Devo: C or D? S & D etc.

no gut feeling?

I read "Recombo DNA" by Kevin C. Smith. This book covers all the pre-history of Devo from the 60s on and then ends in 1980 before Freedom of Choice. Good concept. Indepth coverage of Ohio scene, college years, Kent State shootings (the Casales were present), the various religious tracts and conspiracy books they were inspired by, their other art projects and home recording from 70-77, working with Bowie, Eno, Conny Plank etc. Nice to get more info about early members like Jim Mothersbaugh and Bob Lewis. Great read but man those guys are whiners. They have nothing good to say about anyone.

I'm reading the fancy new book which is all great pictures and oral history from Mark and Jerry. Might be a good complement. It's not a great history on its own, sort of assumes a bit of knowledge. Would've been nice to have a bit more context within, but the pics and anecdotes are great.

This is the one that like $250? I want it but I'll wait for the cheapo paperback reprint I guess.

There's already a cheaper version...I didn't pay that much, I got the "Classic Edition" for 65 bucks.

its strange that they've been so silent these last few years. the most powerful nation on the planet electing an idiot game show host to lead them is just about the most Devo thing of all time.

Never too late for a Devo 2.0 reunion.

Interview with Jerry Casale here (starts about 18 mins in): https://www.mixcloud.com/DublinDigitalRadio/xxx-devo-with-gerald-casale/"> https://www.mixcloud.com/DublinDigitalRadio/xxx-devo-with-gerald-casale/

Ugh I borked that link but click on the end and it works.

But today Devo is merely the house band on the Titanic.

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqek5/devo-open-letter-devolution-rock-hall-trump-2018

I feel like that rant would have more bite if he wasn't such a (closet?) gourmet food & wine expert.

I did wonder when one of 'em was gonna step out and use Trump as the ultimate evidence that their theory was correct all along. There's no satire anymore.

hang on, you cant rant if you like food/wine ?

I mean you can, but knowing personally that he orders multiple $1000 bottles of wine on the reg at elite-tier restaurants kinda softens the blow.

The theory is not anti-capitalist. It's that humans are de-evolving. $1000 bottle of wine seems to be either a step forward, or at least neutral in that.

Devo has never been anti-capitalist, they've been about subverting capitalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1J99Z0BIMc

"Everyone has their own facts, their own private Idaho stored in their expensive cellular phones," he sneers as he taps his Khlebnikov caviar spoon against the decanter of 1962 Saint Emilion Cheval Blanc.

"The earbuds are in, the feedback loops are locked, and the Frappuccino’s are flowing freely."

I feel like that rant would have more bite if he wasn't such a (closet?) gourmet food & wine expert.

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli)

not closeted at all, has gone on the record about being a wine aficionado

personally i have no kick against the luxury left

Fantastic documentary and a must watch if you're on this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thy0gQzqgY0

grrrr ... unavailable to those of us in the uk.

what is it ?

thank you for posting (doc is the story behind how the mutant image of Chi Chi Rodriguez ended up on the first album cover)

the idea of a doc that puts the Kent State footage together with Chi Chi's golf career is some direct version of the truth, I'm sending that to my mom (I started listening to Devo when I was 12, and she definitely remembers that)

my earliest Devo memories are from about the same time as I saw that episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where the golfer's name is pronounced "chee-chee-rod-rih-gweez"

same

First ever Gerald Casale solo album out now on red vinyl

that came out last year - I got a copy. hard to believe it's actually 15 years old now. the new (?) track on the vinyl is pretty good though

t or f Gerald Casale is the Mike Love of Devo

Lol. Good one. Maybe a bit more like Peter Hook.

I don't know if that's fair - they have opposing opinions on the Kent State shootings at least.
I read the biography Recombo DNA, which credits Casale as the main "conceptualist" in the group, which is a pretty important role in Devo.

It's mostly because he is the grifter, and he is a bit cringe.

Also, Mothersbaugh's art books demonstrate that he had plenty to contribute to their concepts, and he wrote a lot of their most "conceptual" songs on his own including Jocko Homo.

