Devo: C or D? S & D etc.

& at their peak as a live band around 1980/81. The hardcore/first album/second album/3rd&4th albums periods all come together when performed live. They are closing the show with Jocko Homo/Smart Patrol/Mr DNA/Gut Feeling/Gates of Steel, all performed in power pop rock band mode and it works perfectly.

IMO Something For Everybody is the only post-Oh No! thing worthy of the Devo name. though I do have a real soft spot for "Doctor Detroit". good album, just wish it hadn't been mastered so hot. also wtf with all the different tracklistings, how does "Watch Us Work It" get relegated to a bonus track

btw I appreciate that perspective rush. I do think the members of Devo skew quite liberal but more than that they're total edgelords. Casale had a 9/11 themed wedding for Christ's sake. they were also horny motherfuckers by the sound of it. so whatever queer themes they might've used were probably meant to be ironic. I kinda feel a lot of the Devo concept was bullshit in general, like wow so cool that the concept of your band is to do as much commercial shit as possible

Hey, the Devolution agenda needs to be paid for!

Casale had a 9/11 themed wedding for Christ's sake.

gerry is all sorts of cringe

yeah he had some kind of ill conceived terrorist-themed group in the 2000s that just seemed like the worst fuckin thing ever.

They never became part of the Eno-Byrne-Fripp-Gabriel-Bowie continuum. They were auditioned, but found wanting, and ultimately they didn't get the nod. That must have hurt.

to me all those stories of people like Bowie Eno Lennon et al courting Devo always sounded like the opposite of "auditioned & found wanting". more like 70s stars with reps as innovators trying to get in on the ground floor with a hyped Next Big Thing band. see also: Johnny Rotten asking to join as lead singer. i never got the impression that Devo wanted or were seeking any of that.

"Jihad Jerry and the Evildoers"? yeah the concept was in bad taste but the album itself is actually pretty good, better than the prior 3 Devo albums at least. though it does lose points for recycling a few obscure Devo tunes.

xpost. Bowie wanted to produce the first album but Devo didn't want to wait until he was available so went off and got themselves set up with Eno instead. They have been explicit on numerous occasions that they removed most of Eno's artistic contributions to the album - synth parts etc. and also backing vocals by Bowie.

see also: Johnny Rotten asking to join as lead singer. i never got the impression that Devo wanted or were seeking any of that.

This was a bit of Machiavellian manouvering from Richard Branson, who was trying to persuade Devo to hire Lydon as lead singer. I don't think anyone has ever claimed Lydon himself asked to join Devo.

ah youre right, did a quick google and it seems that mothersbaughs telling is that branson said he was passing along a request from lydon, but lydon in his memoir says he never heard a word about it and would never have done it. (which is funny bc iirc branson had music press nearby and was like "lets go downstairs and announce johnny rotten is now the singer for devo right now". hilarious to imagine devo saying yes and lydon hearing about it at the same time as the rest of the world.)

Doesn't seem like something Lydon would ever do.

Re some of the comments about the Hardcore material, I don't see so much of a contrast except Alan Myers joined and that's when they "became" Devo. The arrangements don't change much but the songs are faster and they sounded like a proper band that a record label could sign.

And by the time Myers joined they dropped most of the nasty, ugly stuff that Rushomancy refers to. By the end of 1976 their set was songs that ended up on the first two albums. In a small way, they actually distance themselves from it in "The Men Who Make The Music" video. The record company executive plays them "She Didn't Know I Was a Midget", by "Parcheezi" - presented as the epitome of unit-shifting corporate rock. But it is actually their own song "Midget" from three or four years earlier, one of their most retrogressive attempts at Zappa-style humour. The manager tells them they should come up with stuff like that and Bob Mothersbaugh, who wrote Midget responds "I guess we like ideas".

Gerald's newest song (he appears as the Jihad Jerry character in the video) is actually super rad. Guitar solo by Steve Bartek from Oingo Boingo!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kv2UMoynOw

Hey, that IS pretty good! I see he's got a few other recent-ish singles/collaborations on Spotify, will check out.

yeah, not for me.
i'll stick with the devo i know and love.

I'd keep these imo.

Without glancing at the date, you’d think Marsh had responded to Gamergate

HA!

there's something about Duty Now For the Future that irritates me too. I don't know what it is. I think they became really synth heavy one album too early. has some great tunes though.

Wiggly World is like their best song

Duty Now is awesome.

It is but even then I'd rate the first 3: Q:AWNM? > FoC >>> DNftF

frogbs otm about either the sameness or thinness of Duty Now that puts it on a lower tier than the others, at least from a fidelity standpoint.

re David Marsh, "inspired amateurism". Forget that. Shows what certain people must've prioritized back then. I can't imagine listening to those three records and thinking "amateurs".

yeah, as much as some of their stuff rubs me the wrong way, i can't say that any of it being "amateur" ever crossed my mind.

