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| I was witnessing genius... |
I had a very satisfying project called One Hit No More, and that’s what steered me to DEVO. At the same time, hitting DEVO put that project into the realm of bands I grew up with, aka, bands I know fairly well. And DEVO fits that better than most.
Having grown up on early (the earliest, in fact) MTV, I couldn’t wrap my head around DEVO as a “one-hit wonder.” Part of that followed from the fact that MTV playe a lot of DEVO; between “Through Being Cool,” “Beautiful World,” “Love Without Anger,” “Freedom of Choice,” and “Satisfaction,” it simply never occurred to me that “Whip It” was their only Top 40 hit.
And that was despite all the visibly weird shit/themes they presented and played with. I remember watching it, understanding it was different, but, young as I was - their prime years hit when I was 9-11 years old - all of it went over my head. So, let’s fill in some blanks.
Somewhat Briefly
“…here are the five basic components of the Devolutionary Oath:
1. Wear gaudy colors or avoid display
2. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one
3. The littlest may survive & the unfit may live
4. Be like your ancestors or be different
5. We must repeat”
Even if I, like everyone from DEVO, came from Ohio, I had no hope of wrapping my head around that. Then again, they had quite the head start…
The main members of DEVO - Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale - met at Kent State, when Kent State was Kent State, i.e., Casale was present for the university’s most infamous moment, saw his friends die, and lived through the hyper-reactionary backlash. Suffice to say, it changed him:
“Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season the students. We lived in fear.”
Having grown up on early (the earliest, in fact) MTV, I couldn’t wrap my head around DEVO as a “one-hit wonder.” Part of that followed from the fact that MTV playe a lot of DEVO; between “Through Being Cool,” “Beautiful World,” “Love Without Anger,” “Freedom of Choice,” and “Satisfaction,” it simply never occurred to me that “Whip It” was their only Top 40 hit.
And that was despite all the visibly weird shit/themes they presented and played with. I remember watching it, understanding it was different, but, young as I was - their prime years hit when I was 9-11 years old - all of it went over my head. So, let’s fill in some blanks.
Somewhat Briefly
“…here are the five basic components of the Devolutionary Oath:
1. Wear gaudy colors or avoid display
2. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one
3. The littlest may survive & the unfit may live
4. Be like your ancestors or be different
5. We must repeat”
Even if I, like everyone from DEVO, came from Ohio, I had no hope of wrapping my head around that. Then again, they had quite the head start…
The main members of DEVO - Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale - met at Kent State, when Kent State was Kent State, i.e., Casale was present for the university’s most infamous moment, saw his friends die, and lived through the hyper-reactionary backlash. Suffice to say, it changed him:
“Until then I was a hippie. I thought that the world is essentially good. If people were evil, there was justice and that the law mattered. All of those silly naïve things. I saw the depths of the horrors and lies and the evil. In the paper that evening, the Akron Beacon Journal, said that students were running around armed and that officers had been hurt. So deputy sheriffs went out and deputized citizens. They drove around with shotguns and there was martial law for ten days. 7 PM curfew. It was open season the students. We lived in fear.”
