A Sense of Doubt blog post #1565 - De-evolution: Know the Truth - a Musical Monday Mix for 1906.03
I have loved DEVO since I discovered them in the late 1970s. Despite the success of "Whip It" from the 1980 album Freedom of Choice, I still cleave to the band's first album, 1978's Are We Not Men? We Are DEVO! as the band's most influential and seminal album.
I love doing these mixes -- and this one is ALL DEVO -- because I learn things, such as that the band's biggest hit "Whip It" references Thomas Pynchon's criticism of American conformity in the novel Gravity's Rainbow rather than some BDSM or masturbation fantasy.
This post shares the link and video pod player for the DEVO mix on You Tube, but it also shares many articles about DEVO and places to find DEVO, such as the band's official site, its Twitter, its Facebook and others.
Enjoy this Monday dedicated to DEVO.
WE ARE DEVO!
https://www.spin.com/2010/07/secret-history-devo/
5. VIDEO NOW FOR THE FUTURE
Casale: “People forget, we did play rock’n’roll. The emphasis got put elsewhere in the public image and the press. But nobody who saw Devo live thought we couldn’t rock.”
Mothersbaugh: “But we didn’t think we necessarily had to go out and perform. We were inspired by a Popular Science magazine with some clean-cut 1974 couple holding up a laserdisc. We were making music-driven narratives, short films, and we were gonna do a collection of ‘em once a year on laserdisc. And we also imagined playing one concert that would be beamed everywhere, so you don’t go on tour to support the laserdisc.”
http://www.clubdevo.com/
https://twitter.com/DEVO
https://www.facebook.com/ClubDEVO/
https://www.instagram.com/clubdevo/
Devo (/ˈdiːvoʊ/, originally /diːˈvoʊ/)[7] is an American rock band from Akron, Ohio formed in 1973. Their classic lineup consisted of two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs (Mark and Bob) and the Casales (Gerald and Bob), along with Alan Myers. The band had a No. 14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", the song that gave the band mainstream popularity.
Devo is known for their music and stage shows mingling kitsch science fiction themes, deadpan surrealist humorand mordantly satirical social commentary. Their often discordant pop songs feature unusual synthetic instrumentation and time signatures that have proven influential on subsequent popular music, particularly new wave, industrial, and alternative rock artists. Devo was also a pioneer of the music video, creating clips for the LaserDisc format, with "Whip It" getting heavy airplay in the early days of MTV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devo
https://pop-culture.fandom.com/wiki/Devo
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gy37ax/guide-to-getting-into-devo
Though certain crowds got what they were doing—notably, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, who would procure Devo a record deal after seeing the band’s short film, The Truth About Devolution—It wouldn’t be until “Whip It” that Devo managed to infiltrate the mainstream. Even then, most people still got it all wrong, believing (thanks in part to its BDSM-inflected video) it to be about sadomasochism and/or masturbation, rather than the Gravity’s Rainbow-inspired satire of American conformity that it was. Devo, of course, was mostly fine with such misinterpretations—not only did they help sell records, but they helped prove its point.
Half a century after its inception, Devo’s story, and its subtle critiques of corporate monoculture, technological worship, and geopolitical hysteria, play out like a canary in the coal mine of Trump’s America. They tried to tell us, but we didn’t listen: Devolution is real.
Devo’s use of synthesizers is so embedded in the DNA of pop music at this point, that’s it’s easy to forget the band helped pioneer it. “Whip It” would be one of the earlier hit pop songs to use synths as a lead instrument in place of guitar, its melody an uncanny but visceral facsimile of mainstream convention—unfamiliar, futuristic, and seductive. Devo took the technological innovations of Kraftwerk, Bob Moog, and others, and poured them over primal rock rhythms, resulting in a sound that used unfamiliar instruments in familiar ways, and vice-versa.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43p97n/devo-mark-mothersbaugh-gerald-casale-anniversary-interview-2018
Today, Devo’s mainstream legacy doubles as shorthand for 80s New Wave quirk—a group of synth-addled weirdos in red Ziggurat hats, yellow Tyvek suits, and a novelty hit, 1980’s “Whip It,” to their name. But to dismiss Devo as nostalgia compilation fodder is to overlook a body of work that feels prescient in both style and substance, rife with critiques of consumerism, right-wing ascendance, Midwestern paternalism, corporate monoculture, and geopolitical hysteria. Nearly 50 years later, the band’s story plays out like an uncanny harbinger of today’s post-Trump surreality—something Mothersbaugh sees flashes of in even the most unexpected corners of contemporary life.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/devo-on-how-whip-it-changed-their-lives-meeting-the-rolling-stones-704123/
“I don’t think Devo would have hatched in a major city,” the group’s Jerry Casale says, looking back on the art-rockers’ early history in a excited tone. “We were surrounded by an anti-intellectual culture and antagonistic people in Ohio. By the time we came up on the radar of the tastemakers, our aesthetic was fully formed.”
