This Cleveland proto-punk band only existed for a year-and-a-half, but much like Green River was the parent of the Seattle grunge scene, or London S.S. the progenitor of the first generation of British punk, RFTT was the ancestor of both Pere Ubu and the Dead Boys. In fact there are signature songs of both bands which were actually written and performed first by RFTT--the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" and "Ain't It Fun" and Ubu's "30 Seconds over Tokyo".
Started by Crocus Behemoth as a weird joke band, they started to get serious about music (down right arty about music) when Peter Laughner joined the band. Behemoth would change his name back to David Thomas when he and Laughner founded Pere Ubu after RFTT's breakup in 1975. The band also counted as members the future Cheetah Chrome and Johnny Blitz of the Dead Boys.
Laughner passed along a demo of his band to new pal Lester Bangs who enthusiastically reviewed it in Creem. Of course soon after that happened it was requisite that the band break up. But that allowed the members to disperse, Pere Ubu to take shape in Cleveland and Chrome & Blitz to head to New York City to start the Dead Boys with Stiv Bators.
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