Devo: C or D? S & D etc.

Acoleuthic, if you haven't heard it yet, check out Smart Patrol/Mr DNA from their second album. Might be right up your street.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG1T_EuNqCY

Already listened to and loved! The central jam is INTENSE!

I've been listening to those first two albums this afternoon, too. <3 these guys so much. Although my Duty Now for the Future seems to be more jumpy/skippy than last time I played it. Bah.

DNFTF is now being listened to in its entirety! A wry smile cracked when 'Devo Corporate Anthem' was followed up by, erm, a Spotify advert :D

There's a lot to like from the Hardcore Devo era too. They definitely changed after Duty Now...

I saw them perform Are We Not Men? in Seattle a few months back. Amazing.

Strange Pursuits by a mile the best track so far. Interesting how on each album there's been a track that's 'broken' the album open for me

Oh, I listened to the beginning of Oh No! and the first 3 tracks are all wonderful, gather the album falls away after that tho?

SIB is also GREBT

Melvins covered Mr DNA last time I saw them. Melvins + Devo = OMG

Acoleuthic--you really need all of their albums through Shout, and nothing at all after it.

Jamie--Melvins covers are always staggering. The Didjits cover of that song is also top notch.

Think the first album is my fave of all the ones I've heard so far but will give them all a try!

The first two are the closest to my heart, and their most experimental.

Also, make sure you rent/buy/download the video collection because they were huge innovators and the videos have so much to offer.

This is what everyone has told me! Already love the Peek-a-boo video, would see more :)

Yeah I reaaaaaally want to see melvins do their cover of detroit rock city live but lack the balls
to just ask Buzz directly to do it

He's more intimidating than most, but you don't get what you don't ask for :)

that jennings td catch was full of thrillpower

hahaha whoops

I like Oh No! It's Devo all the way through! You wld be so missing out if you just rocked the first three tracks. Big Mess/Speed Racer/What I Must Do – all solid, all on the second half of the album. It's not their most loved album by a long shot, tho.

It's not their most loved album by a long shot, tho.

That's a real shame, because it's certainly my favourite. It's like the technology of the era finally caught up with their ideas - everything comes together on that one for me.

xpost it's my favorite album of theirs, every last note, I get kind of emotional even just thinking about some of the sounds. the first one's the other perfect one.

on second listen 'oh no!' is very good indeed

they rocked live last year.
fat old guys, but givin' it.
where is the love for "uncontrollable urge"?
possibly the best opening vocals of an opening track on a first album ever.

greatest first-two-albums ever by a group. MAYBE Soft Machine matches it, maybe.

Haven't really heard given those first two a fair crack (except for Why Are We Sleeping, which is AWESOME)...if Third was in my 70's top 5, I take it I'd kinda like 'em...

Anyway, DEVO. Thank fuck for ILX.

The first two are the only Soft Machine albums I really like. He sings the alphabet!

"Patterns" is maybe their most underrated song? No love for it on ILX and it's awesome.

Duty Now For the Future is an album I will always buy if I see it in used record stores. Everyone I know needs at least one copy.

they're still great live

Patterns is one of their greatest songs from the later period. (Later period in my opinion being post-Whip It). Find Out is another gem from that time, if you can track it down.

BTW I don't think anything on Oh No It's Devo is underrated. For sure there's an vague idea out there that the album sucks but I'm not sure where that comes from (perhaps it was poorly reviewed at the time owing to them being a bit past their sell-by date by then). But I don't know any Devo fans who don't love it.

I think it might be as good as their debut. Patterns for sure is wondrous. How is that tune not a stone-dead all-time pop classic?

Could've been a cool single but probably rejected because it's practically a ballad. And in a minor key for most of the time. Devo had to maintain this perky, zippy futuristic persona rather than the arty cynics that they actually were. So of course the singles were Peekaboo and That's Good, rather than Explosions or Patterns.

peekaboo is awesome to be fair

They were on fire at the time but no-one was really paying attention. Search for the Rhino Handmade version of Dev-o Live (also on dvd) and their double disc "Recombo DNA" which has tons of demos from 1977-1982 including the whole of Freedom of Choice in demo form. It's a bit heavier, has more guitar and in my opinion is a better album. But I'll admit I've always been a bit cold on that album.

ooh ok! so that and the videos dvd. groovy. all the albums up to oh no! are on spotify, which is how i've been listening to them so far, but there's not much else. youtube will probably have odds and ends. christ, patterns has TWO CHORUSES, and the second one totally builds on the first. this is fucking songwriting.

i gather 'freedom of choice' is a little more...commercial than maybe the others?