“I look at early pictures of us now and think, ‘I can see why people could be really attracted to Devo,'” says Mark Mothersbaugh, who sounds somewhat more reserved. “I can also see why so many people were angry with us or frightened of us.”
https://thevinylfactory.com/features/now-for-the-future-an-introduction-to-art-pop-pioneers-devo-in-10-records/
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that are fans of Devo and those that aren’t. To me Devo have always been visionaries. A band that contorted music and culture into radiant surrealist shapes, deadpan humorists hellbent on discordant and satirical rock ‘n roll, representing all that is good about music – attitude, philosophy, pop brilliance. They are a band that polarises opinion: to some they are the emperors new clothes, to others they are true iconoclasts of modern culture.
AND THIS.........
New Traditionalists
(Warner Bros., 1981)
(Warner Bros., 1981)
This is Devo at their most scientific. The emphasise on guitars has been culled to make way for a more synthpop direction, a path they would continue down. Drum machines take over a good portion of the rhythmic duties here whilst synthesizers hold up most of the main melodies, and to many fans this was a step down. I personally disagree, the bands newly developed robotic direction and self-production style embraces the synthetic approach the band had always promised would prevail.
Perhaps less humorous and off-kilter in content than previous offerings, it still contains some of Devo’s cleverest and most cynical lyrical content accompanied by some jerky, yet undeniably danceable, grooves. The anti-anthem ‘Through Being Cool’ sets the stage, but the highlight comes in the form of ‘Beautiful World’ a sarcastic social commentary on the state of human nature, set to one of their subtlest yet most memorable melodies…their point emphasised to great effect in it’s accompanying video featuring a montage of footage displaying human suffering. Showing us that De-evolution was indeed real and that the band had not lost their bite.
HERE'S A HUGE PLAYLIST OF DEVO TRACKS!!
top tracks DEVO - 165 tracks - YOU TUBE
YOU TUBE PLAYLIST LINK:
De-evolution: Know the Truth - a Musical Monday Mix for 1906.03
1. "Jocko Homo" (original version) - 3:58
2. "Beautiful World" - 3:39
3. "Through Being Cool" - 3:16
4. "[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction" - DEVOvision - 2:42
5. "Freedom Of Choice" - DEVOvision - 3:26
6. "Girl U Want" - DEVOvision - 2:59
7. "Whip It" - DEVOvision - 2:47
8. "Mongoloid" - 3:05
9. "Space Junk" - 2:15
10. "Gates Of Steel" - 3:32
11. "Uncontrollable Urge" (Live On Fridays) - 4:57
12. "Shrivel Up" - 3:04
13. "Blockhead" - 3:01
14. "Time Out For Fun" - 3:04
15. "Peek A Boo" - 3:31
16. "Secret Agent Man" - 1974 - 3:
17. "Come Back Jonee" - 3:38
18. "Jerkin' Back 'n' Forth" - 3:06
19. "Pink Pussycat" - 3:01
20. "Fresh!" - 3:03
21. "S.I.B (Swelling itching brain)" - 4:30
22. "Be Stiff" - 2:35
23. "I'm a Potato" - 3:05
24. "Midget" - 2:45
25. "Step Up" - 3:02
The first video in the mix and possibly the very best and most quintessential DEVO song.
About "Jocko Homo" -
FROM:
The perfect calling card, and for Devo a true statement of intent. Their debut album features many of their well known earlier songs rerecorded with Brian Eno in Germany at Conny Plank’s studio, where Bowie famously recorded his Berlin trilogy. Eno’s production both benefits and hinders, bringing out the best elements in Devo’s guitar and drum sounds, yet at times veering into overt sparseness and a suppression of synthesizers, a main ingredient in Devo’s later sound.
The songs themselves demonstrate Devo at their brilliantly bizarre best, vital and full of wry observations. Standouts are the wiry guitar driven punk of ‘Uncontrollable Urge’, the Island of Dr. Moreau-influenced unofficial band theme ‘Jocko Homo’, not forgetting their deconstructed (and bettered?) cover version of the Rolling Stones ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’. There are no dull moments and placed within a 1978 timeframe this must have sounded otherworldly, and in my view it still does.
FULL PLAYLIST VIDEO PLAYER POD:
It all started with this...
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1906.03 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1430 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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