The Musical Box

devo. from left: mark mothersbaugh, bob mothersbaugh, gerald casale, josh freese and bob casale. photo by joshua dalsimer.

However unwittingly, Lexington has played a role in the evolution of de-evolution – or more specifically, in the make-up of the veteran jump-suited pop purveyors that have come to symbolize such social regression: Devo.

It’s a small part, mind you. But it’s one that sprang to mind for Devo co-founder frontman Mark Mothersbaugh as the band prepared for its first ever Kentucky performance this weekend at the Forecastle Festival in Louisville.

“I drove through Kentucky once,” Mothersbaugh recalled. “It was in Lexington at a Salvation Army store around 1975 or 76 that I bought five matching pairs of tuxedo pants. A caterer or a tuxedo rental place had probably gotten rid of a bunch of stuff. So I bought them for the band. They were in fashion, too.”

This summer Devo is in the midst of a full scale career renaissance. Though active since 1973, save for a few dormant years in the early ‘90s, the band released its first album of new songs in 20 years, Something for Everybody, in June. That has upped the band’s visibility considerably, resulting in TV appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Colbert Report (with host Stephen Colbert even donning an official Devo jump suit and “energy dome” hat for the occasion) and Jimmy Kimmel Live! (Click here for a clip of Devo performing Fresh and the 1982 hit That’s Good last Feburary at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.)

So why now? Why has Devo re-entered a record company arena it left in disgust two decades ago, an environment that has all but corroded record labels out of existence ever since.

“It came about through the whole collapse of the record business,” Mothersbaugh said. “At least, in the way we came to know it. They had this business model that we lost interest in. But their feeling more recently has been, ‘We’re an endangered specifies, a dinosaur that’s about to sink into the tar pit. We’d like to give one last go at reinventing what a record company is. We think you guys might be the right band to collaborate with.’

“That was a totally different way to think about things than what was going on in the record industry in 1977, when we were being pontificated to about what it is to be a recording artist.”

With that, Devo did the unthinkable – it re-signed with Warner Brothers, the label that introduced the band to the world in the midst of punk rock and New Wave revolution with the 1978 Brian Eno-produced debut album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!

Comprised of two set of brothers – Mothersbaugh and sibling Bob, along with Gerald Casale and his brother Bob (the siblings were designated in early album notes as Bob 1 and Bob 2), Devo moved heavily into keyboard dominate pop at the dawn of the ‘80s, resulting in the career defining 1980 hit Whip It.Augmented since 1995 by drummer Josh Freese (of Weezer, Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle fame), the band of brothers downshifted its workload in recent years in favor of other pursuits. Mothersbaugh, in particular, has been a prolific composer of scores for films, TV and video games. Among his newest projects was the score for the 2009 animated movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

“Three years ago, if you said we would be back with Warner Bros. I would have said, ‘That’s impossible. You’re smoking something if you think that’s going to happen. But I’m kind of pleasantly surprised. There have definitely been bumps. There has definitely been turbulence. But we’re trying to turn the concept of what it means to be a record company upside down on them.

“Record companies are going to have to figure out how to redefine and reinvigorate themselves as something relevant. And there is a good chance they won’t. They’re not really needed anymore. Everyone with access to the internet has access to a forum and an audience. It’s changed the way musicians make music. You’re no longer making music to please a record company. You making it to make yourself happy and to be true to your art, all while finding an audience on your own.”

With all the changes in the record industry, the music of Something for Everybody sounds more like an update than a reinvention of Devo music from the ‘70s and ‘80s. The single Fresh reasserts the band’s efficient pop drive while What We Do lyrically emphasizes a routine but regimented dance savvy agenda in its chorus (“What we do is what we do. It’s all the same. There’s nothing new.”)

But Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man) brings a concept of de-evolution – born, in no small part, by the 1970 shootings at Ohio’s Kent State University, which occurred while Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale were students there – into the 21^st century with a hapless, hybrid-driving character confronting paranoia, dashed dreams and omnipresent violence that concludes with the sobering, mantra-like chorus of “don’t tase me, bro.”

“You have to understand, we were never celebrating de-evolution,” Mothersbaugh said. “We were just warning people about it. We were always like, ‘You know what? Things are failing part.’ We just didn’t know how fast they were falling apart. 30 years ago, we didn’t have a crystal ball. I mean, who would have known there would today be a 24/7 underwater cam of a spewing oil well?

“To me, that’s the most significant sign of de-evolution in our culture. But in a way, that’s made things easier for us. People now have a handle on us that’s more accurate than it was 30 or 35 years ago. Back then, Devo was shocking, weird and even threatening to some people. Now, maybe, we’re kind of in our time.”

Devo performs at 7:30 p.m. June 12 as part of the Forecastle Festival at Waterfront Park in Louisville. Tickets are $60 (single day admission), $110 (two day admission), $150 (entire festival). For a full festival schedule, click here.