Recombo DNA: The Story of Devo, or How the 60s Became the 80s
by Kevin C. Smith (Music 781.666 Dev)
Devo, the synth-pop superstars
behind the 1980 hit “Whip It,” helped to spearhead a new wave (pardon the pun)
of keyboard-fronted bands, and they were also among the early bands to embrace
the creativity possible through the music video format, helping to popularize
the idea in the early years of MTV. They had a few other near-hits throughout
the 80s before laying down their energy dome hats in 1991, but the truth is
that there was a lot going on behind the scenes with this band. You can read
all about their story in the book Recombo DNA: The Story of Devo, or How the 60s Became the 80s
by Kevin C. Smith, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.
The title of the book is shared by
a retrospective release of demo recordings made by the band. I can’t think of a
band that has released so many compilation anthologies, demo albums, and b-side
collections after they became mostly inactive, but it’s clear that there has
long been an audience interested in dissecting everything they made. It’s also
worth bearing in mind that most of their 1980s albums were panned by music
journalists, and record sales also dropped off after the first few albums. So
why all of the reassessment of this body of work?
The book Recombo DNA serves as a history of the band, and
also helps to satisfy this persistent curiosity about the significance of their
music. As it turns out, their collective story is unusual as band backstories
go, and in a sense, Smith takes an unusual approach with the book that
underlines their curious position. That is to say that for a band so often
remembered as an iconic representation of 1980s pop culture, most of their work
was a commentary on sociopolitics of the 1960s and subsequent failures in the
70s, but it was all packaged in a form that became very chic in the 80s. The
book itself is chronological, but nearly all of the activity takes place in the
70s. The 80s are only represented by a 10-page epilogue! Clearly there are
strange forces at play here.
If you only have a passing
familiarity with the band, it’s likely that you don’t know about their origin
story, which is discussed in detail throughout Chapter 1 of Recombo DNA The original band members are all from
the Akron, OH area, and were affiliated with Kent State in 1970. It was the end
of the 1960s and all of the hopes and dreams of youth culture in that era
seemed to hit a wall in short order. For many in music, the philosophical “end
of the 60s” came at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in December of 1969, a
concert headlined by the Rolling Stones that erupted in violence led by the
Hell’s Angels who were there as security. For the soon-to-be-members of Devo,
it was May 4th, 1970 and the Kent State Massacre, when the Ohio National Guard
killed 4 and wounded 9 unarmed students on the Kent State campus. I’ll let
readers get all of the details in the book themselves, but suffice it to say
that the incident was the flashpoint for the concept of “de-evolution,” or
“Devo,” in the mind of Gerald Casale, who eventually met up with future band
member Mark Mothersbaugh in the years following the massacre. The earliest
versions of their concept were also inspired by pop culture references, such as
Wonder Woman comics and the old “Island of Lost Souls” film, which inspired
some of their favorite early catchphrases like “Are we not men?”
Chapter 2 is where the band starts
to become a public entity. Initially, a sextet version of the band was
assembled for a one-off performance in April 1973 on the Kent State campus.
Some early members shifted around, and their 2nd performance was the following
year at the same Creative Arts Festival at Kent State. It’s interesting to note
that founders Casale and Mothersbaugh both ended up cajoling siblings to join
them in the band. Two siblings, both named Bob, ended up staying with Devo for
the long haul. The band also continued to find references in culture that
furthered their “devolution” concept, such as a 1924 anti-evolution pamphlet
called “Jocko Homo Heavenbound,” which became the inspiration for the song that
might be considered their theme tune, or the book “The Beginning Was the End”
by Oscar Maerth, whose title and some concepts the band borrowed for their
short film a few years later. Devo’s third gig was about a year later, and
again took place at Kent State. This time, they played two sets, each time
acting as a warm-up for screenings of the film “Pink Flamingos.” This time,
they were approaching the high-concept style they would become known for. The
band all wore costumes and used fake names, and by a few months later, they
were opening for Sun Ra wearing matching costumes. However, their music was
still somewhat unrefined.
The year 1976 stands as the point
where everything started coming together. The band decided to create a short
film about their devolution concept that could be released on laserdisc, the
brand-new video format at the time that anticipated the compact disc by almost
a decade. “The Beginning Was the End: The Truth About De-Evolution” functioned
basically like a music video for two songs, and became one of the early music
videos that excited people about underground music. Smith takes a detour in the
book at this point to compare Devo to the work of The Residents in San
Francisco, who were kindred spirits in many ways as artists working with video
and primitive electronic music, learning as they went along. In the Devo camp,
along with creating their new video, they found the yellow suits that they all
wore during the early segment of their career, the excellent drummer Alan Myers
joined the band, which created a more professional backbone for their sound,
and they started consciously honing details of their songwriting technique and
performance aesthetic. They wanted to emulate the sounds and movements of a
machine. And they honed their skills by finally starting to play a lot of local
club gigs.
1977 was the year Devo went
national, at least in an underground sense. This year finds them showing their
film publicly, releasing their first single by themselves, and touring to NYC
and California, where they found many kindred spirits performing around the
country, such as Pere Ubu in Cleveland, Suicide in New York City, or The Units
in San Francisco. In the book, this part of the Devo story takes us to roughly
the halfway point—7 years of slow development take up the first half, and now
just three years of accelerated activity will fill the 2nd half of the book.
I’ll not take you through a play by play of their seemingly quick rise in
popularity once the right people saw them performing, such as David Bowie, Iggy
Pop, and Brian Eno, but suffice it to say that the 2nd half of the book reads
more like the usual rock band biography, with the band finally bouncing from
success to success, building a significant fan base, and finding themselves in
the middle of a record label bidding war. It’s all a little paradoxical for a
band whose underlying philosophy is largely anti-commercial, an elaborate
satire of conspicuous consumption, but they found a way to balance everything.
It’s a dance their fans have had to navigate forever, too, the idea of buying
lots of recordings and t-shirts and novelty items from a favorite band whose
message in general speaks to the frivolity of such things.
As mentioned earlier, the
relatively brief epilogue of the book addresses the 1980s, the decade where
Devo briefly enjoyed commercial success and were certainly an influence on a
lot of the New Wave music that filled the airwaves, as well as being pioneers
in music video production which drove the music industry in that era. In their
way, they inspired some of the slick, colorful crass commercialism typical of
most popular music of the era, even though they had been creating that kind of
look and feel for satirical purposes. Although this book was first published in
2013, and could have included some of the latter-day Devo moments, such as
their Dev2.o collaboration with Disney in 2006, or their 2010 album “Something
for Everybody,” author Smith leaves the story there. Few bands would merit a
biography of this nature, but for Devo, this works very well, and it explains
the interest in their early demo work that persists to this day—there is yet
another retrospective triple LP album of their early demos spanning the era
between 1973 and 1977 slated for release later this year (their 50th
anniversary). If you’re a fan and you end up pursuing that new release, this
book is a great companion for shedding more light on the early days of
de-evolution.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try Rebels and Underdogs: The Story of Ohio Rock and Roll by
Garin Pirnia, Hardcore Devo Vol. 1 and Hardcore Devo Vol. 2 by Devo on Hoopla Music.)
( official www.clubdevo.com
web site )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to
this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog
individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the
reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the
Polley Music Library,
located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th
& "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians,
books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs,
music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out
Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and
follow them on Facebook!
Posts
