The case of Devo is singular. As much ingenious and innovative at their debut, as rustic and trivial later, in an effort to pander to the public's taste, yielding to the arrogance of lucrative ambition. Yet they were, with Pere Ubu, Residents, Suicide, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie, the founding fathers of the New Wave. The rogue wave that was, clearly from the second half of the '70s to the early '80s, not a school or a compact movement, but a disposition to exploration outside of schemata, introspective, eager to break with conventions, in discontinuity with everything, even with Punk.
Gerald V. Casale was used to thinking clumsily, more in images than in ideas. Mark Mothersbaugh couldn't categorize life, not considering statements worthy of his actions. Therefore, he felt, in the same way, alive when reading, writing, drawing, sleeping, dreaming, eating, vomiting. Without opposition.
Jerry and Mark were regularly enrolled at Kent State University and were among the youngsters protesting after the invasion of Cambodia wanted by Nixon, also on that fateful May 4, 1970, when the National Guard opened fire on Campus students, killing Sandra Lee Scheuer, William Schroeder, Allison Krause, and Jeffry Glen Miller. The latter two were close friends of ours. Certain stories mark you. Neil Young, for instance, wrote "Ohio" on the spur of the moment.
The irreverence of conceptual theater where Gerald played the human enema alongside the human feces, did not seem - in truth - sufficient neither as a reaction nor as an artistic direction. Neither did Mark's excessive passion for decals with profiles of people vomiting suffice. They were pastimes for themselves. Not enough. Okay dadaism, but how to move beyond the naivety of hippie ideas, the tragedy of loss, and mourning?
The University of Kent stayed closed for three months. Devo perhaps was born then. Music was a glue. The two loved Blues and Prog, Captain Beefheart and the early Roxy Music. They slowly, but inexorably, conceived of the new music, the de-evolved one, New Wave. Heralds of neurotic, aloof, stolid poses, they rejected the ideology of the '60s as well as the contemporary tendency toward hedonism.
The theory of dehumanization, stemming at least from 1972, was prefigured and developed precisely at Kent. "In The Beginning Was The End: The Truth About De-Evolution", their short film directed by friend Chuck Statler, constituted the ideological and prophetic base of the group. It was presented at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1976. Seeking thus a way to protest, sublimating it in a anti-capitalist science fiction vision, which would at least clash with the strength of denunciation. And satire.
The theoretical core of de-Evolution counters Charles Darwin: man turns from adapting to nature to adapting to the technological environment. In a process of externally-directed massification. Toward mechanical and mechanistic depersonalization. The unconditional trust in technology that then oppresses, debases, enslaves man eliminates every ethical residue: what is possible is also permissible, indeed obligatory. Man becomes a hybrid, android and ameboid. Among the inspirers: Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, fundamentalist and sectarian preachers.
Thus they create scenarios, choreographies, flamboyant and phantasmal characters: Booji Boy, the simple-minded adult with a face of a foolish, silly child (who by chance moves like an idiot), the little Chinese man with his obscuring clairvoyances transcribed on flying sheets, a Hitlerian dictator, such as General Boy, father of Booji. Devo dressed alike to be anonymous, indistinguishable, serial. A shift team of maintenance workers at a nuclear plant. Surveillance attendants of the machine society. Technocratic.
They also adopt disguises from boiled potatoes, condoms, robots, lego men, humanoids. They are golems, complying with the myth of the postmodern man born in the 16th century with Rabbi Jehudah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague, and Dr. Johannes Faustus, and continued up to the cybernetics of Norbert Weiner. Bad taste, then, the Kitsch was self-imposed. Yet they became, nonetheless, Devo, a musical and visual affair. Impactful. Exceptional. Hilarious.
If it was corrosive criticism or insidious celebration of the commercialized, commodified Rock, that is, become a superstructure of capital, it's up to each to decide.
