Democracy for Vancouver

http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1865559895
Probably everyone in most of America’s first glimpse of the the beginning of the end of New Wave and Punk, comes the Saturday Night Live debut of Akron Ohio’s DEVO. The year was 1978. They had just released the classic, Brian Eno produced Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo and were about to finish recording their second LP for Warner Brothers and were starting to feel the lash of their master’s whip. In 1980 they would have a smash hit, become a household name and it would soon be all over for them.
Nothing kills art like success.
Now the remnants of DEVO work in the motion picture industry and occasionally perform for festivals and Nike corporate gigs. Seriously.

DEVO started out as an art project by Kent State students Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh. After National Guardsmen gunned down their fellow students (Casale was ten feet away from one victim) , they saw that the sixties were over and attempted to document what they saw was clearly the decline of humanity. Along with the pair’s siblings and filmmaker Chuck Statler, they created films of their musical performance, intercutting dada-esque images and sequences - creating the rock video format, for better or worse. When punk rock broke, DEVO began performing in the exploding Cleveland scene, along such bands as Pere Ubu, The Dead Boys and the Pagans. When they made the trek to jaded New York, they became an instant sensation, attracting attention of David Bowie, who wanted to produce them. The German band Kraftwerk, who had clearly influenced DEVO, asked to take their film The Truth About Devolution with them on tour, making DEVO by proxy an opener for them across Europe. Suddenly major labels were interested in signing them and electronic music pioneer Brian Eno whisked them off to Germany to record the band and in the process, shaved off a lot of their ugly, atonal synthesizer sounds in favor of a very guitar-heavy mix.
The spanking-new cable channel, Music Television - or, MTV played lots of their promotional videos, mainly due to the fact that they, as well as other younger New Wave acts were some of the few bands to be on the video bandwagon at this point.
DEVO had a very tumultuous relationship with Warner Brothers from the get go, no doubt made worse when Punk and New Wave didn’t create any bands that were bigger than The Beatles and Jesus combined. The label interfered wherever possible and made their lives miserable. DEVO inexplicably rewarded their bad behavior by putting together one of the most accessible albums of the eighties in the form of Freedom of Choice and its monster hit Whip It. After that, DEVO could write its own check, even if it was for a shadily contracted royalty advance. Soon DEVO was no longer a weirdo cult band, but was now even popular with those the band liked to lampoon. DEVO also became the band instantly identified with New Wave and Punk. I remember that in 1980, if you didn’t have a big, stylish feathered hair-helmet or designer jeans or didn’t dress like a Led Zeppelin burnout, someone would yell “Hey Devo!” at you.
The Band put out one more great album - 1981’s New Traditionalists, followed with a few videos (at which point they were still garnering airplay at MTV) and singles that charted decently. After that they went into a startling decline. For whatever reasons, DEVO’s output through the rest of the Eighties and early Nineties showed and astonishing lack of energy and imagination. Even their videos from this period are unbelievably lackluster, which is sad considering that they helped create the medium.
They often cite burnout and the intrusive nature upon the creative process imparted by the business end of their label as a primary reason for running out of gas. But in the process, they learned a lot and all are still involved in creative endeavors. Mark Mothersbaugh not only scores major Hollywood movies, but continues to create and exhibit his visual art. Gerald Casale recently released a CD as Jihad Jerry and The Evil Doers. Most of DEVO also work in post-production audio in the motion picture industry, as well as in the computer restoration of movie sound in classic movies.
Many bands today owe a heavy debt to DEVO not only for rock video, but also for the successful integration of formerly egghead instrumentation such as the synthesizer into a rock format, the art of the deceptive interview or the development of a truly absurd wardrobe. Bands like the Polysics sound a lot like DEVO, to me anyway.