Page 29 - the NOISE September 2013

er they were an Allman Brothers cover band. They lasted about three songs before being unplugged and thrown out.
Jim Mothersbaugh left in 1975 and Jerry, Mark and the two Bobs decided to make a short film to introduce DEVO to the world. The Truth About De-Evolution opened with the band portraying factory employees, Mothers- baugh as Booji Boy and the rest in clear plastic facemasks, getting off work and driving to a bar where they perform “Secret Agent Man.”
The next scene began with Booji Boy run- ning through an industrial area while an air raid siren blares. He races up a staircase to de- liver the “secret papers” to his father, the mili- tary commander General Boy (portrayed by Mothersbaugh patriarch Robert Sr.), who faces the camera and declares:
“In the past, this information has been sup- pressed, but now it can be told. Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about De-evolution!”
To which Booji Boy exclaims: “Oh, Dad! We’re all DEVO!”
What follows is DEVO’s statement of pur- pose: “Jocko Homo.” Mark Mothersbaugh sings the lyrics dressed as a doctor (with orange rub- ber gloves) lecturing to his masked colleagues:
They tell us that We lost our tails Evolving up From little snails I say it’s all
Just wind in sails Are we not men?
WE ARE DEVO! Are we not men?
D-E-V-O!
There was no road map for what DEVO was trying to do. The term “multimedia” did not ex- ist in the 1970s. The only parallel was a mysteri- ous group from San Francisco called The Resi- dents, who began to weld unsettling visuals to their creepy music around the same period.
“The Truth About De-Evolution” made the
rounds of independent film festivals and caused a minor hubbub. The band felt like they were on the right track. In 1976 DEVO hired drummer Alan Myers. Inspired, the brothers Casale and Mothersbaugh cranked out a slew of new songs: “Mongoloid,” “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Come Back Jonee,” “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy,” “Space Junk,” “Sloppy,” “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA” and a spastic version of the Rolling Stones’“Satisfaction.”
DEVO were now a real band. After years of struggling, they had grown into exciting live performers. The presence of an actual drum- mer gave their music a rock & roll kick. Their shows were no longer endurance tests for the audience, except for Booji Boy’s inevitable bummer appearance. The group adopted bright yellow one-piece uniforms and eye goggles. Their onstage moves were robotic yet sexy.
The contrast between the five’s unsmiling seriousness and the ridiculous subject matter of their songs (and manner of dress) slowly found an audience of fellow mutants. They recorded and distributed a rough demo tape and word of mouth began to spread.
About this time, the first wave of punk rock hit. Since DEVO’s music was so anti-commer- cial, they were lumped in with the punks, but the two camps never really cared for each other. The punks found DEVO silly and child- ish and gimmicky while DEVO found the punks conformist and humorless and thuglike. The punks felt that the spudboys were mocking them and the spudboys WERE mocking them. It was an uneasy marriage of convenience.
There was a positive side. Punk rock did alert the public that music existed outside the mainstream. More venues were allowing offbeat bands to play, and a network of punk- friendly scenes was building across America. For all of its weirdness, DEVO’s music was me- ticulously crafted, as was their live show. They weren’t amateurs, which set them apart from the majority of the punks. But punk was defi- nitely underground, which is where DEVO felt they belonged.
A copy of the band’s demo landed in the hands of Dean Stockwell, an American actor and writer. Stockwell was a Hollywood brat who had starred opposite such heavyweights as Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, and Orson Welles. He won Best Actor at Cannes twice, one of only three people to ever do so.
After discovering LSD in the mid-1960s,
deVo, photo by Debbie Leavitt, debbieleavitt.com
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thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news
• september 2013 • 29