th<\/sup> anniversary of its release, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!<\/i> is every bit as strange and untethered from convention as it was in 1978.<\/p>\nWith the benefit of some four decades\u2019 hindsight, it\u2019s clear that the middle-late 1970s was an era of some musical ferment. But much of it was bubbling under, not perceptible to the everyday pop music consumer. Today we look back on David Bowie\u2019s series of albums from that period\u2014Low, \u201cHeroes\u201d and Lodger<\/i>\u2014as a thematically connected set of releases. We even refer to them as the \u201cBerlin Trilogy.\u201d Bowie\u2019s work, friendship and associations with Robert Fripp, Brian Eno and engineer Conny Planck would quietly exert a great influence that extended far beyond the relatively modest commercial performance of those records.<\/p>\n
Bowie and his pals had their collective antennae out for other artists who were doing interesting things, too. Beyond their now well-known and celebrated connections to relatively high-profile artists like Lou Reed and Peter Gabriel, they apparently also paid attention to the odd demo tape that found its way into their hands.<\/p>\n
One of those was a tape from Devo. The creative collective was impressed by the off-kilter music, and a decision was made to produce an album. Owing to schedules and previous commitments, the responsibility for producing what would become Q\/A<\/i> (that\u2019s how I\u2019m going to abbreviate the album title) fell to Eno. Sessions took place in Cologne, West Germany, with Planck engineering*; Bowie dropped by when he could, and he ultimately acted as an uncredited co-producer.<\/p>\n
Despite the way-out aesthetic of Devo and its music\u2014one that might suggest a bunch of young musicians with little connection to the pop culture of the 1960s\u2014two of the five band members were in fact inextricably tied to an earlier era. Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis were students at Ohio\u2019s Kent State University at the time of the infamous 1970 killing of war protesters by members of the Ohio National Guard. In fact the tragedy had a sort of unintended connection to a half-serious conceptual theory cooked up by the pair. The group would take its name from the founding members\u2019 \u201ctheory of de-evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n
On one level, Devo seemed hard to take seriously, and much about the band\u2019s approach suggested they didn\u2019t intend<\/i> to be taken seriously. But deep inside their quirky lyrics and provocatively weird visual style was some sharply-executed social commentary about the vapidity of modern culture.<\/p>\n
Listening now, \u201cUncontrollable Urge\u201d has much in common with some of the nervier punk coming out of the UK; in particular, Mark Mothersbaugh\u2019s yelpy vocal is reminiscent of Feargal Sharkey\u2019s warble. But it\u2019s worth noting that \u201cTeenage Kicks,\u201d the debut single from Northern Ireland\u2019s Undertones was released in October 1978, more than a month after the release of Devo\u2019s first record. The whip-fast delivery of the song\u2019s melody was very much in a new wave\/punk vein, but the song has a strong melodic line as well. The song is built around a riff identical to (and in the same key as) Led Zeppelin’s \u201cMisty Mountain Hop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The nods\u2014or sideways glaces\u2014to classic rock continue. Devo\u2019s radical deconstruction of the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201c(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u201d likely angered many a rock purist when the band performed it on Saturday Night Live<\/i> on October 14, 1979. Everything about the performance seemed designed to outrage, from the band\u2019s hazmat-suit uniforms to the modifications made to their instruments (Jerry Casale playing a sawed-off Gibson Ripper bass? Effects pedals duct-taped onto guitars? Sacrilege!). Devo\u2019s \u201cSatisfaction\u201d was a poke in the eye, a shot across the bow, a statement of purpose that made it clear the band would not play by anyone\u2019s rules but its own. The stuttering, almost dub instrumental approach to the song suggests Eno\u2019s influence; he would explore similar textures on his own \u201cpop\u201d [sic] trilogy of albums.<\/p>\n
\u201cPraying Hands\u201d is equal parts rock melody and robotic sonic assault, and its brief lyric pokes fun at religiosity. Its start\/stop approach is not miles away from the music on early albums from Swindon, England\u2019s XTC, but that likely had more to do with shared influences than cross-pollination; XTC\u2019s debut album was released right around the time Devo finished sessions for Q\/A<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Other than Mothersbaugh\u2019s distinctive vocals, \u201cSpace Junk\u201d is relatively conventional rock, albeit rock of the excessively speedy variety. Eno adds synthesizer textures. \u201cMongoloid\u201d is something else entirely; at first, its deliberately provocative lyric seems to be making fun of a genetic chromosome disorder; closer inspection suggests that\u2014just maybe\u2014the song is a wry commentary on the dysfunction of taking part in the modern-day rat race. The nasal vocals, keening synthesizer lines and boxy electronic (or at least electronically-treated) drums impart a cold, distant feel to the song.<\/p>\n
