Black Cat Bone

Only up to and including their first album. After that, it's downhill all the way.

apart from 'Girl U Want', 'Whip It' and 'That's Good'

And Gut Feeling.

that's on the first album!

But would be the only individual song mentioned so far which is worth hearing.

Some of their more clubby tracks, like 'Whip It', were ahead of their time and still retain a freshness. But on the whole I found their wackiness irritating, not as irritating as The Residents but going in that direction.
It's amazing how seriously they were taken in the late seventies, with Eno and Bowie going on about them all the time, but now they seem almost semi-forgotten.

Darkness_Fish wrote:But would be the only individual song mentioned so far which is worth hearing.

No way! All of the songs mentioned so far are good/great for me. They couldn't top the debut album though when it cam to LPs, though to be honest i haven't heard the ones after Shout.

The Modernist wrote:Some of their more clubby tracks, like 'Whip It', were ahead of their time and still retain a freshness. But on the whole I found their wackiness irritating, not as irritating as The Residents but going in that direction.
It's amazing how seriously they were taken in the late seventies, with Eno and Bowie going on about them all the time, but now they seem almost semi-forgotten.

I think they reached their logical extension when Mark Motthersbaugh became the musical director for the Rugrats cartoon.

I saw them circa '78 at the Mabhuhay Gardens, San Francisco's punk nexus and they were a breath of fresh air. They deserved all the praise they got and their albums up to fourth are good to great. I don't think Devo ever changed - I think pop music and fans caught up to them.

Four first album for me - all great

late robust live concert!
still full of energy!

They were fucking excellent. The pre-first album stuff ("Hardcore") is from another planet. There are no other cookies cut from the same cutter.

They also ROCKED. The thing that's so fun about that first album is how it bounces back and forth between sounding like a rock band, and a parody of a rock band. It keeps you off balance, and it's funny. They have zazz.

And they come into the rock scene in 1978 as ... such the antithesis of everything ludicrous about that era that was worshipped and taken seriously. I was still pretty into classic rock at the dawn of punk, I didn't understand why people wanted to tear it down or get rid of it, hey Aerosmith's a pretty good band. Why do these obnoxious unwashed people want me to stop listening to good music? I didn't understand it at all.

But I got Devo. I may have been into rock music but I was also pretty into MAD magazine. Some of their concepts went over my head, but it didn't matter. You don't need to go to the Arctic to know it's cold, right?

Jerry Casale told me the story of Devo playing the Knebworth Festival in 1978 opening for Genesis and the Atlanta Rhythm Section, and how the audience hated them so much they were lobbing every sort of missile that could taken in hand at the stage. But because the festival organizers had put a giant gap at the front of stage and fenced it off for guests, press and photographers, all the crap that was aimed at them ended up raining on the VIPs. An American audience, he felt, would have been better equipped to do damage thanks to our shared heritage of baseball.

ooooooohhhhh yeah wrote:that's on the first album!

It is ... Oh I see.

Gerald Casale follows me on Twitter - I don't know why... Politeness perhaps.

outstanding Mark Mothersbaugh interview!

very focused on his process, his tools, and how good today's kids have got it.

Darkness_Fish wrote:Only up to and including their first album. After that, it's downhill all the way.

Yeah, it seems that way, doesn't it?

I moved on from them almost immediately and by the time I came back to see what they'd been up to there was nothing there that interested me. Maybe a couple of left-over songs on their follow-up, but that was about it.

But I always had good will toward them though (except when I heard their abominable cover of Are You Experienced).

Snarfyguy wrote:But I always had good will toward them though (except when I heard their abominable cover of Are You Experienced).

Hated it!
they just put out a b-sides thing and it whetted my appetite. I can watch you tubes of that guy showing off what he has in his studio all day.
I've been revisiting the "Hardcore Devo" stuff. I really like how "low tech" that stuff is.

I heard the Stiff Singles on late night radio shows in 77. by 78 KROQ was rotating the hell out of every single track on "Are We Not Men?". it still astonishes me how some weird in the middle of the night music was suddenly coming at me like the next big thing. I loved it - every track. I still love it. I agree it's their best but I'm on board the DEVO express all the way up to (and including) "Oh No, it's DEVO"

My favorite thrift store had the first DEVO decal I ever saw. I saw him peeling it off with a razor blade around the time "Freedom of Choice" came out. Me, I thought it seemed more or less like a natural progression at the time. I thought "Duty Now..." had some great tunes but it was already sounding a little clean around the edges here and there.

I never begrudged them their success but I stuck to the first two for years. I've since come around. You can see in the Hardcore stuff that they're pretty much up for anything. being a band for self styled nerds seemed like a perfectly valid career choice but I still like the stuff that sounds like cavemen with electronics. Despite what him and Gerry Casale say about it - those first two Warners LP's are rock and roll albums.

I was working at a movie theater. we were showing "Rust Never Sleeps" on a double bill with a low budget horror film called "Patrick". there was film of "the day my baby gave me a surprise" tagged onto the front of the "rust" print. so, every day. people would finish watching "Patrick" hurl knives at people with his mind, hit the snack bar and then see this...

People would actually come out into the lobby and say "what the FUCK is this????" in its month or so run, dozens of people found it completely unimaginable that a movie theatre would be showing such a thing.

they are growing in my estimation. they put a lot of themselves into what they were doing. I do think they made a money grab and don't want to admit it but those records DID make a lot of money for a lot of people and there's some pretty weird stuff and semi-radical ideas on some of them.

I (heart) DEVO.

Sneelock wrote:I was working at a movie theater. we were showing "Rust Never Sleeps" on a double bill with a low budget horror film called "Patrick". there was film of "the day my baby gave me a surprise" tagged onto the front of the "rust" print. so, every day. people would finish watching "Patrick" hurl knives at people with his mind, hit the snack bar and then see this...

People would actually come out into the lobby and say "what the FUCK is this????" in its month or so run, dozens of people found it completely unimaginable that a movie theatre would be showing such a thing.

God, I LOVE shit like that. Just wonderful.

How's 'Whip It' seen in the US these days (if you can answer such a question!)? Just another MTV hit? A novelty record?

I think the video is about as good as these things get. It always makes me smile. They WERE subversive, but just enough - always that sense of fun on top of it all.

Saw them at the Showbox in Seattle back in 81? and was the best show I had ever experienced. I never saw Bowie do his costume change shows but I felt I had seen an equivalent of Bowie. And the light show was like none other I'd seen.

I find however their output on CDs sounds a lot worse, more muted than on LP. Odd for such a technically crisp band.

Uncle Charles Routine wrote:How's 'Whip It' seen in the US these days (if you can answer such a question!)? Just another MTV hit? A novelty record?

It's the only song most people know and gets the most airplay on things like SiriusxM (Satisfaction and "Girl you want" come in close seconds)...I think the general public see it as a quality single which borders on novelty, while not going over to it...

Swiff it Good!

I'll say this about them, I think their drummer Alan Meyer is the secret ingredient that made them appeal to the masses. If you listen to the demos on Hardcore before he joined, it's SO removed from rock and roll, you couldn't imagine that getting played on the radio even once. Alan gave them groove and impact. He made them rock unironically.