Portal:Devo
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Introduction
Left to right: Gerald Casale (bass), Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals; keyboards), Bob Casale (keyboards; guitar), and Bob Mothersbaugh (guitar)
Devo (/ˈdiːvoʊ/, originally /diːˈvoʊ/) is an American rock band from Akron, Ohio formed in 1973. Their classic lineup consisted of two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs (Mark and Bob) and the Casales (Gerald and Bob), along with Alan Myers. The band had a No. 14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", the song that gave the band mainstream popularity.
Devo is known for their music and stage shows mingling kitsch science fiction themes, deadpan surrealist humor and mordantly satirical social commentary. Their often discordant pop songs feature unusual synthetic instrumentation and time signatures that have proven influential on subsequent popular music, particularly new wave, industrial, and alternative rock artists. Devo was also a pioneer of the music video, creating clips for the LaserDisc format, with "Whip It" getting heavy airplay in the early days of MTV. They are currently nominated for the 2019 Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame class.
Selected general articles
- DEV-O Live is a live EP (and later live album) by American new wave band Devo. It was recorded during the Freedom of Choice tour of 1980, at The Fox Warfield Theatre. Initially only six songs from the show were released on an EP in 1981, intended for airplay use (largely for the King Biscuit Flower Hour). It featured the otherwise-unreleased "Freedom of Choice Theme Song" and a reworked version of "Be Stiff".
Devo were given consistent radio support by Sydney-based noncommercial rock station 2JJ, one of the first rock stations outside America to play their recordings. This paid off, as in August 1981, they found commercial success in Australia when the EP spent 3 weeks at the top of the Australian singles charts. Later in the year, they travelled to Australia and appeared on TV show Countdown. Read more... - "The Mutants Are Revolting" is the twelfth episode of the sixth season of the American animated sitcom Futurama and is the 100th episode of the series. It aired on Comedy Central on September 2, 2010 as a mid-season finale, with remaining episodes broadcast in November 2010 and in 2011. In the episode, the Planet Express crew celebrate their 100th delivery. Leela's status as a mutant is exposed to the public and she is deported from the surface and forced to live with other mutants in the sewers. She recognizes the inequality with which mutants are forced to live and rallies them together in an equal rights revolt against the surface dwellers.
The episode was written by Eric Horsted and directed by Raymie Muzquiz. Mark Mothersbaugh of the band Devo guest stars as himself, while the band appears as future mutated versions of themselves. Having the 100th episode as the seventh-season finale was a coincidence. The production team sought to focus the episode's subject matter on a topic with roots in the series' history. They eventually chose to write about Leela's mutant heritage, which had been one of the series' longstanding storylines. "The Mutants Are Revolting" received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Although recognized as an unlikely landmark for Futurama by critics due to its previous cancellation, the episode was criticized for failing to live up to its status as the series' 100th episode. Devo's guest appearance is one of co-producer and head writer David X. Cohen's favorite moments in the series. Read more... - Greatest Hits is a collection of songs by Devo released in 1990. The album includes several photos from previous albums, and the first half of an article on the band by Howie Klein. The second half of this article appears in the accompanying material for Devo's Greatest Misses. Read more...
- "Freedom of Choice" is a song by the American new wave band Devo, written by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. It appears on the album of the same name.
The line "In ancient Rome there was a poem about a dog who had two bones. He picked at one, he licked the other, he went in circles 'till he dropped dead," resembles the Buridan's ass paradox about the nature of free will, with the donkey changed to a dog who dies when he can't decide which bone to eat. Read more... - "Jocko Homo" is the B-side to Devo's first single, "Mongoloid," released in 1977 on Devo's own label, Booji Boy Records and later released in the UK on Stiff Records. The song was re-recorded as the feature song for Devo's first album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! on Warner Bros. Records in 1978. The original version peaked at #62 on the UK Singles Chart. It is based on a chant from the 1932 movie Island of Lost Souls. "Jocko Homo" introduced the call-and-response "Are we not men?" / "We are Devo!" It is generally considered to be Devo's anthem. The title is taken from a 1924 anti-evolution tract called Jocko-Homo Heavenbound by B. H. Shadduck, where it is explained as meaning "ape-man." The song revolves around an idiosyncratic descending guitar riff and absurdist lyrics. Read more...
- Booji Boy /ˈbʊɡi/ is a character created in the early 1970s by the American new wave band Devo. The name is pronounced "Boogie Boy"—the strange spelling "Booji" resulted when the band was using Letraset to produce captions for a film, and ran out of the letter "g". When the "i" was added but before the "e," Devo's lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh reportedly remarked that the odd spelling "looked right."
