"THERE IS no creativity without humour" Jerry Casale, between mouthfuls of taramasalata,23.6.78.
Which, as a general statement, is self-evident garbage. Jerry, guitarist with Devo - the "reverse evolution" band – peppers interviews with stuff like that, probably just for fun.
It opens this piece simply because it is very pertinent to Devo. Devo - though precious few seem to have noticed it - have their cybernetic tongues firmly in their android cheeks.
It's astonishing really, what with all that ideological crap they wheel out, that they've been taken so seriously up until now. A glance through their previous encounters with the media reveals a glut of gullible journalists swallowing every off the wall incomprehensibility Devo can sling at them.
Devo provoke several reactions in people. The most common is pomposity unbridled, but the most realistic is excitement and laughter.
It isn't that subtle a humour - formation dancing, Y-Fronts stuffed with cotton wool, prat falls - so frankly, why the dandruff-heads at Knebworth came to be so offended by them as to bombard them with lousy fruit and dirty bottles is a mystery.
I can only imagine that the audience have been brainwashed, by preconceptions that Devo are at least partly responsible for. All that pseudo-intellectualising about a highly questionable half-baked biological theory has provided them with a legacy of po-faces.
All that stuff came about because part of Devo is that people need mystique, and Devo provide it. That's OK. I admire Devo, I love spectacle.
But I'm not about to have my plonker pulled publicly by any bogus ideology toting robots. And with this precept very firmly in mind, we met in a very Devo Kensington eaterie (Devo is an all purpose adjective), the Akron combo out of place in zippy jump suits. Jerry speaks for the band, as is traditional. Clean, shaven and slippery, an accomplished politician.
To save space, ridiculous statements - though they aren't that difficult to spot - will be indicated by a (+).
Incidentally, nonsense is Devo, so don't think any of them will be offended by me mentioning it. They arranged it that way.
So here's a fulcrum for argument. Devo are a gimmick, a talented joke, but joke nevertheless.
"What 's the difference between serious and joking (+)," enquires Jerry, innocently. "We're serious. about our jokes. "
Meaning , assumedly, that Devo are a joke.
"I think everything is. All the intellectualisation about Devo is beyond the realm of anything even to be argued. It's ridiculous. The claims made about Devo are totally ridiculous. "
And they should know, they make them. Sure the answer to "What is Devo" is different every time. Sure it makes no sense. That's the way they want. That, itself, is Devo.
"Everything is different and nothing makes any sense. That is the nature of being. If you realize that everybody contradicts themselves and that everything is ridiculous. People are Devo (+). Devo is a working verb.
"We don't pretend to make sense. Don't you see you cannot make sense and not have to say it for effect? You can say something ridiculous and not be putting somebody on? Why does it have to be one or the other? What's wrong with ridiculous?
"We're not TV commentators that tell everybody how to think about a piece of news. We're encouraging people to examine the Devo ideology and pull it apart.
"Confusion is not a state to get out of (+). Everyone lives in confusion, and what causes problems is, they try and get out of it. Because you're not where you're at, you're always panicking and trying to be somewhere else. "
Despite this 'nothing really matters' approach, Jerry manages to drum up some mild annoyance when that emotive noun 'gimmick' gets pointed Devo's way.
"Maybe people shouldn't talk to people who play music, y' know.
"We never were taught that things shouldn't be fun. We're trying to make things fun.
"It's beautiful when people take us in a pompous way. The joke's on everyone. We're a joke. The joke's on anyone who isn't honest. Devo are honest (+).
"We make fools of ourselves for lots of people's enjoyment. How can the joke be on anybody but us?
"We represent people's lives to them (+). That's a very serious subject (+). If our movements are contorted and mechanical and painful and we break out and rip clothes and people feel they've gone through something after they've seen it, then that's absolutely serious, it's been a service. "
To try and get it straight. . .. just for the record . . . just for once... haven't you been indulging in some terrible leg pulling?
"I don't know what you're getting at. I think it's irrelevant. In fact it's irritating. It's real smutty to make those distinctions. "
Which is the perfectly correct Devo response. Not until sometime later does actuality creep any closer, following a directly related question about media manipulation.