(and so what if they were amateurs? gatekeepers can fuck off imo)

must admit that i always considered duty now kind of a dud, especially coming between the two albums that it does. always thought freedom was their one "BIG" album. and even though i have a soft spot for oh no, i'd have no issue with taking freedom and leaving the rest.

well I think it's like a lot of sophmore albums in that it draws from the same early writing sessions but all the real killer stuff was on the debut. so it doesn't really have a great single. and it boasts some tunes that are either really annoying ("S.I.B.", "Pink Pussycat") or dull ("Blockhead", "Triumph of the Will"). what I notice when I hear it now is all the spacey synth noises and sequenced bass parts. which I don't think was quite right for them just yet - none of that was on the debut.

it's still a fine album though! I mean "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" is arguably their best tune and everything on it is pretty catchy. just wish it rocked harder! I dont think "Penetration in the Centerfold" should be a B-Side!!

also wanna point out I really do like "Pink Pussycat", but the cover of "Secret Agent Man" is like...20% as clever as them doing "Satisfaction"

What the hell, "Blockhead" is great.

But, other than that, I largely agree with you about this album - in fact I think I prefer "New Traditionalists".

also wanna point out I really do like "Pink Pussycat", but the cover of "Secret Agent Man" is like...20% as clever as them doing "Satisfaction"

"freedom of choice" has grown on me over the years, when i was younger i was more into the guitar-based stuff and apparently they got mad at their guitar player between the second and third albums because he got laid or something

my first exposure to a lot of the songs on duty now was from the "mongoloid years" release so i've always had a softspot for a lot of those songs. and yeah they do have amazing b-sides, penetration in the centerfold, soo bawlz, mecha-mania boy, turn around (which i guess most people these days know through the nirvana cover!).

eno really didn't have a huge influence on the first devo album - he was willing to sit back and let them do their thing - but kind of like bill bruford on "trio", i'm gonna give him credit for what he _didn't_ do. he didn't get in the way and facilitated devo being able to give the songs they had their best possible airing. i think you can see this on a song like "secret agent man", which just has a panache on the original video version that imo the _duty now for the future_ version lacks. (haha while i was putting this post together i see someone else mentioned this, gmta)

personally i love annoying devo - i dig the shit out of a song like "peek-a-boo!" with its stupid siren in the middle, and shit, so much of the early songs are annoying in the extreme. obnoxious art terrorist devo is one of my favorite devos. shit, that WMMS recording from '75 on the "mongoloid years" release with them doing "jocko homo" into their fellatio anthem "i need a chick" into ... (tmi stuff) i mean, them knowing about vibrators in '75 is kind of cutting edge, isn't it? even if they didn't know how to use one properly. still, before i transitioned i never thought about using a vibe and i was missing out, those things aren't just for women.

fuck "triumph of the will" though, fucking edgelord nazi shit. it wasn't all casale, either, mothersbaugh had a self-published autobio in the '80s that he called "my struggle".

i guess _duty now_ kind of lives in the shadow of the albums surrounding it but it really does have a lot going for it imo.

i actually was listening to "speed racer" last night after watching the wachowskis' film (about which i'm on team "hell yes this is underrated", it's like watching picopop rollerball). anyway there's a bootleg of demos for _oh no!_ which are mostly like the original, except in the original the lyric goes "i'm a barbie doll and i like to fuck", which i think has more panache than the released version.

fuck "triumph of the will" though, fucking edgelord nazi shit.

It's an evisceration of fascist sexuality, though.

maybe, and maybe "androgyny" was an evisceration of traditional gender roles, but the message is significantly less clear than that of, say, "beautiful world" - you know, the song where mothersbaugh and casale are always complaining about how nobody "gets it" like it's a masterpiece of subtlety or something.

i don't trust their "ironic" incel posture. not after what one of them said to that lady who called them queer. i do think they've probably grown as people since that time, though.

in the original the lyric goes "i'm a barbie doll and i like to fuck", which i think has more panache than the released version.

Day My Baby Gave Me a Suprise rocks and was a single but obviously didn’t make it.

