"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 (+). "
