While
there’s no question that Devo is certainly one of the most innovative and
unconventional bands in the annals of popular music history, oftentimes they
unfortunately (and undeservedly) get lumped into the “one hit wonder” category
due to the monster success of “Whip It” and its iconic video. You couldn’t turn
on MTV in the early 80s without seeing Devo’s distinct black sleeveless
turtleneck and red energy dome combo. However, as the re-release of The Men Who Make the Music (out August
12) makes abundantly clear, there is certainly more to the New Wave pioneers
below the surface of those yellow jumpsuits.
Devo created
The Men Who Make the Music as their
first home video release back in the visionary VHS days of 1981. While it was
actually completed as early as 1979, its release was held up by label execs for
its “anti-music industry content.” When it finally got released two years
later, it immediately became a cult fan favorite. After its initial release,
original copies of the tape were hard to come by and rarely sold for less than
a couple hundred bucks. However,
the fine folks over at MVD are making The
Men Who Make the Music available again and thankfully this time it’s on DVD
– though don’t expect any sort of visual sprucing up as it still contains the
time-appropriate graininess that adds to its charm. The DVD contains the full
49-minute The Men Who Make the Music in
its original state and included as a bonus is Butch Devo and Sundance Gig, an hour-long live concert from their
1996 closing slot at the Sundance Film Festival.
The
Men Who Make the Music
As Devo’s
first video release, The Men Who Make the
Music is certainly not short on character and charm. Mixing concert footage
from their 1978 tour with music videos and quirky interstitial segments that
look straight out of a 70s-era Saturday
Night Live skit, the video ends up being both a cool snapshot of Devo’s
early years and an interesting time capsule for the New Wave quirkiness of the
late 70s. The live performances do a fantastic job of showing that Devo is more
than just a fun-loving, experimental band looking to shock people with gimmicks
and antics. Songs like “Uncontrollable Urge,” “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA,” and “Red
Eye” showcase Devo’s impressive mix of idiosyncratic guitar-and-bass lines,
wiggly synth splashes, and punk rock energy. The music videos showcase Devo’s
one-of-a-kind personality and their off-beat sense of humor. The opening video
for “Jocko Homo” features frontman Mark Mothersbaugh doing a wonderfully
disjointed dance that would give David Byrne a run for his money and the rest
of the band’s sunglasses-under-pantyhose look is both delightful and disturbing
in equal measure. The interstitial segments work as transitional pieces that
thread a (very, very) loose narrative throughout the video, showing such things
as Devo’s woes in the face of “Big Entertainment” and their tongue-in-cheek
philosophy of “reductive synthesis” that allows them to “remove the gooey
cellulite in modern music.” There’s only one Devo and The Men Who Make the Music wonderfully
proves why.
Butch
Devo and Sundance Gig
The bonus
half of this release is Butch Devo and
Sundance Gig, a concert video featuring Devo’s January 26, 1996 closing set
at the Sundance Film Festival in Park Slope, Utah. Shot almost 20 years after
the concert footage in The Men Who Make
the Music, it’s really amazing to see the same (or possibly even more) energy
and passion coming from the band as they blaze through a stunning setlist of
fan favorites and early Devo material. Of course, the band is also decked out
in matching striped prison suits because… why not? Bassist/co-founder Jerry
Casale described the show by saying, “In January of '96, we closed Sundance
Film Festival. We wore 20s style prison suits and dished out classic Devo songs
to an unsuspecting audience of Hollywood elite." From the opening thump of
“Too Much Paranoias” to the closing sing-a-long of “Beautiful World,” Devo
never slows down musically or physically. There’s even the occasional
herky-jerky, full-band choreography in the midst of all the wonderfully weird
riffs and off-kilter rhythms. Devo performed a wide variety of their best-loved
tracks here, with “Girl U Want,” “Jerkin’ Bank and Forth,” “Jocko Homo,” and
their kooky cover of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” being absolute standouts here. As a personal bonus, they also played a frantic
version of my favorite Devo track, “That’s Good” that I was super jazzed to
see.
With
the knockout one-two punch of both The
Men Who Make the Music and Butch Devo
and Sundance Gig presented here,
this DVD comes with a hugest of recommendations from me. Apart from a few of
the videos on MTV, I never saw any of the original material from The Men Who Make the Music before. So I can honestly say that you don’t need
to have seen it back in 1981 to enjoy it now. This DVD is a wonderful treasure
trove for Devo fans, as well as for popular culture fans that will dig the
nostalgic time capsule vibe of the creatively unhinged music videos and
interstitial segments.
The Men Who Make the Music will be
released on August 12 and can be pre-ordered from MVD here.
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