DEVO - Q: ARE WE NO MEN? @ 45

 

Released on August 28th, 1978, DEVO's debut LP, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, turns 45 years old today. After incubating their music and philosophy over the course of some 5 years, the world was introduced to the concept of "De-Evolution", the principal that humanity had peaked as a species and was now backsliding into primitivism and ignorance.

Inspired by the Kent State Massacre of 4 students on May 4th, 1970, co-founder Gerald Casale began to formulate the basic principals of DeEvolution into the band, DEVO, back in 1973. Along with co-founder, Mark Mothersbaugh, brothers Bob 1 & Bob 2 and Alan Myers, the band spent three years developing songs, stagecraft and iconography in order to represent their vision of a degraded, displaced and disjointed dystopian future. By 1977, the group were ready to record and their demo was causing the likes of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Robert Fripp and Brian Eno to be in the running to produced the album. The job ultimately landed with Eno, who flew the band out to Conny Plank's studio near Cologne, Germany.

Production of the album ended up being something of a battle of wills, as the band held steadfastly to conceptions about how the songs should be produced, while resisting potentially beneficial suggestions from Eno. In later years, band members would express regrets over their stubbornness and refusal to collaborate more openly with Brian. But despite the friction, they managed to produce an album of tight, angular and innovative music, which would prove to be deeply influential as upcoming young artists sought something more than the three chord slash of punk.

I know my own reaction to the band and the album was a sense of revelation. I saw them perform on Saturday Night Live and was immediately won over by their quirky, alien idiosyncrasy, which was counterbalanced by an uncanny sense of nostalgia for mid century modern aesthetics. Parts of it reminded me of music from Warner Bros cartoons, while other aspects left me feeling like I'd stepped into a '50s science fiction B-movie. Coupled with their hazard suited, herky-jerky robotic stage antics, you had the perfect formula for fanatical DEVOtion!

While some critics at the time of its release couldn't quite grasp what the band were doing, the album has still managed to secure a solid position as essential listening from that era, in the ensuing years since its release. It's an album I can still listen to at any time and enjoy its strangeness, while marvelling at its ability to resist sounding dated.

DEVO - FREEDOM OF CHOICE @ 40!

May 16th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of DEVO's third and most successful LP, Freedom of Choice, released this day in 1980.

For me, this album represents DEVO achieving the perfection of their final form. Everything they'd been building towards and carefully crafting came into exact alignment on this album, from the song writing to the balance of instrumentation between guitars and synths to the image to the politics. In a way, it's almost too perfect because I never found any subsequent album as compelling. It's those first three albums which encompass the totality of the DEVO journey for me and, after this, it was pretty much just "more of the same".

Prior to this album, DEVO were a curiosity for most people, oddballs on the fringe in funny suits doing wacky robot moves. They'd been around for a good many years before this, forging their vision in underground clubs and managing to gain some attention with their first two albums within the burgeoning "New Wave" scene. I was an early adopter of the DEVO vision as soon as I saw them on SNL that first time performing Satisfaction and Jock Homo in 1978. The future was clear and it was obvious we were all slipping backwards down the evolutionary slope. As anyone can see by the current state of our planet, DEVO were more than musicians or artists, they were profits.

Freedom of Choice, in its very title, lays out the conundrum of human civilization as we struggle with the our sense of self and the desire to give up responsibility. "Freedom from choice is what you want" and all you have to do is look around to see humanity abdicating its responsibilities as the absolute worst of us flood into that vacuum of power and assume control over a system they never build and have no idea how to operate. The US is currently in the hands of a president who is the quintessential manifestation of the theory of "De-evolution". Booji Boy is all grown up and he's got his finger on the button. No one could more perfectly represent the corruption of our civilization and no one more precisely predicted this than Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale.

Freedom of Choice managed to take DEVO out of the shadows of obscurity and thrust them into the mainstream zeitgeist, particularly with the iconic single, Whip It. The song and its refrain to "whip it good" have become permanently ingrained in the collective consciousness of western pop culture. The domed red plastic hats have equally become fixtures when it comes to identifying the band. If you're looking for the pure stuff, there's no other record that's more DEVO than this.