{"id":7050,"date":"2015-01-13T05:30:31","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=7050"},"modified":"2018-12-07T11:51:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T16:51:18","slug":"dvd-review-the-complete-truth-about-de-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2015\/01\/13\/dvd-review-the-complete-truth-about-de-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"DVD Review: The Complete Truth About De-evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/devo_complete.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"396\" hspace=\"20\" vspace=\"20\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Beginning in the 1970s, <strong>DEVO<\/strong> established themselves as among the most effective artists using using the creative tool of video in the musical idiom. Contrasting starkly with the the myth-making and glamor of most other music videos, the work of DEVO is deeply unsettling and provocative. Twenty DEVO music video clips (plus some relevant extras) have been compiled on <em>The Complete Truth About De-evolution<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>DEVO&#8217;s philosophical sensibility is shot through all of the band&#8217;s video work. The concept of de-evolution as used by the group (and from whence comes their name) holds as its central concept the idea that humankind is no longer evolving in a forward direction; instead, we&#8217;re on the decline. DEVO has always been as much an art installation as a band; in keeping with the punk aesthetic (the band&#8217;s first video clip debuted in 1976) the band employed a DIY musical aesthetic that eschewed virtuosity in favor of a harsh, brittle, discordant and often deceptively simplistic sound. That approach would have certainly been part of the appeal to fellow musical outsider <strong>Brian Eno<\/strong>; he produced their first album.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the video clips as collected on <em>The Complete Truth About De-evolution<\/em> are low-budget affairs; even when the band hit it big and had a Warner Brothers-financed budget, their more costly videos still had an intentionally homegrown look about them. Though professionally executed, the stop-motion sections of \u201cLove Without Anger\u201d (oddly enough, a staple of early 80s MTV) are reminiscent of the crude animation found on early DEVO clips.<\/p>\n<p>And what all of the group&#8217;s videos share is that world view that concedes \u2013 no, celebrates, really \u2013 the idea that everything is shit, that we&#8217;re headed for the dustbin of history. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in what may well be DEVO&#8217;s finest video clip, the one made to support the song \u201cBeautiful World.\u201d Thick with irony (or sarcasm; your choice), the video displays police beatings, KKK rallies, and atomic detonations, all providing a visual backdrop for lyrics that (on the surface, at least) express what a \u201csweet romantic place&#8221; the world is. With DEVO, satire is always a central element, or at least a tool that&#8217;s kept handy.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"float: right; padding: 10px; width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=ss_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=musoscribe-20&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=B00GTSVOCA&amp;asins=B00GTSVOCA&amp;linkId=3JJMXJRL2VR4UWK5&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The early clips \u2013 that is, the ones that predate MTV&#8217;s summer 1981 launch \u2013 have gotten much less exposure, though some of them surfaced on the USA cable network&#8217;s night time music-centric program <em>Night Flight<\/em>. Still, most casual viewers won&#8217;t have known that these clips (such as \u201cDEVO Corporate Anthem\u201d and \u201cJocko Homo\u201d) even exist. And while they&#8217;re very different from later, more commercially-oriented material like the <em>tres bizarre<\/em> \u201cWhip It\u201d video, the band&#8217;s bent approach is consistent through all of the clips.<\/p>\n<p>And as seems to be true with most any established band one would care to name, the later <em>songs<\/em> (\u201cTheme From <em>Doctor Detroit<\/em>,\u201d for example) don&#8217;t measure up to earlier efforts; but with DEVO the quality of the <em>videos<\/em> never flags. Certainly not \u201ceasy viewing\u201d in the manner of easy listening, DEVO music video clips are thought-provoking, entertaining in their own awkward way, and always exceedingly strange. For those qualities alone, <em>The Complete Truth About De-evolution<\/em> is worth viewing. For fans of the band \u2013 and\/or aficionados of the strange \u2013 this DVD is a must-own.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/the_musoscribe\">Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"18\" height=\"18\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"1\" vspace=\"0\" \/> Twitter<\/a> and get notified<br \/>\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beginning in the 1970s, DEVO established themselves as among the most effective artists using using the creative tool of video in the musical idiom. Contrasting starkly with the the myth-making [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,38,49,59,65],"tags":[669],"class_list":["post-7050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dvd","category-incredibly-strange","category-new-release","category-punk","category-review","tag-devo","cat-25-id","cat-38-id","cat-49-id","cat-59-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050","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=7050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15755,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions\/15755"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}