Wasn't aware of that different version of "Secret Agent Man". Much better than the album version, which I'd probably rank below the Johnny Rivers version

personally i have a fondness for "high wire" myself but i'm weird that way

Wasn't aware of that different version of "Secret Agent Man". Much better than the album version, which I'd probably rank below the Johnny Rivers version

as well as the version on the Now It Can Be Told film and the Duty Now version, there's also this third version of Secret Agent Man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1tXTF_5keE

I really dig this demo version of Race Of Doom, I don't know when it was recorded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3y01jb504

there's a 1980 demo called Time Bomb that appeared on Recombo DNA that sounds like an early version of Race Of Doom, but that Race Of Doom demo sounds like it might have been recorded earlier than Time Bomb, so maybe they reworked it into Time Bomb and then reworked it back into the version of Race Of Doom that then appeared on New Traditionalists? Blow Up from Total Devo sounds like it's a reworking of Time Bomb as well

Puppet Boy is at 2 million plays on youtube when the other tracks on the Shout album have view-counts on the tens of thousands, it's also showing as the second most popular Devo song on spotify. Has it become a meme song like Temporary Secretary, or was it used in a show or a tiktok video or something?

apparently it's something to do with this?

https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/who-is-wally-darling-and-what-is-welcome-home-arg-the-viral-horror-game-explained

https://www.tiktok.com/discover/puppet-boy-meme-welcome-home

Box set of early stuff on the way: https://shop.clubdevo.com/products/art-devo-1973-1977-box-set-akron-gold-vinyl-dev

Tracklist

Exhibit (A) 1973-1976
Boojis Industrial Death
Total Love
Auto Modown (Early version)
Space Girl Blues (Early version)
Live Forever
Androgyny (Live at Kent Kove 74)+
Fraulein (Kent Kove 1974)

Exhibit (B) 1973-1975
Bicentennial Birthday
Man From The Past
Midget/My Lai Mama (Kent Kove 74)
Shimmy Shake
All Of Us
Hubert House
The Tinkle Tune

Exhibit (C) 1973-1975
Private Secretary (Kent Kove 74)+
I Don’t Know Why
Dixie
Pigs Waddle (Kent Kove74)+
Death Of Lt. Casanova (Kent Kove 74)

Exhibit (D) 1975-1977
U Got Me Bugged (Instrumental version)
I Don’t Know What I Do Do
Huboon Stomp
Can U Take It (Early version)
Uncontrollable Urge (Early version)
Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
Falling In Love Again

Exhibit (E) 1975-1977
Devo Corporate Anthem (Early version)
Shrivel Up (Early version)
Smart Patrol (Early version)
I’m Lost at Home
Untitled
Never Go Back
Secret Agent Man (Mark vocal)

Exhibit (F) 1975-1977
Social Fools (Early version)
A Plan For U (Early version)
Nutty Buddy (Live at JB’s 76)
Dogs Of Democracy
Race Of Doom (Early version)
Space Junk (Early version)
Primal Satisfaction*
End Message

Exhibit (G) 1975
Untitled Montage (Harlan Hall)
Untitled Montage (Harlan Hall)

Exhibit (H) 1975-1977
Untitled Montage (Harlan Hall)
Untitled Montage (Greenwood)

Probably some overlap with the Hardcore releases, but can't really tell from the vague "early version" description. Honestly, I'd just rather have some more complete live shows from 1978-1981

I'm guessing they won't be the exact same recordings, if something is an "early version" of a tune that only appeared on Hardcore then I assume it's even earlier than that. I've heard the fanmade Hardcore 3 & 4 comp and although some of the material is interesting the recording quality is so low it's pretty much unlistenable. idk it's kinda hard to imagine there's anything worthwhile left in the vault after both the Hardcore & Recombo DNA releases (the latter of which really needs a repress), plus this is limited to 500 copies which implies it's for the hopelessly Devoted only. still worth a download I guess.

Race Of Doom (Early version)

assume that this is the version below which is very good and doesn't appear on Hardcore 3 and 4 comps, so maybe there is still some interesting stuff left to release?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM3y01jb504

interesting, looks like none of the pre-mark stuff here so no "columbo dick", also i guess they don't have a recording of beehive from this era? a lot of these songs aren't really good (many of them are on bootleg), but there's certainly some historical interest here. my gut here is that there isn't any overlap with the "hardcore" releases, that it's all stuff that wasn't on the hardcore records. we'll see tho! it would also be interesting to see the full "sextet devo" video see release.

anybody know where that long rehearsal take of "freedom of choice" is from and if there's any more where that came from?

All all thread spuds aware of this site? https://boojiboysbasement.com Just checking...

anyone hear the boxset yet? I think most of the tracks have been compiled here:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhWOj_4g_IpLiFuOzjGKNQxfpi1iEFNie

wondering if the sound has been cleaned up at all because most of these sound pretty rough. fun clicking through these though, feel like half their studio output has roots to that 1973-1977 period. even a couple of the songs on Total Devo!

also, regarding the rough sound quality: I've kind of wondered if parts of the Hardcore comps were actually re-recorded since noticing that "Fountain of Filth" sounds like it was from a much later session. "I Need a Chick" specifically, the drums on that are nothing like the other tracks, and surely that sample at the end isn't from the 70's?