I am attempting to make some sense of a very perplexing scenario, albeit one that doesn’t really matter all that much to anyone, if I were to be honest, because it’s mostly just pop culture dork crap. BUT it’s a thing of interest!
SHRIVELED UP: DEVO, “de-evolution” and the Prophylactic Tour
Recently, my bud was all like “Did you see how DEVO is set to headline that Punk Rock Bowling thing?” My first thought was “there will be no concerts this year, because the virus nonsense is not going to stop, ever, as Doctor Faucet is promoting Bill Gates’ Malthusian agenda and the Center for Dicks and Cocks hasn’t decided whether or not obesity is a bad thing. The damage is permanently done to the brains of this weak generation. If anything, fools will probably need to present their Soviet-style proof of vaccine paperwork to concert venue Apparatchik, and enter personal plastic pods separated at 6 foot intervals. That’s PUNK ROCK!!”
And then, once again, I began thinking about how DEVO: The De-Evolution Band would respond to and critique the abject insanity of modern society, as they had done so well in the past. This is a society which has been getting aggressively stupider in so many ways… Take, for example: Pop music, sequel/prequel/remake movies, the Entertainment Industry in general, “The News”, junk food, plastic everything, Chinese escalators that kill people, staring at phones, political polarization, pharmaceutical drug proliferation, etc. DEVO were downright ground-breaking in the 1970s and 80s with their “high” and “low” devo concepts and the satire and art (props to their 2010 comeback album Something For Everybody, which is really good and fits the zeitgeist of that timeframe). So how might this humorous DE-EVOLUTION philosophy, which started in the 1970s, continue in Current Year, with the cornucopia of dumb shit that’s deserving of clever and necessary mockery in musical form?
Well, I have a prediction: Should DEVO actually play this Pun Crock Bowling thing, they will NOT be mocking our present world and its MANY stupid / hilarious problems; they will not mention senile Biden’s stuttering, forgetful banter, nor the fact that this dementia-addled puppet boy dipshit is the most popular president in US history (by a lot), nor his war-mongering Big Business /Tech Industry occupational party. Instead, Jerry Casale will say something like “I’m sure glad Trump is gone, he’s the worst man ever! (wild audience applause) This next song is called ‘Whip It’!” And that will be that. So this is what I’m trying to get at with my contemplations of The De-Evolution Band, the philosophy they gave us, those things which are absolutely verboten in these “modern times”, and a dead thing called satire.
The last time I saw DEVO’s Jerry Casale in action was when he presided over the screening of DEVO’s music videos at The Hollywood Theater in Portland, late 2019 (note: I’d seen him speak on multiple occasions over the years). Jerry did some Q & A, and really seemed more bitter than ever. I was like, jeez Jerry, lighten up! He was obviously very perturbed by Orange Cheeto Hitler, the worst man ever. But afterwards, he shook my hand with a smile and is always cordial with the fans.
Now, let’s flashback even more to October 2008, in Akron, Ohio. I went to a DEVO performance, but it was no ordinary performance; it was some kind of Democratic party fundraiser, also featuring a performance by Chrissie Hynde. At the time, I couldn’t care less about presidential politics. I just wanted to see DEVO. Various politicians or other dumb dorks were taking the stage and talking, and I mocked them, because I am a rowdy DEVO fan and I don’t care what boring old liberals have to say. What sticks out about this DEVO performance was towards the end when Jerry chanted “Obama! Oh-Eight!” repeatedly. I cringed. Sure, we all dealt with that horrible clown George W Bush and 8 years of war, and felt optimistic about a brand new president, but The De-Evolution Band throwing excited and serious support behind a Democratic Party presidential candidate just felt GROSS.
So when I predict that Biden, and the horrors that this withered old piece of shit “president” represents, will be completed overlooked by DEVO (and indirectly celebrated), this is how I’ve drawn my conclusion. It seems that the unstoppable force of de-evolution has devolved DEVO into a status quo rock band, cheering on the ruling class, like so many others. And this is a major bummer!
It is interesting to note that DEVO are, in fact, baby boomers. Hippies in the late 60s to early 70s, edumacated in a Univershitty when communism was the hot new thing amongst the “rebellious” youths; they left their gritty yet awesome Northeast Ohio home and went to the Hell that is Los Angeles in order to enter the reprehensible entertainment industry. I find that this may fundamentally be why DEVO stopped being the wildly creative force that they once were, and eventually became assimilated into their bland, phony surroundings. Jerry made a living directing music videos and commercials, fer cryin’ out loud! That’s gotta be awful. Mark Mothersbaugh started his own music soundtrack company, which is cool, but that just means he’s working for big, bloated Hollywood scumbags (and also Wes Anderson, whom I do not enjoy at all, because my testosterone levels are normal). Mark’s wife, Anita Greenspan, is apparently some entertainment industry PR person or some such bullshit (gross!!), and the rest of DEVO does not like her (I recall that she has been a bad influence upon Mark’s involvement with the band). To me, it looks like the West Coast shit machine chewed up DEVO and spit them out, despite their early resistance. (Alternate universe DEVO, who moved to New York instead of Los Angeles, would have probably been a better, more dangerous band.)