Booji Boy has traits of a simian child and typically wears an orange nuclear protection suit. He is portrayed by Mothersbaugh in a mask and is the son of another fictitious Devo character, General Boy. The intent of the figure is to satirize infantile regression in Western culture, a quality Devo enjoyed elucidating. This character was officially introduced in the 1976 short film The Truth About De-Evolution. Read more...
Josh Mancell (born November 13, 1969) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist who writes music for film, television, and video games. He is best known for his work on the Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series of video games.
Mancell has received two Daytime Emmy Award nominations for his work on the children's television series, Clifford the Big Red Dog. Read more...- Pioneers Who Got Scalped: The Anthology is a compilation album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in 2000, on the label Rhino. 17 of the 50 tracks were previously unreleased on CD, including B-sides, outtakes, remixes, soundtrack songs and spoken word material. The band recorded the long-time concert favorite "The Words Get Stuck in My Throat" in the studio for the first time, specifically for inclusion on this compilation.
The liner notes are by music historian Andy Zax, most famous for being the Music Geek on the Comedy Central program Beat the Geeks. Read more... - On July 23, 2013, Devo released Something Else for Everybody, a digital collection of eleven tracks from the Something for Everybody sessions that didn't make the final album. The death of Alan Myers, Devo's third and most prominent drummer, came just a month before the release of the album. Something Else for Everybody was released on CD by Booji Boy Records on May 20, 2014. Read more...
- Total Devo is the seventh studio album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in May 1988, their first album on Enigma Records, four years after their previous album, Shout. The album was recorded between 1986 and 1988, with the basic tracks recorded at Devo studios, in Marina del Rey, and the additional tracks at Master Control, in Burbank, California.
Total Devo was the first Devo studio album without drummer Alan Myers, who was replaced by former Sparks drummer David Kendrick. This was the last Devo album to include use of the Fairlight CMI digital sampling synthesizer, which was mostly used for pre-sequencing the album, as well as for sampling in the choruses of "Some Things Never Change" and "Agitated." Read more... - "Whip It" is a song by American rock band Devo from their third album Freedom of Choice (1980). It is a new wave and synth-pop song that features a synthesizer, electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums in its instrumentation. The apparently nonsensical lyrics have a common theme revolving around the ability to deal with one's problems by "whipping it". Co-written by bassist Gerald Casale and singer Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo recorded "Whip It" with producer Robert Margouleff at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
Although "Whip It" was released as the second single from Freedom of Choice, Warner Bros. Records did not expect it to be a hit, due to its nonstandard tempo and strange lyrics. The disc jockey Kal Rudman took an interest in the song and it was soon being played on several radio stations in the Southeastern United States. Peaking at number fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100, "Whip It" became a hit single and found chart success in several countries. Mothersbaugh believes the song sold well because some people assumed the lyrics are about masturbation or sadomasochism. Read more...
Robert Curtis Lewis (born March 4, 1947) is an American composer, musician, and basketballer. He is best known as a co-founder (along with Gerald Casale) of the new wave band Devo. He graduated from Kent State University shortly after the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Read more...- Now It Can Be Told: DEVO at the Palace is a live album released by American new wave band Devo, recorded during their 1988 "comeback tour" in promotion of the Total Devo album. It contains performances of several cuts from Total Devo but largely focuses on earlier material and also contains one exclusive song, "It Doesn't Matter to Me." Read more...
- Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo is a compilation of songs by American new wave band Devo, released in 1993. It was released in the United Kingdom by Virgin Records as a British equivalent to the American compilation Greatest Hits. Virgin omitted "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" and "Here to Go (Go Mix)" from the American running order and added the singles "Mongoloid," "Be Stiff," "Secret Agent Man" and "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize," as well as an exclusive remix of "Whip It." Read more...
Freese performing live with Devo, in 2008.
Joshua Ryan Freese (born December 25, 1972) is an American session drummer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and composer.
He is a permanent member of The Vandals and Devo, having formerly played drums for Guns N' Roses from 1997 to 2000, A Perfect Circle from 1999 to 2012, Nine Inch Nails from 2005 to 2008, Weezer from 2009 to 2011, and Sublime with Rome from 2012 to 2017. He has appeared on over 400 records. In December 2010, Freese began touring with Paramore on their South American tour. In fall 2016 he returned to playing full time with Sting whom he toured and recorded with in 2005. Read more...- Duty Now for the Future is the second studio album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in July 1979, on the labels Warner Bros. and Virgin. Produced by Ken Scott, the album was recorded between September 1978 and early 1979, at Chateau Recorders, in Hollywood, California. The majority of the songs on the album had been performed in Devo's live set as early as 1976.
