Page 28 - the NOISE September 2013

HumAn HiGHWAY
“[Kent State was] probably the biggest lesson ever learned at an American place of learning.” — Neil Young (1977)
Gerald Casale was born in 1948 and raised in Kent, Ohio. While studying art at Kent State University in the late 1960s, Jerry and some fellow students hatched a fun little pet theory called De- evolution.
De-evolution postulated that the human race was not evolv- ing but de-evolving. People were getting stupider and more sheep-like and the decline of civilization was unfolding in front of us. It made sense in a twisted way. The clues were everywhere, just look at Nixon.
Casale was primarily a visual artist and held several exhibi- tions centered on the De-evolution theme. He took his theory half-seriously but always presented it with a straight face like it was the latest scientific breakthrough.
The late 1960s/early 1970s was a period of intense political activism on American college campuses, and Kent State was no exception. Casale was a member of Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) and had participated in many protests and sit-ins. With a man like Richard Nixon in the Oval Office, there was plen- ty to get angry about.
One of Nixon’s campaign promises in 1968 was to end the war in Vietnam, but on April 30, 1970, he announced that American troops had invaded Cambodia, thus escalating the conflict. The President achieved this without a Congressional vote, a defiant- ly unconstitutional act.
That weekend, Kent State University erupted. Several large protests were broken up by police, and a near-riot occurred in the downtown bar area. The campus ROTC building was set afire while students danced around it joyously. Draft cards and a copy of the US Constitution were burned. A state of emergency was declared and the Ohio State National Guard was called in to maintain order.
On Monday, May 4, 1970, a planned anti-war rally was held on campus. About 2000 people showed up. After failing to disperse the protestors with tear gas, a company of National Guardsmen advanced on the crowd, forcing them out of the commons area. In the ensuing confusion, the soldiers opened fire. Two male and two female students, all aged 19-20, were killed and nine others wounded.
Jerry Casale was there that afternoon. He never had a weapon pointed at him before, much less 77 of them. He distinctly heard an order to fire and watched as the troops shot his classmates. He was nearer to the guns than several of those who were hit. He could have easily been one of them. Casale later stated none of his fellow protestors thought that the National Guards’ rifles were loaded.
May 4, 1970 was the day Jerry Casale stopped being a hippie. Peace and love obviously were not going to work. His goofy De- evolution theory became his new religion. The massacre at his alma mater and the distortion of the facts written afterward in
neil Young, photo by Mike Frankel, mikefrankel.com
the press only proved it further.
In June 1970, Crosby Stills Nash And Young released “Ohio,”
a Neil Young song hastily written about Kent State. The single came blasting out of every radio in America that summer. It was inescapable. Many Kent State students were deeply moved by
“Ohio,” but Jerry Casale and his friends were not. They saw it as a bunch of rich California musicians making a profit off of their tragedy.
Despite his loathing for “Ohio,” one stanza pierced Casale through his heart:
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground How can you run when you know?
Jerry was acquainted with two of the victims: Jeffrey Miller and Allison Krause. He had helped the incoming freshmen through their orientation the previous fall. In fact, Casale had witnessed Krause being shot and killed. The song lyric haunted him, but “Ohio” was wrong, all wrong. The idea of creating his own De-evolution music began growing in Casale’s head.
Shortly after the shootings, Jerry met a Kent State art stu- dent named Mark Mothersbaugh. After listening to Casale’s De- evolution spiel, Mothersbaugh showed him a pamphlet he had found called “Jocko-Homo Heavenbound,” an anti-evolution dia- tribe written by B.H. Shadduck in 1924. “Jocko-Homo” was the name given by Shadduck to the modern de-evolved apeman. The author was clearly a religious nut, but much of the text mir- rored the De-evolution theory. The two young men marveled at the synchronicity.
Jerry Casale had discovered a kindred spirit in Mark Mothers- baugh. Together, they would bring De-evolution to the masses. Mothersbaugh encouraged Casale to expand his theory across other media. Jerry had played bass and Mark had sung
in bar bands, so forming a group was the next logical step. Strangely enough, each had brothers named Bob who were gui- tarists, and both Bobs agreed to join. Mark’s other brother Jim signed up, playing home-made synthesized drum pads. DEVO was born.
DEVO was designed to function visually as well as sonically. Characters such as Pootman and The Chinaman illustrated De- evolution’s effect on humanity. One day Mothersbaugh was poking around a novelty store and found a hideous rubber baby mask with orange hair. Mark developed a whiny falsetto voice to accompany it and thus became DEVO’s mascot Booji Boy.
Booji (pronounced “boogie”) Boy was the eternal child, the naif. Onstage, Mothersbaugh would don the Booji Boy mask while playing a slow drone on his Moog synthesizer (Mark was possibly the only person in Ohio who owned one in 1972) and screech long drawn-out numbers such as “The Words Get Stuck In My Throat” and “I Need A Chick” (.”.. to suck on my dick”) ac- companied by jeers from the audience, if there was one.
From 1972-1975, DEVO played several sparsely-attended live shows around the Kent State area. Their twisted, freaky music was not popular. They once landed a gig by telling the bar own-
28 • september 2013 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us