"The phrase 'media manipulation' conjures up a paranoid situation. It's bound to make people defensive and mad at you. It's bound to take the creativity and fun out of it.
"In a certain sense everybody maniplates the media and vice versa. And to even it is to make someone a special case when it's not true. "
Quite so. It's just that Devo are more adept at it than some.
" Hahaha. (Pause). I’m just saying what makes something good is that people's imagination needs something to feed on. That's what makes it good.
"People enjoy being put on or manipulated. But in Devo there's substance behind the entertainment.”
And there, in black and white and bold type, is Devo's perceptive core. Devo are a superb, clever, funny, entertaining pack of bullshit.
Let's not labour the point too sorely. There are other premises to be contended. Like spuds. Inevitably we trip over this conceptual stumbling block, during one of Jerry's ' circumnavigations about the nature of Devo.
"People are biologically de-evolving (+). It's not just sociological. I think that diet is producing assymetrical spud bodies (+ +)."
A glance, through any other of Devo's encounter will reveal oblique conversational encounters with spuds. It’s a confusion tactic Devo throw in.
"Spuds, potatoes, y'know. They're always put down, yet they are IT (+ + + + +). They're like the working class of the vegetable family. Spuds should have their day."
Apoplexed by such
profundity,
I skip back to the
starting point of the question,
biological de-evolution.
We're all going to end up like little fishes again, right?
"If you accept the theory of evolution. We're not sure. We're very scientific, though. That's why we don't indulge in glitter and personality indulgence and things like that. We take the nonglorification of the body; the non-subjective; non-hippy approach to things."
It seems peculiar that Devo – for Jerry is Devo, a facet of a five-part organism (+) feel they don’t indulge in glitter.
It may be a type of glitter alien to Slade and T Rex, but it has its flashy, theatrical aspects. Jerry, needless to say, disagrees.
"We don't even feel what we do is theatrical ( + ). Its not a rehearsed stage act. "So we walk down to an industrial supply house and we see these yellow suits and they're so hideous and we think, ha, ha, ha, let’s wear those because they’re so hideous.
“Then we play the pieces that occur to us and move our bodies to it… that’s theatrical?”
So it's coincidence, then, that they all keep precisely the same expressions onstage, and all rip off their suits at the same time, to reveal coincidentally placed boxer suits.
"That's US. We're just a bunch of uptight middle class kids from the mid-west and this is what we do. We’re spuds, if you want us to be honest.
"We're not theatrical In the sense that we think of jaded people making hip contrivances . We don't try and glorify our bodies and wear codpieces or whatever.
“It makes no difference to us. You could see it that way, and it makes no difference. No that's Devo. Wear gaudy colours or avoid display!
"It's just the embodiment of mutually exclusive things (+). We're just that. We are probably inhibited exhibitionists."
I don't want to appear to be sniping at Devo - I genuinely admire them - and I understand perfectly why they utilize, all this mumbo jumbo. But believe it at your own risk. Jerry doesn't like being pinned down about it . . . " An interview of this nature - you might as well be in court with the lawyer trying to trap the witness or something. We're not dealing with something that has applied yes or no answers.
"People need things that don't make sense. We do fill that need.
"Everything makes sense and everything doesn't (+)."
In other words, to understand where Devo are coming from, just abandon logic and hold on to your titfer.
"The logical references over the last couple of million years are accepted through habit. That whole frame of logic is a fake. It just doesn't work.
"Devo.only are nonsense when you try and make sense of them (+)."
Vainly, I have tried to do this, but must make do with one or two half admissions, which is probably all for the better if Devo are to remain fun. Perhaps the only way to approach the subject is to be a Devo journalist. But how? Now is the ideal time to find out.
"To be a Devo journalist I would let the person I was interviewing submit a paragraph about me.
"Now there was that guy who got hit by some member of Black Sabbath. That's poetic justice. They respond in the way they could respond to how his words affected them.
“Unfortunately Devo couldn't bring itself to do that", but we'd sure like to have a couple of paragraphs on some journalists, some of whom are obviously frustrated and constipated."
And here's my paragraph – since I vowed to print it - composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, the lead singer.