The "Devo Corporate Anthem" song and video are a nod to the 1975 film Rollerball, in which games are preceded by players and audience standing solemnly while listening to a regional "corporate hymn." Read more... - Something for Everybody is the ninth studio album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in June 2010 (being their first studio album in two decades, since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps) on their original label Warner Bros., and was their first issued on that label since their sixth studio album Shout in 1984. The album was recorded between July 2007 and mid-2009, at Mutato Muzika, in West Hollywood, California. The album is the last Devo album to feature Bob Casale, who died in February 2014.
The album cover depicts a woman the band refers to as the "Sexy Candy Dome Girl", (Russian model and musician Natasha Romanova of the band Discrete Encounter) holding a miniature blue energy dome to her mouth. Read more... - The Beginning Was the End is a 1971 pseudo-scientific book written by Oscar Kiss Maerth that claims that mankind evolved from cannibalistic apes. Its premise: Read more...
- Greatest Misses is a collection of songs by Devo released in 1990. The album includes several photos from previous albums, and the second half of an article on the band by Howie Klein. The first half of this article appears in the accompanying material for Devo's Greatest Hits. Greatest Misses contains lesser-known tracks and alternate versions of tracks from other albums. It has a Parental Advisory label because of the song "Penetration in the Centerfold". Read more...
- "Dare to Be Stupid" is an original song by "Weird Al" Yankovic. It is a musical pastiche (or "style parody") of the band Devo.
Lyrically, the song dares the listener to be stupid in various ways; mostly by advising the listener to do the opposite of common idioms (e.g. "let the bedbugs bite" or "put all your eggs in one basket"), with the occasional absurd non sequitur (e.g. "stick your head in the microwave and get yourself a tan"). Read more... - Shout is the sixth studio album by American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in October 1984, on the labels Warner Bros. and Virgin, two years after their previous album, Oh, No! It's Devo. The album was recorded over a period of ten months between July 1983 and Feb 1984, in sessions that took place at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, California. The album retained the synth-pop sound of their previous few records, with an extensive focus on the then-new Fairlight CMI Series IIx digital sampling synthesizer. Despite the popularity of synth-pop in 1984, the album was a critical and commercial failure, peaking at only No. 83 on the Billboard 200 and ultimately leading to Warner Bros. dropping the band from their label. Shout was the second Devo album (after 1981's New Traditionalists) in which co-founder and bass player Gerald Casale sang the majority of the lead vocals, which are usually performed by Mark Mothersbaugh.
Following its release, the band went on hiatus for four years. Although the band would release two studio albums through Enigma Records, they would not release another album through Warner Bros. until Something for Everybody in 2010. The band themselves have been quite vocal in that they were not satisfied with the completed album, and in response to a question from a fan on Twitter, Casale once said that recording the album was even "too painful to talk about." Read more... - The Complete Truth About De-Evolution was the third home video release by new wave band Devo. It is a collection of Devo's music videos from 1976 to 1990. It was released on LaserDisc in 1993 by Voyager and on DVD by Rhino Records in 2003. MVD released a new version of the disc in 2014. Read more...
- Hardcore Devo: Volume One is the first of two collections of demos by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in August 1990, on the label Rykodisc. It was out of print for over twenty years; however, it was re-issued on Superior Viaduct in 2013 both as a vinyl release (May 2013) and a CD containing both volumes and bonus tracks (July 2013). Read more...
Casale performing live with Devo, 1978
Gerald Vincent "Jerry" Casale (born Gerald Vincent Pizzute; July 28, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, commercial and music video director, and vintner.
Casale's music career spans more than 40 years. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as co-founder and bass player of the new wave band Devo, which released a Top 20 hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It". Casale is one of the main composers of Devo's music and made major lyrical contributions to the band's songs, while also designing Devo's distinctive attire (including the energy dome, plastic pompadours, and yellow radiation suits) over the years with Mark Mothersbaugh and directed most of Devo's music videos. He is one of only two members (along with lead singer and keyboardist Mothersbaugh) who have been with Devo throughout its entire history. Read more...- Hardcore Devo Live! is a concert film and live album, showcasing the June 28th, 2014 performance at the Fox Theatre in Oakland, California of Devo's 2014 "Hardcore Devo Live" tour. The tour commemorates the 40th anniversary of the band, and pays tribute to former band member, Bob Casale who died February 17th, 2014. The set list exclusively focuses on songs written between 1974 and 1977, before Devo had a recording contract. Many of the songs had not been performed by the band since 1977. While the music is largely performed as a quartet, the band is augmented, off-stage, by Brian Applegate on additional keyboards and bass guitar. The tour was also the last tour to feature Josh Freese on drums.
