Devo

A lot of care has been put into expanding the scope that pop culture assigned the band, as they are much more than the one-hit “Whip It” wonder. The “Gut Feeling/Slap Your Mammy” instrumental is leaned on heavily early on, as it is one of the finest compositions of any century and brings the converts a-rolling in. Devo will keep old fans happy while it makes new fans by the conveyor belt load. It isn’t any surprise that after the band Mothersbaugh became such a noted score composer, while Casale, who directed all the videos, became an iconic music video and commercial director.

What is surprising is that Devo ends up deeper, darker, and weirder than a hot tray of pot brownies. While the band has always sported the look of the future that helped set the pace of the 80s years before it started, the interviews chosen reveal that it went way past just a look. Like lots of great science fiction, the band was using the vocabulary of tomorrow to condemn the atrocities of the present tense. The ever-changing identical headwear with industrial uniforms was parodying the direction that the band feared society was heading.

“It will just take a few seconds to catch a craze that will last until the sound itself stops.”

Devo was perpetually building a speculative world that had a very similar aim to the cult sleeper Idiocracy, where the world of the future has gone stupid. All the most offensive parts of the “Whip It” video were supposed to be making fun of institutional bad taste, yet ended up being embraced for it. The greatest irony here, more than when the band found out most Americans don’t do irony, is that society has gone in exactly the direction Devo was warning about.

Mothersbaugh himself acknowledges that the band’s curse has always been being ahead of its time, but it is fitting that we have finally arrived at a time when that is obvious. If you have not seen this legendary band play live yet, do so while you still have the chance, if you can. Whether you have or have not, see Devo as soon as possible. It will just take a few seconds to catch a craze that will last until the sound itself stops.