Being that the boys in question are playing here in NYC at the Hammerstein Ballroom in a couple of weeks (though rumor has it that tickets are selling for $80.00....when did Devo become the Rolling Stones?), I figured I'd add this one.
Originally posted on ILM 10/07/2003
Inspired by picking up the dizzyingly exhaustive new bio of the same name by Jade Dellinger and David Giffels, I was recently struck by how very few albums make me as unabashedly happy as this positively seminal classic. I remember seeing them on "Saturday Night Live" and thinking they were just another surreal sketch until a few weeks later I wrapped my ears around this record. They seemed a thousand times more subversive than conventionally 'dangerous' bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols and Kiss. There was truly NOTHING like them (before or since).
But beyond their singularly bizarre and unique aesthetic, there were actually hugely satisfying tunes on this debut album. Even if you were put off by the yellow suits and the whole schtick, "Uncontrollable Urge", "Praying Hands", "Gut Feeling" and of course "Mongoloid" and "Jocko Homo" (to say nothing of their notorious cover of "Satisfaction") are just simply great, great songs. Brian Eno's production is sharp and suitably alien sounding, retaining their raw edge, but filtering it through a patina of strangely synthetic-sounding elements. And unlike some of their later records (wherein they truly succumbed to de-evolution, quality-wise) this album quite literally ROCKS!
As an extra bonus, I remember members of my family getting actively disquieted by their unflinching weirdness (most evident on "Shrivel Up" and "Too Much Paranoias"...to say nothing of the thoroughly inexplicable faux-Chichi Rodriguez-morphing cover art) and what's not to love about that when you're a perpetually disagreeable twelve year old? The fact that this album acted as a palpable irritant to my family (way more so than Kiss etc.) as well as thoroughly rocking made it a virutally priceless addition to my then fledgling record collection.
Its younger brother, Duty Now for the Future is also positively brilliant in the same wonderfully deranged manner, but after that, the band seemingly acquiesced to the demands of the music industry. The albums were still dazzlingly fresh and unfailingly interesting, but they seemed a bit de-fanged and housebroken after Freedom of Choice, the album that firmly tied the one-hit-wonder albatross that was "Whip It" around their collective neck. They would never again sound so alive and frantic as on Q:Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
If you can't appreciate this album for the thing of unique brilliance that it is, truly someone has sucked the marrow of life out of your joyless bones.
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