London Calling LIVE DEVO

Rip It Up, Issue 36, 1 July 1980, Page 26

London Calling LIVE DEVO

The Venue, opposite Victoria station, is designed to be something like the Roxy on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. At the Roxy on a good night you can sit back and watch Dave Edmunds or the Ramones while a waitress brings your Pino Colada. Only at a place like the Masque or San Francisco's Deaf Club do American rock audiences get anything like audiences here. English audiences tend to prefer the less stuffy atmosphere of the Nashville or the Electric Ballroom where you can stand or dance and the prices are cheaper than the Venue. Maybe there's some truth in a Virgin employee’s claim that the Greater London Council imposes the Venue’s minimum ticket price of S7.SONZ in an apparent effort to “keep the punks out". But that doesn’t explain the steep $12.75NZ to see Devo at the venue. That includes a SI.SONZ booking fee at the Virgin record store. Devo is, yes, on Virgin Records and the Venue, incidentally, is owned by Virgin •Records. Perhaps the highest ticket prices allow the Venue its reputation as a press hangout. Another great rock’n’roll swindle? That as Virgin would no doubt quickly add is showbiz. Devo’s show, as it happens, is almost value for money. It starts with films the first introducing Booji Boy and the General (who tells Booji the time has come for the world to know the truth about de-evolution). Enter Devo, that’s D-E-V-0 —rock's caped crusaders, machines with a mission. “Jocko Homo” is followed by filmclips of “(Can't Get Me No) Satisfaction”, “The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize", and two from the new album “Girl U Want" and “Freedom of Choice". “Girl U Want" in particular shows a more FM-conscious Devo with a possible (US) hit in the Cheap Trick mould of sugarpuff pop. Devo takes the stage wearing plant pot hats to begin with songs from the new album. Things didn’t start smoothly when the US flag Devo Mark Mothersbaugh waved low over the heads of the audience was torn from its staff. And then when Mothersbaugh ripped up his padded uniform in “Swelling Itching Brain” the audience was suspiciously quick to help him. Devo changed uniforms and overcame all with an absurd, clever, and above all professional performance. “Freedom of Choice” (with Devo, in Hitler masks) was the encore, there were more films, a “goodnight spuds" and a final “We Are All Devo!". Then “Devo Corporate Anthem". Devo once considered de-evolution and its associated theories (cathonic progress and fluid catharsis) important enough to refuse interviews to English journalists who didn’t take it seriously. Simply stated Devo’s theories on deevolution amount to a reaction against man’s evolutionary direction. De-evolutionaries or, more simply, devo-tees seek to remind the machine-worshippers (in Devo Jerry Casale's words) of the “the belch, the fart and the belly laugh".* Devo aim to inject “some notion of the transcendent" into the lives of the technocrats. The technocrats, those ruled by the machine-worshippers are described by Casale as “unthinking slaves of the organic processes they do not understand (who) live only to reproduce themselves”. You didn’t have to understand de-evolution to enjoy Devo's concert. De-evolution was reduced to the simplest of platitudes, a call and answer response any blockhead could join in: Are We Not Men? We Are Devo! Devo must repeat Jeremy Tempter * Taken from Casale’s Didactical Works re Deevolution which appeared in CLE, an American fanzine.