Postby bobzilla77 » 07 Aug 2014, 19:07
In between making our first two albums, two of the guys in Claw Hammer had a talk with the head of our record label, who had just noticed the Pussy Galore Exile On Main Street limited cassette selling for $50 in Goldmine. "You guys should do that! And then, we'll hoard all the copies! So eventually we can sell all 500 of them for $50 and make $25,000!" Yes, great idea, we said! So what album will you do - Between The Buttons? Beggar's Banquet?
No, said our guitarist, we would do Devo's first album in its entirety.
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life, no fuckin' way." said the record label head.
Two months later we were in the studio. Bob & Mark Mothersbaugh gave their blessing and came to watch us perform it live. Mark wrote the liner notes.
It has yet to reach collector prices of $50 a copy, and we don't still have all 500 copies. So much for that.
But some of our band got to meet Devo and later, we all got to do sessions for Mark's soundtrack operation, Mutato Muzika, when he needed a rockin' TV theme song. He called us back later to do a surf-punk themed Mello Yello commercial.
This led to me doing one session playing drums with Devo in 1996 when their drummer Josh Freese was on tour and they needed a couple of numbers for the Supercop soundtrack in a hurry - the title song for the movie, and a cover of NIN's "Head Like A Hole". Someone at Interscope heard this coming out of an office, and thought it was music for a Nine Inch Nails Saturday morning cartoon, like the Beatles and the Jackson 5.
I'm pleased to note that the song appears, with a credit to me, on their compilation Pioneers Who Got Scalped. I'm an actual footnote in Devo history, one of my highest professional accomplishments.
Jimbo wrote:I guess I am over Graham Nash's politics. Hopelessly naive by the standards I've molded for myself these days.