American rock group Pere Ubu/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
This song, as Dostoevsky might put it, is based on a true event. On the morning of April 18, 1942, sixteen American bombers carried out what became known as the Doolittle Raid, attacking Japanese territory for the first time in retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack. Not all returned from the raid.
"Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" is the title of a book written by one of the participants of that raid. In 1944, a film of the same name, starring Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum, was made based on the book, and thirty years later, a song was written as if from the pilot's cockpit.
"30 Seconds Over Tokyo" is the first single from 1975 by the band Pere Ubu, a true gem of deep American art-punk led by the unique vocalist David Thomas, nicknamed Crocus Behemoth. In this initial attempt, all the elements that three years later led Rolling Stone magazine to announce Pere Ubu's debut album as the pinnacle of rock 'n' roll are already evident. Whether it’s the pinnacle or not, the superb guitar riff, atmospheric atonal jolts, and Thomas's distinctive vocals, which sound like a big strong beast trembling with fear, combine to create a most authentic second-by-second soundtrack of wartime horror.