E-Mail This Article to a Friend Reignition Rocket from the Tombs lift off, again BY MIKE MILIARD

Of course you remember Rocket from the Tombs. Formed in the burning-river smokestack dystopia of Cleveland in 1975. Together for barely nine months. Eight live gigs. A grand total of zero records. Yes, obscurity is thine. But thanks to their songs — such screeching paroxysms of anthemic nihilism as "30 Seconds over Tokyo," "Final Solution," and "Sonic Reducer" — and the two bands, Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys, into whom Rocket bifurcated (and who made Rocket’s songs their own), the group have been assured a spot in the punk-rock firmament.

"It’s a great band," says the group’s man-mountain mouthpiece, David Thomas, over the phone from Cleveland. "You don’t usually turn your back on that sort of thing." So he’s not: the long-dormant Tombs are due at T.T. the Bear’s Place this Saturday. But, he insists, "we’re not getting back together. We’re not really doing a reunion. At some point, we need to determine whether we decide to be a real band again and write new material. I think this tour will be the point on which we decide that."

The un-reunion is the second leg of a tour provoked by an abrasive live document, The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs (Smog Veil), that was released last spring. Not counting shoddy bootlegs, it was the band’s first album. (A batch of re-recorded studio versions of their chestnuts, Rocket Redux, is due from Smog Veil early next year.) While compiling the disc, Thomas re-established links with guitarist Gene "Cheetah Chrome" O’Connor. "I hadn’t seen Gene since ’78 or something like that. After the Dead Boys, he went into a junkie phase. He came out of that a number of years ago, but then he didn’t live in Cleveland, I didn’t live in Cleveland, we didn’t see each other. But we got along. We always liked each other. It was just a question of whether we could stand to be in a band together."

One reason the first incarnation of the group was so short-lived was the incongruous personalities of its members. On one side stood cerebral part-time rock critics Thomas and Peter Laughner, both of whom went on to play abstruse art punk in Pere Ubu. (Laughner drank himself to death not long after, at age 27.) On the other were quintessential sophomoric dopes O’Connor and drummer John Madansky (a/k/a Johnny Blitz). Their subsequent band, the Dead Boys, are well described by the title of the DBs’ debut album: Young, Loud and Snotty.

"They were just sort of stoner kids," Thomas laugh-wheezes. "They were younger than me and Peter. The kids in the band annoyed the adults in the band. Gene and the drummers were like from the projects. Me and Peter were professional-family kids."

The late Laughner was vital to the band: he wrote or co-wrote nearly all their songs, and his screw-it-all world view was central to their æsthetic. So can it really be Rocket from the Tombs without him? "Well, he’s not been around for 30 years! Yeah!" And his shoes are being ably filled this time around by Television guitarist Richard Lloyd. "They don’t necessarily play alike, but there’s a synchronicity, a sympathy, a simpático thing. And Richard is a perfect person, because of Peter’s involvement with Television." (It was crazed music fan Laughner who squired Television to Cleveland for their first gig outside New York City.)

To judge from the excoriating noise on Rocket Redux, the relaunched Rocket are as focused and as feral as ever. And Thomas seems thrilled to be back. "Everything I’ve done in my career is based on the fact that I was in Rocket from the Tombs. That hard, angry, vicious rock is the foundation for everything."

Which raises a point: is he worried about tarnishing the band’s mystique — a mythology based in part on the fact that almost no one had ever seen, let alone heard, Rocket from the Tombs? "We’re not in the business of mystique. Madonna and people like that are into mystique. We’re just a cruddy Midwest rock band. We don’t do mystique. We do rock."

Rocket from the Tombs play this Saturday, December 6, at T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline Street in Central Square. Tickets are $15; call (617) 492-BEAR.