The show is performed in two halves, the first, focusing on earlier material, is presented with the band seated, in street clothes, with minimal lighting, as if the audience were watching them rehearsing in a basement. After "Midget," the band puts on blue coveralls, as worn in early live shows, working in more famous songs that would later appear Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Duty Now for the Future. The band is joined on the final song of the night, "Clockout," by Alex Casale, Bob Casale's son, on bass. Read more... - Devo Presents Adventures of the Smart Patrol is a CD-ROM video game developed and published by Inscape. It was released in 1996. Members of the band Devo helped write the story, compose the music, and oversee the game's graphics.
The game received negative review from critics. Read more... - Devo Live is the fourth home video release by new wave band Devo, and their second DVD. Devo Live contains an entire performance from their 1996 reunion tour (part of the Lollapalooza tour event), filmed at Irvine Meadows, California. It was released in 2003. Read more...
- The American new wave band Devo released their rendition of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" as a single in 1977, initially in a self-produced version on their own label Booji Boy Records. The song was re-recorded with Brian Eno as producer for their first album, and that version was also released as a single in 1978, this time by Warner Brothers Records, after it was played for Mick Jagger's approval. Steve Huey of AllMusic stated that the cover version "reworks the original's alienation into a spastic freak-out that's nearly unrecognizable". This version of the song was featured prominently in the 1995 Martin Scorsese epic crime film Casino.
The quirky music video for the song and several others from this album received significant airplay on the upstart MTV. A notable feature of the video was dancer Craig Allen Rothwell, known as Spazz Attack, whose signature dance move, a forward flip onto his back, drew him significant attention. Read more...
Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers is the solo project of American musician Gerald Casale, best known as a founding member and "chief strategist" of the influential band Devo. Jihad Jerry also includes contributions from Mark Mothersbaugh, Bob Mothersbaugh, and his brother Bob Casale. It also adds drummer Josh Freese, who had previously only worked with them when Devo was on tour.
The band released a three-song EP through the iTunes Music Store and other music download services titled Army Girls Gone Wild. A full-length album, Mine Is Not A Holy War, was released in stores by Cordless Recordings on 12 September 2006. The album was released on iTunes on 22 August 2006. Jihad Jerry & the Evildoers play in a hard, blues-influenced style. Their debut album includes versions of several songs from the Hardcore Devo-era of Devo's recordings. Read more...- Recombo DNA is a collection of studio demos and unreleased tracks by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in 2000 by Rhino and limited to 5,000 copies.
Unlike the Hardcore Devo compilations, which contained several demos from Devo's pre-record deal days, this collection spans throughout much of their career with Warner Bros. and Enigma. Read more... - The Men Who Make the Music was the first home video released by the American new wave band Devo. Finished in 1979, the film was set to be the first Video LP under the title "DevoVision" (advertised in the inner sleeve of the "Duty Now for the Future" LP), but was shelved by Time Life due to concerns about its anti-music industry content. It was released in 1981. A DVD of this film was announced in 2000, due to be released by Rhino Records, but this never came to pass. In January 2014, Michael Pilmer, webmaster of the official Devo website, indicated a DVD release by MVD later in the year. The DVD was released the following August, including a bonus feature of Devo's 1996 reunion show at the Sundance Film Festival.
A concert film of Devo on their 1979 tour of Japan was also titled The Men Who Make the Music, and features live performances of "Secret Agent Man", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", "Too Much Paranoias", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Mongoloid" and "Jocko Homo", filmed at Nippon Budokan. The performance of "Red Eye" from this show is also on the official The Men Who Make the Music release. Read more... - Hardcore Devo Live! is a concert film and live album, showcasing the June 28th, 2014 performance at the Fox Theatre in Oakland, California of Devo's 2014 "Hardcore Devo Live" tour. The tour commemorates the 40th anniversary of the band, and pays tribute to former band member, Bob Casale who died February 17th, 2014. The set list exclusively focuses on songs written between 1974 and 1977, before Devo had a recording contract. Many of the songs had not been performed by the band since 1977. While the music is largely performed as a quartet, the band is augmented, off-stage, by Brian Applegate on additional keyboards and bass guitar. The tour was also the last tour to feature Josh Freese on drums.
