Devo: C or D? S & D etc.

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?

listening to it now. really happy that the version on here is much less ambiguous than the previous version i heard - this is _definitely_ a satire on people who see androgyny as a threat, people who think it, I don't know, disfigures the face of man and woman, or something. it's actually really interesting because the attitude it's parodying _does_ strongly resemble the stupid shit bigots say about gender non-conforming people today.

sound quality is predictably rough but is _way_ better than the bootlegs of a lot of this material.

Consumer alert on the new 50 Years Of De-Evolution LP box set just released (via the Hoffmanites). Apparently "Smart Patrol" fades out at the end and "Mr. DNA" is dropped, which is just plain crazy to me. Also, all the New Traditionalists tracks are running fast.

whoa yeah, "Smart Patrol" is listed at 3:43, that's a baffling decision. I have never really thought of them as two separate tracks.

wonder if speeding up the NT stuff is because they felt it was too slow to begin with? I'd heard the tapes were damaged, or something...wonder if the CD's like that

anyway, I'm not really interested in this, looks to be very little new there. if you ask me they need to reissue Recombo DNA and/or Something For Everybody

basically just some single edits and a '74 version of "i'm a potato"?

Re: New Tradionalists tape damage

New Traditionalists was the band's first fully self-produced album. It was recorded on a then-new brand of 2-inch tape from 3M. Unfortunately, when Devo began recording the vocals for the album, the edges of the tape had begun to disintegrate. After asking Warner Bros. if they could start over and re-record the album from scratch and being denied, Devo transferred all the work they had done to digital reel-to-reel tape and finished the album via digital recording at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, California.

Which IIRC caused the original vinyl/cassette release to sound a little muddy, and hich they were able to correct on the last CD master.

Anyone else see Mark Mothersbaugh, Peter Conheim and Gerald Casale premiere the new restorations of their films at MoMA tonight? It was pretty nice - sold out but luckily they squeezed in a lot of people waiting in the standby line. (Spotted Steve Shelley in the audience - didn’t realize he was a big Devo fan.)

At one point, someone mentioned Gerald’s brother, Bob, and he said even though it’s been nearly ten years since his passing, he still hasn’t removed his number from his phone. Thought that was pretty sweet.

Wow @ this. Jerry Casale interviewed on the BBC... in 1970!

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

"Next: UFO Expert"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1AdD6EfVuQ