Devo has been on my
mind a lot recently, ever since they
came to my town on their
Hardcore Devo tour
in July. The tour was primarily based around their early material,
particularly their home demos recorded before they signed a major
label contract. I decided not to go, primarily because I find some of
their early material to be problematic. In fact, after realizing that
I didn't want to see the show, I started reevaluating my collection
of Devo albums. I had bought their first four albums in rapid
succession in 2005, and although I've listened to several of their
other albums and collections, no others appealed to me enough to
merit purchase.
Over the last two or
three years, I've reviewed my entire music collection from start to
finish. (Yes, it really did take two or three years.) In the process,
I realized that my tastes had changed and that my ideas about
collecting music were not the same as they once were. The complete
story perhaps merits its own more complete post, but the short of it
is that I started getting rid of anything I didn't connect with. Some
things I'd outgrown (Everclear, Green Day), some just weren't
actually very good (INXS, Adam Ant, Richard Lloyd, Daniel Ash), and
some were things I'd bought because they were "important"
but I just couldn't get into (Raw Power, Suicide, U2).
In this process, I
realized that most Devo albums aren't actually very good. Devo's
politics, social commentary, and satire are among the best
commercially available, but their early and latter-day writing leans
too heavy on relationship songs that are uninteresting, clichéd, or
even repulsive. Musically, their creativity and experimentation
appeared to peak with their debut album, and it gradually drifted
away as their career progressed. They still managed to periodically
write good tunes and wield clever concepts, but the rate of
innovation took a sharp downturn.
As a result of this
realization, I did something I've never done before: I sold
everything except their first album and bought a "greatest hits"
compilation. I'll save the detailed explanation of the personal
significance of such an act for the aforementioned separate post, but
I think Devo's career merits a greater discussion at present to
justify my decision.
["Mongoloid"
b/w "Jocko Homo" single, 1977.]
Devo was founded in the
early 70s in Ohio in the wake of the Kent State shootings, the same
source of inspiration for
Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young's
"Ohio". They started out as more of a performance art or
cultural critique outlet based around the ideas of Gerald Casale and
the long-forgotten Bob Lewis. Mark Mothersbaugh brought additional,
similar ideas along with greater musical proficiency and equipment.
As friends and siblings joined to form a band, Lewis gradually
shifted to something of a management role before leaving under
seemingly contentious grounds around the time the band signed a
contract with Warner Bros. Records.
In the meantime, the
band had been ceaselessly writing songs and recording homemade demos
for years. Most of these recordings never saw the light of day until
the Hardcore Devo compilations were released in 1990, although
a few appeared on a supposedly official "bootleg" under the
title Mechanical Man in 1978, and the best of the bunch were
later re-recorded. The forgotten songs, the same ones being featured
on the recent tour, are unfortunately a decidedly mixed lot. While
the band had boundless creative energy, many songs were blatantly
sexist. Although I realize they may have intentionally pushed the
envelope in the name of satire, I find many of these early songs
unlistenable for this reason.
[Q: Are We Not Men?
A: We Are Devo!, 1978.]
Nonetheless, by 1977,
the band began releasing singles on independent labels and managed to
catch the eyes of
Neil Young and
David Bowie. The next year, they
recorded their debut for Warner Bros.,
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We
Are Devo, produced and financed by a certain
Brian Eno. Somewhere
in the process, the more objectionable songs were filtered out in
favor of a strong set of cultural and social critiques. "Jocko
Homo" was a statement of purpose in 7/4, "Satisfaction"
is among the greatest cover versions of all time (and it doesn't even
use the signature original riff!), and "Mongoloid"
challenges preconceived notions of developmental disability. The
album is full of pointed sarcasm whose bitterness does not detract
from the strength of the message.
[Duty Now for the
Future, 1979.]