It was mentioned upthread but worth mentioning again - the Hardcore Devo CDs with pre-1st album songs are really good too.

Itchy goo, itchy goo, itchy goo goo goo
It's all I wanna do, whammo!

For me, Freedom of Choice is just a bit half-assed in the songwriting dept, and the production job has always underwhelmed me - some of the songs (not all) sound pretty flat eg. "Gates of Steel", "Snowball" and "Planet Earth" all sound way better in their live or remixed versions. Also it was the first time their packaging and conceptual elements stopped being subversive and surreal. Also, in my view it marks the point where they stopped opposing paternalism and joined the machine in terms of Mark Mothersbaugh's "advice" songs which started cropping up more and more, starting with Whip it. That always disappointed me. Contrasted with the previous two albums it really came up short.

Mind you, I'd love to hear a good remaster of this and New Traditionalists.

The Hardcore Devo albums are SOLID, esp. the 2nd one.

This sounds like it could be awesome:

* In 1982, Toni Basil released a cover of "Pity You" on her album Word of Mouth, retitled as "You Gotta Problem." The instrumental track of this version was re-recorded by Devo and the album was engineered by Bob Casale.

Melvins covered Mr DNA last time I saw them. Melvins + Devo = OMG

― Jamie_ATP, Sunday, January 10, 2010 6:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i saw that at ATP :D

Re Toni Basil - it's okay. She did a few Devo songs including Be Stiff and I forget the others. They are all okay. There's youtube vids out there. If memory serves she shows up in The Men Who Make The Music somewhere.

Or at least she gets a credit and my friends and I would argue about where she was. I think she's in the video for Come Back Jonee somewhere.

I have that Toni Basil album! Most of the album's not great apart from Mickey but the Devo song is cool.

I just watched it on Youtube – the vid has kind of a Devo vibe to it.

Ha her "Be Stiff" video has the same orange-haired guy who seizure-dances in the Devo videos.

Spaz Attack. LOL.

"I come up the river to kill many people. I come up the river with my laser gun."

I just recalled there's another Toni Basil/Devo collab (with vocals from both) on the Recombo DNA disc I mentioned upthread. It's pretty crap. It's one of those clanky, banging mid-tempo things and her vocals are horrible, with MM doing his "Peekaboo" voice in the background.

Fans of Oh No It's Devo could hunt down the soundboard recording of the Boston gig on that tour. First 2/3rds is all Oh No/FoC/New Trad stuff, including stuff that they probably never performed again, like Patterns, Speed Racer, Out of Sync and Deep Sleep. Then they close the show with Joko Homo/Uncontrolable Urge/Smart Patrol/Gut Feeling/Come Back Jonee. This must've been an incredible tour to see.

I'm a huge fan of the first 4 albums and have always been lukewarm about "Oh No" and downright hated "Shout". "Peekaboo" grates, too.

I'd love to hear that stuff live, though, so if there's a link to the above mentioned Boston gig, please post it!

This looks like it although it's slightly incomplete. Missing the 8 min version of Beautiful World and Come Back Jonee. The version of Girl You Want is amazing on this - it sounds totally different.

In my opinion there are two, radically different Devos: 1974-1979 version and 1980-1982 version (post-82 who gives a shit?). In terms of music, philosophy, songwriting, image and so on they are quite different. A huge bulk of the first version (my favourite) only exists in live or demo form. So I listen to demos, live stuff, and Hardcore archival stuff for my Devo fix these days, having long ago exhausted the albums. Fortunately there is huge amounts of of stuff out there, with some kind of approval of the band. The Hardcore discs are just the tip of the iceberg. Here's an unbelievable resource.