In 1977, David Bowie introduced DEVO onstage in New York City. A few years later…
Wise words from a wise man.
So basically, the weirdo band who wrote awesome songs like “Mongoloid”, “Jocko Homo”, “Midget”, “Pink Pussycat”, “Be Stiff”, “I Need A Chick”, “Social Fools”, “Penetration In The Centerfold”, and many more, have unfortunately been Los Angeles-area entertainment industry people for decades, and their satirical worldview became neutered. But alas, the excellent songs remain… and that theory of De-Evolution remains as well! It’s that theory that really sticks in my craw. The foundational principle. De-Evolution didn’t STOP because some baby boomers found new life in the Democratic Party. The process has undoubtedly continued, unabated, and it seems that no one has the ability to apply it to Current Year and keep taking it where it needs to go. Doing so might be dangerous… but then again, back in the day, DEVO used to purposely make people angry. Things used to be dangerous, which is fun. Remember “punk”?
I mean, shit, those dumb things I wrote at the top of this (regarding concerts) are so damn DE-VO (and I probably made you angry with my words, because I’m not allowed to say bad things about things)!
Genetic experimentation via Microsoft-sponsored mRNA gene-therapy vaccines on a global scale (recombo DNA?)
Soviet-style vaccine “passports” to present to mouth-breathing bureaucratic mongoloidian Apparatchik in our corporate feudal state, in order to enter a concert venue (see Idiocracy)
Forever wearing a MASK (research the correlation between DEVO and masks!)
Entering some sort of enclosed plastic pod so as to keep you and everyone SAFE from a flu-like virus
All to see a “PUNK ROCK” show. It’s DE-VO AF! Maybe DEVO will re-purpose the old General Boy concert etiquette video to instruct you to wash your hands and wear three masks at once? I mean, the potatoes are perfect representations of the fat-ass fans. Nah, this would actually be funny, and the band would get “cancelled” on social media by overweight bespectacled they/thems. But anyways, this all seems like the kind of dystopian social madness that DEVO would have joked about in the late 70s! But nowadays, if I joke about this bullshit, I will be punished and excommunicated. People who are better than me will become very suspicious of me. I must be reading some crazy conspiracy websites if I have ideas like that (fun fact: I do indeed have a copy of THIS). Perhaps the authorities should be alerted to my presence. Call the FBI. Delete my social media accounts…
“De-Evolution” was speaking truth to power, using THE SCIENCE in a funny and creative way, being smart enough to call yourself an ape and act like a retard because doing so was strictly taboo in our supposedly advanced and democratic society (ah, satire!). De-Evolution warned us that adults were devolving into big babies, which is obviously true, and now we are seeing that people really WANT to be irresponsible babies! They’ll pay for it! Sometime it’s totally free! The system itself rewards fat stupid irresponsibility! Testosterone levels are dropping fast, mental illnesses are increasing just as fast, OTC drugs are spread far and wide to “cure” one thing while causing another thing… DEVO told us to “protect ourselves from the ninnies and the twits. The enemy is at the gate, and the enemy is the human mind itself - or lack of it - on this planet.” Right now, as I write this, I could rattle off a long list of perpetrators who fit the ninny / twit description (such as current “president” and the entire occupational class of the American government). There is no lack of total retards who are totally DE-VO. But there IS a distinct lack of transgressive smart-ass musician-types who would fearlessly put themselves out there in harm’s way so as to report on the constant process of De-Evolution while getting besmirched by the media and harassed by pinheads; musician-types who would THRIVE on igniting controversy and taking great joy in watching morons gnash their teeth and squirm about! There was a time when this was called “punk rock”, but those days are over just like the days of De-Evolution, it seems.
BUT, perhaps the most F-ed up thing of ALL is that DEVO’s plastic protective gear has officially stopped being a satirical art project and a commentary on modern sanitized life, and has instead become the actual way our prophylactic society functions!! Doesn’t anyone see how insanely, hilariously DE-VO this is? The processes of de-evolution have predictably taken us downward to this “utopian” modern society that’s chock-full of great big fat people, popular new mental illnesses, hyper-consumerism, and a repressive FEAR of microscopic germs (and of death itself), and not even DEVO themselves can lean into the joke and bring the whole damn thing full-circle to the funniest, most ridiculous conclusion that NO ONE could have ever predicted! COME ON, gorillas are being vaccinated! HELLO, DEVO?
(Oh yeah, Mark almost died of the meme virus. Good thing his Los Angeles public relations wife was there to provide relations to the public. Surely we were given the real, actual story…)
So, I guess we shall see what happens. Will those 70-year-old spudboys take the stage in Las Vegas, defying the odds, even though Mark almost DIED? Will they drop some witticisms that mock the blatant puppetry of Biden and his ruling elite controllers, in front of a doughy middle-aged masked-up crowd? Will they rock new plastic haz-mat costumes that make fun of germ paranoia and try to sing into microphones through triple-layer masks? I wouldn’t count on it. Rejoice, for Orange Cheeto Drumpf is no longer president! Everything is fine now, and SOON it will all be back to NORMAL again, after everyone is injected with experimental gene therapy vaccines because a flu-like virus seems to kill the old and the obese. Whip it good.