No Subject

	  He was like a man who was standing on top of the world looking
	over into a new world.  That is what Daddy was like. He had lifted
	himself so he was looking the horizon to a new world, a free and
	happy world.  He stood there on the edge of the universe looking
	into the future. [...] They pulled the ladder out from under him 
	and killed him.

> Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 06:17:18 pst
> From: Peter Stokes <stokes%cmc.cdn%ubc.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
> Subject: worst albums...

> Ok... bands out of the norm such as Devo and B-52's and the like are bands
> that anyone can pick on BUT "milestones" in music such as the Beatles are
> not.  Although I am not an avid Beatles fan I would not cut them up for this
> reason... (same as Elvis, Stones etc..)

> What's a Kleenex band???   -- One blow and they are gone  examples....
> devo ...
>  
 [other bands which more aptly fit the description - hofmann]
> 
> and thousands more tons of vinyl that should have been used to make Tupperware

I wrote a short reply originally to this and Doug has informed me that his or
my  mailer ate it up because it had a single dot on a line.  Due to the
regulations of storing non-business stuff on our computer I deleted the original
file.  I think the rewrite I did turned out better simply because I went home
and dug out my old DEVO records.  Here goes ( and please don't take this as
a downgrading of your opinion, Mr. Stokes - rather as my own humble 
interpretation of rapidly fading past events)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the time DEVO released "Whip it," they had fulfilled their own prophecy
of de-evolution.  By signing onto a major label and subsequently being 
regarded as a "sell-out" and or as you succinctly put it a "kleenex" band,
they effectively wiped out their huge underground cult following and replaced
the multitudes with frat-boys, high school Barbie dolls and scooter-riding
and video/computer nerds.  Their new fans attested to the truth of the theory
of de-evolution.

Things weren't always that way.  Cut to Kent State, 1970.  Two young men sitting
on the edge of a tragedy - an event that was the culmination of a machine
state ("Tin Soldiers and ...") marching blindly into foreign fields and 
jungles now importing their mechanized and de-evolved culture/violence on
their own (well - not really if you consider the Army vets to be victims
also).  That day the two young men saw a vision.  A vision of ... DEVO -
precursors to a new man - Jocko Homo.  For four lonely years, they honed
and practiced their ideas into the most viable protests media possible -
Rock music.  This time the medium would be the message rather than the
other way around (Young and Crosby's Ohio as an example).  DEVO would be
the logical outgrowth of what machine state encouraged - mindless idiots.
Needless to say, Ohio had the makings of a cult band and it wasn't long
before the limp (at that time) US underground noticed them and recognized them 
as sign of things to come - both in music (vacuous and emotionless electronics
became the staple and downfall of many seceding "new wave" bands - Vapors
and Blondie spring immediately to my mind) and in the new field of 
video  (DEVO pioneered video by cranking out the first underground beta tapes
featuring a myriad of devolved cult characters - the radiated Boogie Boy
with the Rocky Squirrel voice and his Nazi-like father, General Boy led
the pack).

In 1976, they played Detroit's famous Plum Street alongside perennial
Motor City favorites AMBOY DUKES and MC5.  The Detroit scene took these
weird short-haired geeks under its wing and nurtured and wrote about them
to the rest of the country.  By 1979, they were playing large colliseums
without ever releasing a mainstream hit garnering the interest of Rolling
Stone and Time magazine which likened a DEVO concert to a Nazi rally.
Disguising themselves as an opening act cum-psychedelic-lovebeads band
known only as DOVE, BAND OF LOVE (DOVE being a clever juxtaposition of
DEVO) - they annoyed their fans who booed and ranted against this "hippy"
band.  Suddenly, the large video screen (the first use at a concert - I
think) erupted in crackles and static as General Boy announced that the
concert was under siege by the Smart Police (who would eliminate anyone
who thinks).  Naturally, a police force came in to remove DOVE replacing
them with the overall-clad DEVO and the strange Boogie Boy who bounced
around the stage.  It was a bust.  DEVO demonstrated to the young fans
the proper application of mind control as they whipped everyone into
a frenzy yelling, "We Are DEVO" with clenched fists raised high.
The machine-like cover of "Satisfaction" echoed their anti-cool stance
and punctuated the evening with the automated blasts from the band.

Large record companies (perhaps subliminally identifying with the DEVO
mind control) took notice.  By 1980 (I think) DEVO had signed a contract
and soon after the much downgraded FREEDOM OF CHOICE (featuring the over
played song - "Whip It") was released.  It was the title cut and 
accompanying video which presented the chilling DEVO view of the future
most cogently by asking the listener "Do you want Freedom of Choice or
Freedom From Choice?" and are they the same in the 80's?  A look at
the newly emerging institutions just in American music confirmed this -
MTV, domination in mainstream music by major labels who would only 
hire "safe" acts and acts which hadn't committed the cardinal sin of
recording on an independent label (the irony here was that such groups
couldn't be noticed unless they did) thereby signing on only video-
marketable groups (Kate and some others may be exceptions while groups
like the Hooters and Huey Lewis are slowly becoming the rule) and the
inevitable institution of the bible-belt recordburnings of the early
'80's into the Parents Music Research Center (Committee would be
more accurate) which seeks the supression of non-Christian ideals in music.

After Freedom of Choice, DEVO apparently blew off their commitments having
made their statement and have not since released anything mass-marketable
(or as relevant as previous materiel).  I did see them in one of those
fairly non-offensive Honda scooter commercials appearing as the de-evolved
characters they had become.

You know, I heard a Musak version of "Satisfaction" on a recent plane trip
(right after "New York, New York", can ya dig it?) and I thought of DEVO
and wondered if they would have liked that version better than their own.
The other people in the plane really couldn't understand why I almost
doubled over in laughter and I wasn't about to explain.

Jim "I can't get me no" Hofmann