Mick Mellen's three-legged dog and/or the tape deck mounted on a tripod that functioned as the fourth member of the band. The tape deck was used to play tape loops which the band would then play "with" rhythmically or "against" (where the loop served more as a textural element) depending upon the demands of a particular song.

While notably different from Pere Ubu, the two bands do have similarities. The band's music bore a relation to R&B, but in a unique sense. "… one of the things I was thinking about at the time was what it would be like if some alien was exposed to all relevant information about R&B except actually hearing it," as Tom put it. This thoughtful and conscious approach to the band as a project shows a similar sensibility to Ubu's.

Some time after recording the album Long Walk Off a Short Pier (which was in fact recorded on a pier), Tripod Jimmie moved from Erie, PA to Oakland, CA in the mid-eighties, swapping Roger Prehoda for Glenn Reynolds on drums. This lineup released the album A Warning to All Strangers. The band broke up in 1988 and Tom dropped out of actively playing music for a few years.