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Monday, March 27, 2006
AUTO MODOWN
SPACE GIRL BLUES
Devo
Hardcore Devo, Vol. 1 74-77
Rykodisc : 1990
[Out of print]
CAN U TAKE IT?
BOTTLED UP
Devo
Hardcore Devo, Vol. 2 74-77
Rykodisc : 1991
[Out of print]
UNCONTROLLABLE URGE
SMART PATROL/ MR. DNA
Devo
Devo Live: The Mongoloid Years
Rykodisc : 1992
[Out of print]
As I make my way through Simon Reynolds's Rip It Up and Start Again, an excellent overview of UK (and in the states, US) post-punk, the chapter on Devo has been most illuminating thus far. That band severely altered the DNA of my musical heritage and some revelatory facts about Devo come to light:
-Both Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale were students at Kent State at the time of the National Guard shooting. Two of the students killed were friends of Casale's.
-Mothersbaugh had waist-length long hair and was originally in a band doing Yes and ELP covers.
-Casale had an ongoing performance art thing involving a sidekick named Poot Man, who'd rub his ass on students' artwork and drink milk out of an enema bag. Later on, Devo would often see themselves as the enema bag of music, clearing out blockage.
-Eno, Bowie, and Neil Young were obsessed with the band (the latter's Trans really makes sense in this light), while Iggy Pop wanted to do an album of Devo covers.
-Devo's major label, Virgin, wanted the recently band-less Johnny Rotten to be the group's new lead singer.
-The band actually descended from a lineage of brain-eating apes that had settled in northern Ohio.
It was the start of my junior year in a brand-new high school and my only friends were the absolute weirdest girls in high school. Neither goth chicks nor punks, not stoners or hippies, these girls were just bizzaros, embracing weirdness and hating everything. Leslie decided that she'd just put gobs of cheap gel in her long hair and roll around in raked leaves for a new hairstyle. We would break into boats stored in shopping center parking lots just to smoke cigarettes in the cabin. She and her friends (Lauren, Megan, and Emily) decided (with no knowledge of Riot Grrrls) to form a band. They'd all play tennis rackets and in lieu of singing, they'd instead swing their legs up on a table and begin to emit a shrill whistle. The band name? The Cunt Whistles.
Unfortunately, there will be no mp3s of the Cunt Whistles forthcoming today (or ever). The only band they liked was Devo (oh wait, they also liked Frank Zappa's "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and were responsible for making me like the Beatles by ceaselessly playing "Hey Jude"). So in their honor, here are some old favorites, from the Transformer-crunch of "Auto Modown" to the raw live versions of "Uncontrollable Urge" to the colon-flushing out of "Bottled Up."
As Leslie herself crossed a double-yellow line some ten years ago, "Can U Take It?" remains especially poignant for me. Every day, the spinach-bitter irony of Yosemite Sam blowing up his head and cartoon people not growing old (while you and I end up dead) makes itself into the ultimate truth.
posted by beta
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