Then, musically, they wanted to be "the next big thing", seeking clamour and, deep down, had worked over five years to reach a real studio, with a real producer. A non-musician like Eno. Or Eno himself. They had skipped over Punk, like Pere Ubu, but if the latter contented themselves with the status of cult, underground, niche band, they instead were hunting for opportunities. The band from Akron, Ohio, made a genre we would call Electronic Punk Rock, New Wave connected then to a futuristic and tragicomic imaginary. The stabilized line-up included the brothers Mothersbaugh Mark, voice, and Bob, lead guitar, and the brothers Casale Gerald V., bass, and Bob, guitar. The drummer, finally, was the metronomic Alan Myers.
Ways and forms: psycholabile, tense, neurotic language, jerky. Predominantly fast and thunderous tracks, with little human gradient, that is, a greatly weakened humanity. From the hybridization of man and machine comes an unsettling, disturbing music. But also derisive, parodic, surreal. A counterfeit epicity. In a continuous game of half-truths, like in the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. MC's 5, Stooges, Bowie, Eno, dreamy Zappa-isms, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and again the bubblegum melody revisited by the Ramones, the appeal of Blondie. Ultimately a style halfway between the postmodern and the stark Gothic/ostrogothic.
Synthesizers draft noisy scenarios on which harsh guitars stand out, while the syncopated rhythms, often irregular, tend toward agitation and spasm. Cold and mechanical singing, depersonalized, yet capable of the most grotesque hysteria. This is its most human trait, however obsessive. Mark Mothersbaugh appears - indeed - neurotic and psychopathic, without too much simulation, without too much arrogance.
"Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" was epochal, a crazy and brilliant masterpiece. Rattling, bizarre, obsessive songs. Centrifugal, brief, schizo, agitated vocals. Amid electronic distortions, excessive, rock guitars, and experimentation, in a robotic - limping, rachitic - impulsive and hysterical style. Nothing to share with previous Pop, nor anteroom to what is coming. The work, produced (like the first Talking Heads) by Brian Eno, encompasses ideas matured over years, at least since 1974, if not before. Truly a vast collection of playful inventions, sharp insights, senseless fantasies, and kitschy gimmicks. The long incubation is important, as much, or more than the production of the former Roxy. It is evidenced, "epigrammed" precisely in "Hardcore Devo".
With "Duty Now For The Future", 1979, with a lighter and catchier sound, but especially with "Freedom Of Choice", 1980, came the definitive commercial consecration (i.e., over a million records sold). No more avant-garde and noise experimentation, inevitably. Provocations had become traditional in the context of ever more permeable allure to the taste of the audience (which they themselves truly helped shape). A joy less and less tense, increasingly carefree, disillusioned, no longer able to notice the index of affectation. The Dance Rock aesthetic, easier and (quite) smart, began to prevail. And so, for most, the prototypical Devo are exactly those of "Girl U Want" and "Whip it". "New Traditionalists", 1981, turned out to be partial confirmation (style) and denial (sales), while, in 1990, with "Smooth Noodle Maps", they attempted to break into the Techno scene. Works progressively more commercial, sure, but not ugly, not entirely disdainful, also attractive, dignified, of good eccentric Pop.
In a sense, they were reabsorbed by their disdain for capitalism and thus by the inexperience of their own ideas. Sure, the revolution was "Question:/Answer:". That changed the history of Popular Music. But - question - how many masterpieces can a band from Akron make? Answer: there is a time for creative music and a time for music to be consumed. "A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them" (Qohelet 3, 5).
"Devo – Hardcore Devo 1974-1977 Volume 1", Rykodisc 1990
"Devo – Hardcore Devo 1974-1977 Volume 2", Rykodisc 1991
Or their sum in "Devo – Hardcore", Superior Viaduct 2013.
These are two anthologies, published by Rykodisc, of unreleased recordings and demo tapes made on a four-track, realized in the four years preceding the release of the debut LP. Some tracks, eventually bringing good repute to the group, would be re-recorded and included in official albums, or on "Devo Live", most, however, not.