The show is performed in two halves, the first, focusing on earlier material, is presented with the band seated, in street clothes, with minimal lighting, as if the audience were watching them rehearsing in a basement. After "Midget," the band puts on blue coveralls, as worn in early live shows, working in more famous songs that would later appear Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and Duty Now for the Future. The band is joined on the final song of the night, "Clockout," by Alex Casale, Bob Casale's son, on bass. Read more... - Human Highway is a 1982 American comedy film starring and co-directed by Neil Young under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey. Dean Stockwell co-directed the film and acted along with Russ Tamblyn, Dennis Hopper, and the band Devo. Included is a collaborative performance of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" by Devo and Young with Booji Boy singing lead vocals and Young playing lead guitar.
The film was shown in only select theaters and was not released on VHS until 1995. It received poor reviews upon its premiere but has received favorable reviews more recently. Read more... - "That's Good" is a song by the American new wave band Devo, written by Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale. It appears on their fifth studio album Oh, No! It's Devo. According to Casale, "the lyrics deal with the ambiguity that if everybody wants what you want, how can everybody have it if everybody wants it and what happens when everybody tries to get it, and maybe you should change what you want." Read more...
An energy dome is a helmet often worn by the American new wave band Devo as part of the members' stage outfits. The dome was first worn during the band's Freedom of Choice campaign of 1980. It reappeared in the 1982, 1988, and 1990 tours, as well as most performances since 1997. The domes were custom made for the band from vacuum formed plastic, in a distinctive round, ziggurat shape, and are occasionally—and incorrectly—referred to as "power domes" or "flowerpots". The shape is also reminiscent of the Waldviertel Pyramid. When asked about the story behind the hats, Mark Mothersbaugh recounted: Read more...
Alan Myers (1955 – June 24, 2013) was an American rock drummer whose music career spanned more than 30 years. He came to prominence in the late 1970s as the third and most prominent drummer of the new wave band Devo, replacing Jim Mothersbaugh. Myers was known for the precision of his drumming, especially on the complex and often bizarre rhythms Devo used on their albums. Bandmate Bob Casale often referred to him as "the Human Metronome." Read more...- DEVO Live 1980 is a DualDisc release (and technically, the fourth DVD release) by pioneering new wave band Devo.
The release documents a performance by the influential quintet during their Freedom of Choice tour, when the band was gaining mainstream success on the strength of the Freedom of Choice album and their first major hit single "Whip It". It was shot by director/cameraman Joe Reis and his Target Video team in Petaluma, California, using three video cameras. Read more... - "Watch Us Work It" is a single by the US new wave band Devo, produced by Teddybears. It was originally released in 2007, and was featured in a commercial for Dell. It was subsequently re-released, on vinyl, in 2008. The song was included on the deluxe version of the band's ninth studio album Something for Everybody which was released on June 15, 2010. The song features a sample drum track from "The Super Thing", a song from Devo's 1981 album New Traditionalists.
The band announced in a July 23, 2007, MySpace bulletin that a full-length music video would be created, and the song itself is now available on iTunes and eMusic. Gerald Casale said that this song was chosen from a batch that the band was working on. The music video was released in September 2007, directed by Jonas Åkerlund, and is an extended version of the Dell commercial, without product shots. The song appears in the video game Dance Dance Revolution Universe 3. Read more...
Mutato Muzika is an American music production company established and owned by Devo co-founder and lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh in 1989. The name is a portmanteau of the words mutant and potato, which is a nod to Devo's fanbase which are called Spuds.
While Devo members Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale and Bob Mothersbaugh, with drummer Josh Freese, often meet, rehearse and confer in its West Hollywood, California studio facilities, Mutato Muzika is a full-service music production company. Until his death in 2014, Bob Casale served as a producer/engineer there. Read more...- "Through Being Cool" is a song by the American new wave band Devo, written by Mark Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale, and Bob Mothersbaugh. It appears on the album New Traditionalists. The song was a direct attack on new fans who didn't understand Devo's message. The song was also featured in the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal as well as the 2005 superhero comedy Sky High, with the latter version performed by They Might Be Giants.
The song is also used as a throwback in NBA 2K8 Read more... - "Working in the Coal Mine" is a song with music and lyrics by the American musician and record producer Allen Toussaint. It was an international hit for Lee Dorsey in 1966, and has been recorded by other musicians including Devo in 1981. Read more...
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Selected images
Devo performing live at the Forecastle Festival, in Louisville, Kentucky, 2010
Left to right: Gerald Casale (bass), Mark Mothersbaugh (vocals; keyboards), Bob Casale (keyboards; guitar), and Bob Mothersbaugh (guitar)Mark Mothersbaugh performing live with Devo at the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim, 2007.
Devo performing live at Festival Hall, in Melbourne, Australia, 2008: Casale and Mothersbaugh.
Devo performing live in Atlanta, Georgia, 1978: Bob Casale and Gerald Casale.
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