Milan civic figure is also underground rock musician

MILAN — Most people in Milan know Robert Wheeler for his longtime efforts to publicize the village's connection to famous inventor Thomas Edison, who was born there. Since May 1983, Wheeler, 65, has served as president of the board of the Edison Birthplace Association, which runs Milan's Edison Birthplace Museum. He's Edison's great-great grandnephew and lives on an Edison family farm. In 2020, the Milan Chamber of Commerce named Wheeler the town's "Citizen of the Year" for his efforts. But for more than 25 years, the small-town solid citizen pursued a second career, playing underground rock as the synthesizer player for Pere Ubu, a rock band with a devoted cult following worldwide. Wheeler quietly left the band in June 2021 after a 27-year run. A well-known band? Pere Ubu has the unusual distinction of being both quite famous and rather obscure in the rock music world. Formed in 1975 in Cleveland, and led since its inception by vocalist David Thomas, Pere Ubu released its first album in 1978. The band still exists and has released many studio albums and live albums over the years. It has received excellent notices from music critics for decades. It's the subject of a long and detailed Wikipedia article and various other websites. It enjoys a large following in Europe, where many of the band's live dates take place. The band also has enjoyed a strong following from other musicians; at a gig in London, John Paul Jones (from Led Zeppelin) and Chryssie Hynde (from the Pretenders) turned up. The band's first single, "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," released in 1975, revealed a post-punk sound that has influenced many other bands. On the other hand, the band seldom gets radio airplay, even in Cleveland. It has not enjoyed great commercial success selling records. Most people in Milan are not familiar with the band. "I was in Denmark once, and I mentioned to a guy, 'Where I'm from, no one knows the band'," Wheeler relates. "He goes, 'No, no, no, everyone knows Pere Ubu.'" Listeners who want to get to know Pere Ubu might try "By Order of Mayor Pawlicki," a live set recorded in Poland in 2017. It was released in 2020 to excellent reviews, which praised Wheeler's contributions to the album. It has many of the band's better-known songs and is available on Hoopla Digital, the streaming library service offered by Sandusky Library and other local libraries. Wheeler says a favorite album he played on is "Why I Hate Women," later reissued as "Why I Luv Women," a collection of bluesy songs about love dominated by synthesizer sounds. Reflections Wheeler, now retired, had a long career as a computer support engineer for Fisher-Titus Medical Center, Digital Equipment and other large organizations. Sitting in his 19th-century farmhouse near Milan, Wheeler described what playing for Pere Ubu was like. The band's music has been described as "avant-garage," reflecting the fact that it combines hard-driving rock with unusual sounds. As the band's synthesizer player, Wheeler was an important part of the sound. When playing live, Wheeler sometimes would have as many as four or five synthesizers onstage with him. When he flew to Europe for gigs, most of Wheeler's luggage space was devoted to instruments, cables and other equipment; a small bag had to suffice for his clothes. Early in his days as a Pere Ubu member, Wheeler and other band members would get together in a recording studio in Painesville, east of Cleveland. Later on, Thomas would come to Milan. Working in Wheeler's house, which is decorated with rock music posters and old black and white photos of the Edison family, the two would add synthesizer sounds to basic tracks. In the final stages of his Pere Ubu career, Wheeler would add his parts and send them in. In recent years, Thomas has lived in Brighton, England. Wheeler was a fan of Pere Ubu from the band's early days and played in his own band, Home and Garden, which included early members of Pere Ubu such as Scott Krauss, a drummer from Clyde. He turned down two invitations to join Pere Ubu because he was busy supporting his family. He and his wife, Linda, had a young baby. He accepted the third invitation in 1994 on Linda's advice. She warned him that if he kept saying no, he might not get another chance. "Being asked to join them was like being asked to join the Rolling Stones, for most people," Wheeler said. "I think Pere Ubu is better than the Rolling Stones." Explaining his decision to leave the band last year, a break which he didn't discuss on social media, Wheeler said the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit had made touring harder, and for health reasons, it's become harder for Thomas to tour. Thomas can be demanding and difficult, but he has a great ear and is often right, Wheeler said, describing how Thomas detected a problem with a microphone in Poland that no one else at first could detect. Over the years, there has been some overlap between Wheeler's efforts to promote Edison and his music career, and even between the band and his personal life. Linda is a musician, too, who plays the piano and was formerly in a Cleveland band, Ceilings Below. The couple met when they were introduced by Pere Ubu's bass player. Wheeler was taking part in an Edison Birthplace board meeting in 2012 when a tall Black man poked his head in and asked if he could see the museum. The man bought some books about Edison from the gift shop. Eventually, Wheeler and the other people present discovered the visitor was noted rapper KRS-One. The rap musician was driving from New York to Los Angeles and pulled into Milan after seeing a highway sign promoting the museum. He admitted he didn't know Pere Ubu, Wheeler recalls. Whitney Houston also once turned up at the museum, Wheeler said. At most of Pere Ubu's performance, Wheeler wore a baseball cap promoting the Edison museum. He and Linda, who have a grown daughter, Alex, have large gardens at Homer Page Farm, the historic farm owned by Wheeler's great-great-grandmother, who was Thomas Edison's sister. They board horses on the farm which also has a rental property that's being renovated to serve as an Airbnb rental. Although he is mostly retired from music, Wheeler still gets together sometimes with other musicians. He sometimes records music, for example, with Allen Ravenstine, Pere Ubu's original synthesizer player, who eventually became an airline pilot. "He'll be here in about a month," Wheeler said.