They were reissued in a single-double CD in 2013 by Superior Viaduct, with four other additional tracks (including the hapax Folk "Doghouse Doghouse"). They are, in short, idiot-songs. Wonderful. Remarkable, naturally. For fans and those curious about the de-evolutions and the best youth of Ohio. And, for biographers, given the events at the drums, where the presence of a third Mothersbaugh brother, Jim, is even certified. There are some beautiful songs to collect. Sparse and dazzling. A surprising cohesion altogether. Lose yourself in these meanders, in the synthetic enthusiasm, in the unripe insights.
"Hardcore" Vol.1, is the side, if one can say so, more Pop. It is characterized by robotic rhythms without melody, by abstraction and misogynistic resentments. Alien blues, self-celebrations, magniloquent pranks (e.g. "I need a chick / to suck my dick"), raw, dark, intriguing songs, miniatures more than sketches. And we are often close to the minimalism of the Residents, to that raw and atypical sound (first and foremost "Golden Energy").
Among the tracks that will become famous, the manifesto "Joko Homo", the deconstruction of "Satisfaction" and "Mongoloid", or the praise of diversity.
Then "Mechanical Man" with the lifeless sounds of the synth, noise of elastic bands snapping wildly, a spring-loaded mouse trap, and the vocoder in a monotonous and cybernetic phrasing among the appliances of a basement that looks like a space probe.
The sarcastic and successful satire of "Social Fool", alternately solemn and catchy, pissed off with society, parents, and every authoritarianism. Imploding synthesizers. Paranoid and tormented voice.
The fast, lively, and facetious "I'm A Potato", strong with the tongue-twister "What happens next? / De-evolution self-execution no-solution" and "Uglatto", characterized by the verses: "Fat Oldsmobilo / A puffed potato / This Roman say: / Ugh-latto / You, a bad tomato / Speak Esperanto / So desperato / And constipato / This Roman nose / You're Uglatto".
"Midget", alien funk plus creamy guitar, insipid singing with multiple voices overlapping and intertwining, born of impairment and the most divergent idiocy. Like "Stop And Listen", a splashing of Doo-wop choruses blessed by the fat Camenae.
Hardcore Vol.2. Even here we are not so much in front of Aeolic-choriambic verses, as experimental raids, more - and better - than in Vol.1: electrostatic blues, tongue-twisters, noise mimicry, epic moments (see "All of us”), "Fountains of dirt", rising synthetic depressions, adenoidal whine, ostracism ("I been refused / I lost my shoes"), wrong medicines, "Dogs of democracy", cyber spies, a vicious fräulein desired by our friends, rope pulls, merry rock'n'roll raids (like "Plan For U"). There is no lack of caricaturing emphasis, arrogance, and the search for the ridiculous, a not uncommon tangible and monotonous slowness.
In the Hardcore tapes, indeed, speed and urgency often "disappear". They are hidden, in favor of gloomy and apocalyptic atmospheres. At least sketched. Some, with cause, even recall that the garage where they recorded was not heated and in the harsh winters, they played their instruments in improbable conditions and with wool gloves on. It is, if you will, that pinch of chance that always enriches the compositional genius. Maybe.
On display: "Booji Boy Funeral", an instrumental track with heavy synths to weave and unweave an atmospheric funeral. A mix of pity and fear, practically the elements of Aristotelian tragedy.
"Bamboo Bimbo", paranoid and insane. Ruthless. Scratchy verses that give the piece its palette of rust and amber. A lascivious pantomime.
"Goo Goo Itch", bubblegum melodism in a carefree, extravagant, clownish refrain. Like Zappa. An absurd skit.
"Let's Go", a sort of disjointed and recalcitrant Olympic anthem.
"Bottled up" is a crazily well-executed madness. A cheap and affable fun.
Funny, satirical, bewildering ideas, a sound already sufficiently defined in this significant phase of gestation. This summa has the merit of showcasing the ideas and these "naked kings", abundantly testifying to their indigenous talent, the apprenticeship, their skills, and struggles, and again, the incredible auratic breath, in short, everything behind "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!".
It is, ultimately, "Question:/Answer:" behind the mirror.
Subsequently, the risk will be that there will be no one left in the mirror.
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