"Tim Lott smokes, drinks, told Jerry three times he was confused - said he didn't understand our interviews, said they sounded like bullshit, but never told us what interviews by others he enjoyed or understood (they never asked - TL)."
So my first lesson in Devo journalism. As it is Devo, I shall ignore it or take notice of it.
To navigate less blurred, less philosophical areas - Bowie, it seems, still has an interest in Devo, or "maybe" as Jerry puts it. To plot that connection . . .
"Bowie wanted to produce our album and we wanted him to produce it . Then somehow it became seven albums and a production deal, and suddenly that got tied into a deal with Warner Brothers.
"We didn't like our deal with Warners, Eno ended up doing the first one anyway because Bowie was busy with a film."
Devo, just like nearly all other aware humans admire Bowie for his chameleon-like qualities, an aspect they themselves would like to "ape".
"We have a vague idea of what we want to become. Become more like cellular structures (+) , more like amoebas (+) very electronic.
"But not electronic in the way you think about It, not spacey or in any way psychedelic. But if you can imagine people just making burps and grunts and buzzing noises. . . like really primitive, minimal sounds , but all electronically engendered. "
The change would affect their visuals but not by decking themselves with gadgetry.
“It would be a totally different view. We can do more with the way we move our bodies than those people who get very elaborate can do with 50,000 dollars worth of props. Because" – Jerry indicates himself - "it's all here. They think It's in the pocket book. It's bullshit western boy asshole mentality. "Machines should be used, people get used by them."
This genial tete a tete is taking place the day before Knebworth. As I've observed , they didn't go down too well, unless you count hundreds or people standing up and putting their thumbs down, well.
"I'm sure it will be maximally abstract (+). We hope to do a lot of formations " . . like the army drill team… show them the proper uses of a rifle.
"We're only quasi military. How we use it in Devo is really diametrically opposed to what the military has in mind. Rather than subtracting from the environment, it adds to it.”
But like the military, I venture, Devo use shock tactics.
"No, we just think that way. I find it hard to respond to that. It just has to happen. We're trying to actually give people something different from the old shit. All those asshole minds holding everything back – bankrupt burnt out minds.
"Those people who just go out there and stick a cigarette in the neck of their guitar, play, walk off and get the money, they're not doing anything for anybody (+). They're irresponsible (+)."
All that's left of this interview - unless you want to cross the rhetoric minefield again, and if you haven't got the gist yet then there isn't much point - is erratum, which, at least is interesting, if contentious.
Erratum no 1: Devo and The Tubes.
"What the Tubes do I consider really limited, because it was just adding something to the music - there's no integration. It's not organically connected to the music, like in Devo. All it is, is some Las Vegas show. Theirs is a veneer, an attachment.
"Everyone's visual. But the reasons we do what we do are not connected with their reasons. It's just a question of deciding what visual you want to be."
Erratum 2: Modern society is based on psychotic brain eating apes.
"The reason there are all sorts of species of say , birds and fish and only one species of man is because of the brain eating apes.
"Carnivorous brain eating apes took over early. Their brains got bigger and bigger. The apes found out - not on a conscious level – that they were eating the other ape's knowledge. It increased their sexual drive enormously and it also wiped out all the other species.
"We're not allowed to kill someone and eat their brains now, so it's all done through corporations. Those corporate guys, none of them are less than 6 ft 2 in with great big heads (+). They all look alike (+)."
Erratum 3: The mutants are getting organised.
"There was a mutants' march in America against the Neutron bomb. Bring us your disenfranchalsed (+). Bring us your mutants (+). Mutants are getting organised and we're helping. "
Erratum 3: The perfect organism.
"Marie Osmond is the perfect organism" - Mark Mothersbaugh.
Erratum 4: Making money in large quantities if not necessarily Devo.
"Our purpose was never to make money. Money is a by-product of the fact that we're doing what is needed. Money changes what we're doing now. As long as the money keeps coming in, that's perfect as long as we're still doing what's needed.
"As our original purpose was not to make money, we're not compromising what we do to make it.”
Erratum 5: More hedging.
"The answer to all your questions could be no and the answer to all of them could be yes and both of them would be true."
. Erratum 6: It's just wind in sails.
"It's
just wind in sail (+). "
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