I guess there's a parallel if you think both he and Love helped make the work of a talented musical introvert more accessible and understandable to the public.

yeah I mean listening to his solo album I think its clear he's probably most responsible for their overall sound

does seem a bit insufferable but Mike Love he is not

peter hook is a good parallel!

i like everything up to and including oh no its devo and the single here to go but otherwise nothing after that!

Theme From Doctor Detroit is really great

their 2010 comeback album is good, it's just so fucking brickwalled that I almost can't stand to listen to it

Found the two Hardcore Devo comps in a shop a few weeks ago and was surprised to find they're even stranger than I remembered. Especially Vol. 2, it's like some of the most alien music I've ever heard. Also some of the grossest. I think this may be the only time an archival release radically changed my concept of what a band was about. Also Volume 2 has some bonus tracks on it which I've never heard before. "Doghouse Doghouse" is at least kinda funny (the person wailing like a dog, not the lyrics).

one thing though - is "Fountain of Filth" really from the same sessions? it feels like something that could've been on Freedom of Choice! its also cleaner and better recorded than anything else on there. I think someone messed up.

Supposedly 1974 but yeah it doesnt sound like it. It is Ton o' Luv from Freedom of Choice in an early version.

"Fountain of Filth" was in the reunion live set for awhile - stoked to hear it when I saw them!

I think this may be the only time an archival release radically changed my concept of what a band was about.

so otm. the hardcore comps simultaneously upended my idea of who they were while also helping everything else make even more sense than i previously thought it did. like doing a puzzle and fitting all the pieces together correctly, but then realizing that you accidentally had the image spun 90 degrees sideways the whole time

xp - according to the liner notes on my copy, it's 1977. but I still think that's wrong - it sounds like it was recorded in a different place entirely. its like one of those Recombo DNA demos where they changed all the lyrics. not that I'm complaining, the tune is great

Found the two Hardcore Devo comps in a shop a few weeks ago and was surprised to find they're even stranger than I remembered. Especially Vol. 2, it's like some of the most alien music I've ever heard. Also some of the grossest. I think this may be the only time an archival release radically changed my concept of what a band was about.

― frogbs

i got some complicated feelings about the hardcore devo stuff. i was really into them when i was in college, how raw and primitive they were, and i still fucking love the original cover art.

but it's misleading cover art, because that photo set (i can't remember the name of the photographer who put them together, but she did an amazing job) is absolutely the queerest shit devo ever did, and the whole thing about them is that they _weren't_ queer, they were angry disaffected nerds who couldn't get laid. i mean devo have changed and evolved since then, i don't really believe they're like that now, even if mothersbaugh has only ever _ironically_ committed to anti-capitalism, "biting the hand", doing ads with words like "obey" and "consume" worked into them and acting like he's getting one over on his corporate overlords. still, the members of devo overall, i get the feeling they've grown and changed a lot since the '70s.

so first off there's the thing about their whole ethos being a gloss on an overtly racist conspiracy theory. once they got signed to a record label they _mostly_ took the racism out - sure, there was the occasional song called "triumph of the will" or what have you, but nothing nearly as openly _ugly_ as some of the songs on the hardcore albums. i mean, irony isn't a valid defense at this point, whatever they _intended_ some of those songs, and i won't name them but if you've heard them it's pretty obvious, _are_ racist.

and then of course there's the misogyny. i don't know if this was inherent in oscar kiss maerth's work. singing about sexual assault and domestic violence and all sorts of other abuse and particularly, particularly, they seemed...

i remember reading this one anecdote once about devo where they were at some sort of party, sometime around '77-80, and some scene lady dismissed them as "queers", and one of the members of devo responded to that by saying "i'll fuck you right here on the table"

like that is super fucking gross, you know, whether or not devo were queer, whether or not this lady was being homophobic, fucking _hell_

there's also this recording of devo's second concert ever, from the 1974 kent state creative arts festival:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDNPe8u_3eM

that last song there, "androgyny", is uncomfortably terfy, and i don't get the sense that it's meant ironically - these folks aren't exactly super queer. to be clear, i don't think that these sentiments or terf sentiments in general would be endorsed by _any_ living member of devo. i'd be really disappointed if any of them did turn out to be "gender critical". but this is where they started, you know?

i mean devo have changed and evolved since then,

the fuck?!

haha good catch :)

My first experience of the band was seeing the short film for "Mongoloid" on TV, so I went out and picked up Hot Potatoes, a compilation, and that led me to check out the rest of their catalogue. This was during that horrible period in the 1990s when back catalogues were re-released on CD with two albums per disc with generic packaging. But I do still have a Q: Are We Not Men picturedisc, because at the same time vinyl was dirt cheap.