Devo's second album,
Duty Now for the Future (1979), is a classic example of a
sophomore slump. Most of the album featured further re-recordings of
older material, but the song choices are decidedly second-rate. Only
"Blockhead" and "Secret Agent Man" were
successful reinterpretations, and "The Day My Baby Gave Me a
Surprize" (sic) was the only worthwhile new song. The only other
redeeming quality is the cover, which mocked the new requirement of
placing UPCs on album jackets. Musically, the increasing use of
synthesizers was somewhat intriguing, but lyrically, the album
suffered terribly. "Pink Pussycat" is particularly
egregious, but "Clockout" is also quite disappointing for
taking a promising idea and going in a poorly chosen direction.
[Freedom of Choice,
1980.]
Devo's mostly widely
recognized and best-selling album is probably their third, Freedom
of Choice (1980). The
band unabashedly embraced synthpop and produced an early landmark of
the genre. It features their biggest single (at least in the US),
"Whip It", as well as several other fantastic singles
("Girl U Want", "Freedom of Choice", "Gates
of Steel"). But even if the stylistic traits and the singles
excel, the rest of the album is a bit of a drag. Most of the songs
just aren't very compelling, but a few ("Ton o' Luv",
"Don't You Know") are outright bad.
[New
Traditionalists, 1981.]
New Traditionalists
(1981) follows a similar trend: the singles "Beautiful World"
and "Through Being Cool" are excellent, but the rest is
bland or worse. Almost all of the other songs are relationship-based
and offer nothing clever or insightful. I don't even know what to
make of "Love Without Anger".
There seems to be a
pattern here. Devo has always been a band with great ideas, but new
ones came increasingly infrequently, such that most of their albums
after New Traditionalists are lucky to feature a single good
song (e.g. "Post Post-Modern Man"). In their quest to
challenge and critique, they've often been on the line, and their
earliest work is often on the wrong side of it. Their debut features
the cream of the crop of several years of songwriting, but no later
album could live up to that level of consistency. The lesson to learn is
that Devo should perhaps be considered a singles band. Their albums
tend to contain a lot of filler around a small number of truly exceptional songs and ideas.
[Greatest
Hits, 1990.]
This should not be interpreted to imply that Devo is best forgotten or that they aren't worth the hype. To the contrary, Devo's contributions to underground and mainstream music cannot be overstated. They pioneered music videos, they presaged merchandising, they spearheaded synthpop, they practically invented postmodernism in music, they were outspoken advocates of the then-superior laserdisc (the precursor to today's DVD and Blu-ray), they resolutely believed in the idea that a true modern artist should provide a complete multimedia experience, and they did it all while criticizing and mocking the entire system that they existed within. They never backed down or sold out. That being said, the quality of their songs didn't always match the strength of their ideals, and especially early on, they sometimes let their sexual frustrations obscure their vision. I do not mean to downplay the apparent misogyny present in some of the dark corners of their back catalog; even if meant ironically, some songs present an image of sexual relations that are simply crass or unacceptable.
It is for these reasons that I sold everything except
Q: Are We Not Men? and started looking for a compilation. The obvious and most widely available choice (in the US) is the
Greatest Hits collection, possibly augmented by or substituted with
Greatest Misses. However, neither one succinctly and sufficiently comprises their best material, and both feature several weak tracks. Between the two, they contain most of
Q: Are We Not Men?, which is redundant since the album is still worth owning individually, and most of
Duty Now for the Future, which is disappointing, since it's a relatively weak album. A clearly superior choice is
Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo. It does contain several mediocre tracks from
Oh No! It's Devo (1982), as well as an atrocious remix of "Whip It", but otherwise, it
manages to collect just about every worthwhile track up through
New Traditionalists.
[Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo, 1993.]
Scores:
Q: Are We
Not Men? A: We Are Devo: A
Duty Now for the
Future: D+
Freedom of Choice:
B
New Traditionalists:
C+
Hot Potatoes: The
Best of Devo: A-
Further reading:
Bob Lewis' history of Devo (pdf; currently
available only on archive.org)
P.S. Although I wasn't
interested in Devo's most recent appearance in Austin, if I had been
living in here in 2012, I would have loved to have seen the
double-billing of Devo with
Blondie!