\u201cJocko Homo\u201d isn\u2019t as lyrically offensive as its title might suggest, but to a generation raised on a diet of mainstream rock and pop, it may well have sounded like noise. A head-spinning guitar figure\u2014answered by a similar melodic line on synthesizer\u2014provides a decidedly unconventional backing for the song\u2019s verses. An angular, descending riff acts as a kind of instrumental chorus. The song is more or less the group\u2019s anthem (with its chants of \u201cWe are Devo\u201d), and its lyric expands a bit (but not much) on the theory of devolution: simply put, we\u2019re moving backwards, back toward primordial ooze.<\/p>\n
The brief \u201cToo Much Paranoias\u201d sounds like a twisted parody of heavy metal, filtered through the wacky sensibilities of the group. In place of pig-squeal guitar solos, the song features what sounds like guitars being detuned. The lyric mentions a \u201cBig Mac attack,\u201d another reference to the disposable culture exemplified by McDonald\u2019s fast food.<\/p>\n
In the context of the songs on Q\/A<\/i>, \u201cGut Feeling\/Slap Your Mammy\u201d is weird precisely because it\u2019s not. The opening guitar lick sounds like a variant of Hilton Valentine\u2019s arpeggios on the Animals\u2019 \u201cHouse of the Rising Sun.\u201d The catchy, comparatively conventional tune unwinds for more than two minutes before the lyric (a sort of anti-love song) appears. The first part of the medley descends into squalls of atonal guitar skronk as it segues into the brief, pogo-worthy second part. The Dead Kennedys\u2019 Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables<\/i> wouldn\u2019t be released until September 1980, but those who picked up Devo\u2019s Q\/A<\/i> and listened to \u201cSlap Your Mammy\u201d got an advance taste of the San Francisco band\u2019s sonic approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome Back Jonee\u201d has a vaguely country and western vibe, and in retrospect can be seen as a kind of embryonic effort of the sort that would be more fully realized in the group\u2019s biggest hit, \u201cWhip It\u201d from 1980\u2019s Freedom of Choice<\/i>. Lyrically, it\u2019s a story song, perhaps a self-conscious attempt to write in a modern-day variant of Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cJohnny B. Goode.\u201d Some of the song\u2019s riffs are mutated versions of Berry\u2019s style.<\/p>\n
\u201cSloppy (I Saw My Baby Gettin\u2019)\u201d is an off-kilter cousin to the style employed on the Stones cover, with multiple breakdowns that likely would have confounded those attempting to dance to the tune. It features a sparse, smutty lyric.<\/p>\n
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!<\/i> concludes with \u201cShrivel-Up,\u201d a song that seems flown in from another album made by a different group. If \u201cShrivel-Up\u201d sounds like anything else, it\u2019s redolent of some of the early releases by Television; the New York band\u2019s Marquee Moon<\/i> was released in 1977. In any event, the spooky, understated vibe of the song wouldn’t represent a musical direction that Devo would pursue to any substantial degree.<\/p>\n
Devo\u2019s debut album wouldn\u2019t make a serious splash on the charts; it reached only #78 on the Billboard<\/i> album charts. The album fared far better in England where it made it all the way to #12. Q\/A<\/i> did in fact earn RIAA Gold status (500,000 units sold), but that certification came some time after the album\u2019s release: in 2007, some 29 years after it first went on sale. But the influence\u2014and the unyielding, enduring strangeness\u2014of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!<\/i> continues to this day.<\/p>\n
* per the original LP sleeve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The passage of time can do some odd things to our perspective. Things that were once radical and groundbreaking can seem commonplace. It\u2019s sometimes difficult, then, to look back upon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,65],"tags":[669],"class_list":["post-15589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-punk","category-review","tag-devo","cat-59-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15589"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30927,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589\/revisions\/30927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/devo_qa.jpg\")
The passage of time can do some odd things to our perspective. Things that were once radical and groundbreaking can seem commonplace. It\u2019s sometimes difficult, then, to look back upon the release of an album and examine it with the same framework of understanding one had on first hearing it. A good example of this phenomenon is the Sex Pistols\u2019 long-playing debut (and only album-proper, for that matter), 1977\u2019s Never Mind the Bollocks, Here\u2019s the Sex Pistols<\/i>. When that album was unleashed on a largely unsuspecting public, most had never heard anything like it. The album was raw and loud in the extreme, and it felt to most\u2014whether they loved it, despised it or fell somewhere in between\u2014like something they had never heard before.<\/p>\n