I find the early history fascinating because there was an expectation they were going to be the next big thing. They were on one level tailor-made for MTV. They anticipated it. They had an image. I was surprised to learn that Stiff Records put out a Devo tribute album as early as 1979:
https://www.discogs.com/release/482351-Various-Be-Stiff-Tour

It had a bunch of Stiff acts doing covers of "Be Stiff". But of course Devo didn't sell any records until a few years later, and then not many, and here in the UK they didn't sell any records at all ever. The music industry rejected them for several years until, as if a switch had been flipped, suddenly their brand of image-led modern pop was hip, and furthermore David Bowie put in a good word, so they ended up being signed to Stiff and then Warners, a major label. The problem is that on the surface their image was tailor-made for the UK market circa 1980, but on a deeper level there was a massive world of difference between Devo and Culture Club, Adam Ant, Japan etc. I imagine the executives who signed them couldn't perceive that tonally they were a kind of sci-fi Stranglers in boiler suits. And of course Stranglers fans would probably have rejected them for being weird, so they fell between two stools.

Their career arc was a lot like The B-52s, down to having (a) a classic debut with songs that had been toured for several years (b) a second album that felt like out-takes from the first, although in the case of the B-52s the quality drop wasn't as great (c) and then they were a different and much slicker band entirely. The B-52s worked with David Byrne, albeit briefly, and Devo worked with Brian Eno, but in both cases they were rejected. They never became part of the Eno-Byrne-Fripp-Gabriel-Bowie continuum. They were auditioned, but found wanting, and ultimately they didn't get the nod. That must have hurt.

They get dug up every so often because, as mentioned above, the surface is appealing. Also Mark Mothersbaugh did the music for The LEGO Movie. He must chords, and counterpoint, and stuff. Leitmotifs. That's not something the average new wave-era guitarist would know about. And yet his dad was a defence contractor, or something. How did that happen? Practice, or genetics?

They never became part of the Eno-Byrne-Fripp-Gabriel-Bowie continuum. They were auditioned, but found wanting, and ultimately they didn't get the nod. That must have hurt.

I think they distanced themselves from that bunch, actually. Eno had lots of ideas when producing their debut, but they rejected most of them and told him to produce the songs the way they had been planning them for years. I bet their ideas of infiltrating the mainstream led them to believe they could do it better than the older musicians (though Talking Heads always outsold Devo).

He must chords, and counterpoint, and stuff. Leitmotifs. That's not something the average new wave-era guitarist would know about.

There's a quote, I think from Jerry, in one of the Devo biographies, roughly: "In 1972 Mark had hair down to his ass and was playing keyboards in a prog-rock group for money".

Reminding me of a related quote: "if it wasn't for punk, Colin Newman would still be where he was in 1975 - sitting in a meadow with an acoustic guitar writing songs about horses".

Reminding me of a related quote: "if it wasn't for punk, Colin Newman would still be where he was in 1975 - sitting in a meadow with an acoustic guitar writing songs about horses".

Disagreeing fully with the above. They had to stop eno from trying to have too much influence on their sound. And their influence was huge even before selling records with freedom of choice. Every city had their answer to Devo.

i mean the start of jocko homo is in 7, they had prog-rock chops for sure

regarding the way their sound changed in freedom of choice, that was more down to, as i understand it, dynamics within the band - mark and jerry were pissed off at one or both of the guitar players.

It had a bunch of Stiff acts doing covers of "Be Stiff". But of course Devo didn't sell any records until a few years later, and then not many, and here in the UK they didn't sell any records at all ever.

Wtf the first album went to number 12 in the uk. They were on the covers of the uk music press dozens of times 1977-79 and playing in big venues. Incidentally, the first "tribute" album to Devo is this, which came out slightly earlier than the Stiff one. https://www.discogs.com/release/1570542-Various-KROQ-FM-Devotees-Album